8th Day, Write or Wrong: Characterising minor characters

AmyAmy Shipmate
edited January 2019 in Limbo
I'm currently writing a pantomime. (That is, I'm writing something that's half way between a serious drama and a panto farce — I can't quite bring myself to write something devoid of substance!) It's a retelling of The Snow Queen.

I'm totally happy with the plot. I've simplified it a lot, and added a twist at the end (as is my wont). In my version, the Snow Queen is actually Gerda and Kay's mother, who made a deal with the devil in order to save the children's life, and thus is compelled to do evil.

So, characterising the main characters is fairly easy. Gerda is fairly reticent and has confidence issues, stemming from growing up without a mother. The Snow Queen is mercurial and changeable, alternating between doing evil enthusiastically (to prove herself), and feeling lonely and slightly vulnerable. Kay spends most of the time under a spell, so he's easy too, as I can write him fairly two dimensionally.

My problem is the minor characters. I'm finding it hard to make them interesting, and particularly to make them have a distinctive voice. Since I'm writing a play, I have to do a lot with just dialogue. While I'm good at making characters fulfil their role in the plot, I find it a lot harder to make one interesting without their part being strictly necessary.

In another adaptation of Snow Queen (which I read for research), they made the crow a WW1 flying ace. He used all the phrasing, kept calling Gerda "boy" or "lad" (which was both in character and also a running joke)… how do you think up stuff like that? It had no plot relevance, but added much-needed colour.

Comments

  • I was going to suggest just such an idea. Giving them a vocal tick can be really useful in identifying them, and as they are minor characters, you don't necessarily need to have good reason for it.

    Sometime,s the vocal ticks can be more physical, but they have to be expressed with speech for a play. So a character might blink his eyes at the end of each sentence, characterised by [blink, blink]. If it is performed well, the characterisation will come thtough.

    Often, you can get these from exagerating real people. Do you know someone who always talks in a particualr way? With an accent? Don't take the piss, but do use their peculiarity to an extreme to make an oddity.

    I have a character who is a stereotype posh brit - he says things like "what ho old chap". Really easy to slip into conversations, and it helps to identify them when they reappear.

    (Actually, in his case, it was an affectation, but the idea is there).
  • AmyAmy Shipmate
    I was going to suggest just such an idea. Giving them a vocal tick can be really useful in identifying them, and as they are minor characters, you don't necessarily need to have good reason for it.

    I guess I find it hard to think up examples/ideas for that.

    One previous year, the character I played had a repeated phrase "It was literally this one time!". Other characters kept referring to stupid things I'd done in the past, and that was the response. It was great — really gave me something to build the character on.

    But coming up with things like that from scratch? Everything I can think of seems dull…
  • A great example of colorful characters can be found in Dickens.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    To go back to the old distinction EM Forster made between 'flat' and 'round' characters, I don't think minor characters have to be as fully or distinctively developed as key role players. What helps though is some quirk or habit of speech or gesture that 'fixes' them in the reader's mind, just the kind of 'saying' you mention above. If you're looking for a comic effect, some aspect might be exaggerated or made larger than life.

    The critic James Wood has a good piece somewhere on 'getting in' a character, bringing even the smallest walk-on part to life: he used the example of a character from a Guy de Maupassant story: "He was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a doorway."

    Perhaps you just need to spend a little more time with the minor characters until they emerge more clearly?
  • I suppose they can sound dull, but they identify a character.

    Mine are often silly (one spoke in txtspk all the time) but as tthey only appear a few times, it is OK. They can simply finish each sentence with "No?" I suppose I have heard so many people with irritating vocal styles that I can find versions of them to use. There might even be shipmates that I use to inspire me...
  • Is your pantomime context specific? Many of the best ones I've been to have been set in a local village or town with lots of in jokes that the audience will appreciate. If you link in the minor characters to the subplot of village life, then they should come alive in a way that means something to the people you are writing for.
  • AmyAmy Shipmate
    We’re performing in Pimlico. I’ve got a rewrite of Good Morning Baltimore, from Hairspray, as the opening number, now called “Good Evening Pimlico”. But other than that, I don’t have much local stuff in there. Problem is I don’t live round there, and nor do many of our audience. But I could keep an ear to the ground for local news…
  • The other option is topical stuff - so characters based on people in the news or characters and lines from TV advertisements. If you could use Boris Johnson, for example, for characteristics for one of your characters?

    The local pantomimes I was involved in had names based on local villages - so King Stag and Queen Camel, for example.
  • The other option is topical stuff - so characters based on people in the news or characters and lines from TV advertisements. If you could use Boris Johnson, for example, for characteristics for one of your characters?

    Went to a panto the other day where one of the young actors was dressed to look like Donald Trump. He didn't say much, but he didn't need to. Oh how we laughed.


  • AmyAmy Shipmate
    A few years ago we had our villain (the Fairy Frogmother) sing Be Prepared, from the Lion King. At the spoken bit in the middle, she built up to “Srick with me and we’ll make Hardly-Ever-Land GREAT again!”.
  • So a character who says "Make Pimlico Great Again"? Nothing else to distinguish them, but this at the end of sentences would identify the character each time they appear.

    If you watch the political spoofs, and take the facets they take the mick out of, some of them should work for you. More - see which ones get the best laughs. It does make it very contemporary (so may not age well), but as it is minor characters, they could be redone for other environments/times.
  • Is there something from Passport to Pimlico you could pick up on?
  • LeRocLeRoc Shipmate
    If you could use Boris Johnson, for example, for characteristics for one of your characters?
    No-one will believe that this is real.
  • LeRoc wrote: »
    If you could use Boris Johnson, for example, for characteristics for one of your characters?
    No-one will believe that this is real.

    It is a pantomime. He is only slightly less believeable than other traditional pantomime characters.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    If you're going to use Mr Johnson as a character, which I think is a really brilliant idea, please don't just treat him as a buffoon. Please make sure there's something genuinely dark, suspicious, and preferably a bit nasty about him, which only dawns on the audience gradually, after they've laughed at him.
  • AmyAmy Shipmate
    To give you an update, I've written two minor characters since the start of this thread. A bonkers shopkeeper called Ewan, and the Robber Girl's pet/captive Crow.

    Ewan came lifted from a friend's character in a tabletop RPG. (I asked permission!) I guess he's roughly modelled after the stereotype shopkeeper in a fantasy bazaar — selling everything, offering you useless stuff among the gems. But he also keeps mishearing what is asked of him, and provides an endless source of puns.

    Crow I'm still working on, but I'm modelling his way of speaking on Dido Twite from the Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. No idea if I'm getting the dialog right, but it gives him a distinctive manner of speaking, which is what I want at the moment!

    I don't think there's anywhere I can work Boris Johnson in… problem is, most of my baddies are accounted for. Perhaps I could start characterising the Snow Queen's minions a bit better — I just call them Troll 1, Troll 2 at the moment. I guess I could give them a bit more of a separate identity…
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    If one modelled the Snow Queen on the PM, you would have a ready made cabinet of minions with characters ready and waiting - Oh but, I've just realised, they need to have characters.
  • Have you got a suitable double act? That could be how you characterise your trolls - a bit like Laurel and Hardy or Little and Large, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump (with rocket man jokes, bigger button jokes), Boris and Liam Fox with lots of Brexit jokes.
  • Just a note - even if these don't work in this situation, they are all great ideas for minor characters.

    Double acts are a good idea, especially for performed pieces, because the physical characteristics of the performers can be used to emphasise the pairing (like all famous double acts).

    For a single character, a simple stupid haircut - like Boris, Donald or Kin Jong - might work enough (if written only, you can mention it each time they appear).
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