…and I am VERY glad!  Where to begin?

For the curious among you, my first holiday destination was Cancun, Mexico.  It was just in time for hurricane season, I’m told, but we only saw rain twice and both times it was at night after we had shutdown for the evening.  Sweltering hot too, but in the end, very enjoyable.

The trip to Mexico has proven to me that people can share the same system of measurement and still not really resemble each other in many ways.  Little things like speed limits, for example.  Suffice it to say that the Mexican way of life is substantially different than the Canadian one and we can leave it at that.

The second portion of the holiday was driving from Calgary to Northern BC for a wedding.  Three 7 hour driving segments.  It was almost too much.  Some very beautiful country though.  We’re already planning a return trip with our RV next year or the following.

So, with all this vacationing, how much writing did I manage?  In a word, none.

I decided to actually try and do some reading for a change.  It has been a while since I’ve been able to pick up a book that isn’t job related and simply read for the pleasure of it.  I also wanted to just sit back and do nothing… it has been a LONG time since I have not been multitasking for both work and home during my every waking moment.  It was very weird to shutdown.

In fact, it took me about a week before the shakes wore off and I was able to think about nothing but the moment.

That was an important experience for me.  I’ve been so busy planning and executing plans that I haven’t really slowed down enough to see what’s really going on around me.  I’ve been missing out on some of the little things, like my kids growing up.

Funny how a break can bring things into perspective, isn’t it?

I always make sure I spend time with my family, but if your mind isn’t there with you, what are you missing?  For me, it was that my daughter is swiftly becoming a very intelligent and beautiful young lady who makes good decisions.  It was also that my son is an inquisitive and energetic little boy who likes having his dad around.

The things I’ve been missing.

I’ve also come back with the realization that my first book might need a little work.  I’ve often heard it said that you need to step away from the work for a while and then come back to it to see its flaws.  That also means you need to let it leave you mind completely too.  I hadn’t done that.  Now I have and there are some things I can do to make it even better than it already is.

Yup, the holiday definitely was needed and provided the mental (if not physical) rest I truly needed.  I saw lots of new things that I can incorporate into my writing and got in touch with some things I was overlooking too.

Revitalized?  Oh yes!  I am definitely back.

Well, we made it… 4 episodes in 4 weeks.  This week, as you already know, we are talking about supporting characters and how your story resolution might go.

So, without further ado, let’s soldier on.

Part IIIe – Supporting Characters

Supporting characters.  Whether you love them or hate them, they are (usually) a necessary facet of any story.  But what sorts of things do you need to consider when you’re creating them?

For me, I try to keep them to a minimum.  What I mean by that is, I only bring in a supporting character if they move the story forward.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t have people in my stories.  Far from it.  I just don’t spend any time giving a face and a voice to the background people.  I treat them as the white noise of my story, so to speak.

How much depth should I give this supporting cast?  My rule of thumb is as follows:  make them only as deep as you need to.  I don’t generally give them a back story, but I do try and think of who they are and what might motivate them.  I don’t want them to be flat, lifeless characters after all.

Still, they only get as much personality as they need without being completely 2-dimensional.  I also try very hard to not create the stereotypical characters (you might never know it from my tongue-in-cheek description of the main characters).

Let’s take a look at the story I’ve been creating for a moment to create one or two supporting characters.  In the basic plotting I’ve already done, the family escapes a mugger by hopping a taxi.  It just so happens that the taxi driver, one Estavez Roshanko, considers himself a bit of a player in the area.

He claims to know everyone and everything that’s going on.  Great, says Dad.  We need to find a guide to take the family off the beaten track to search for relics.  Estavez sets the family up with a guide (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

I haven’t really spent any time giving Estavez any back story or really much of a personality, but I can already picture him in my mind.  He really only serves a single purpose; to get the family out in the wild on route to finding a fabulous artifact.  I won’t bother spending any time defining the muggers.  I will describe them, but for the purposes of the story, they aren’t all that important.

At this point, I could create the guide.  Chances are, I would need to give her (fooled you, didn’t I… you thought it would be a man) more personality and even a bit of a story of her own since she’ll be spending a lot of time with the family.

Part IIIe – The Resolution

You might be asking yourself, “but what about the climax?”.  Good question.  Your climax will be part of the overall plotting.  It is important, don’t get me wrong, but a story with a great climax but terrible ending falls flat.

You can sometimes get away with a weaker climax, but it’s the ending that will stick in the reader’s mind (see an earlier post by Sean to see what I mean).

Anybody out there ever heard of ‘Deus et machina’?  Basically it means pulling the ending out of nowhere (it translates directly as God out of the machine, I believe).  It’s definitely not the recommended way to go.  The ending has to be logical based on everything that came before.

It’s OK for the ending to be something of a surprise, however, your reader needs to be able to look back and say, “Ah, yes, that makes sense.”  If they can’t, you need to try again.

When I was working on my first book, I knew how it was going to end long before I ever got to the half-way point.  That knowledge allowed me to write towards the ending.  JK Rowling said very much the same thing about her Harry Potter series.  She said that she knew how it was going to end even before the first book was complete.

Is there a magic bullet for endings?  Not really.  I guess your ending should be dependent on the feeling(s) you have tried to generate throughout the story.  You might also want to consider whether you want to have a sequel or if this is the end.  What you don’t want to do is make the ending feel rushed.  Sean will see right through it  .

For my sample story, I believe that the family will emerge from their adventures more committed to each other.  Unfortunately, they have made a lot of enemies who are now chasing them.  Fortunately, they have made a few very good friends who are looking out for them.  They can’t go home to their old lives, but they don’t mind.  They’ve grown beyond them and the adventuring bug has firmly taken hold of them.

Strong ending?  It doesn’t sound like it so far, but then I am missing about 90% of the plot points so I don’t know what else I can put in.  However, what I have gives me a good general feeling for the resolution of this story.

Part IV – The Wrapup

We’ve talked about a lot of things the past few weeks.  By no means are these the only things you need to consider when writing, but they will get you well down the road.

How has your sample story been going?  I can’t say for sure if mine will grow more or stay as it is here on the site.  Time will tell.

What other pieces of the story do you consider important to mention?  Have you anything you’d like to share with me and/or the general readers?  Email me if you do.  I’d love to hear from you.  My address is mplested@startingwritenow.com.

Thanks for spending the last 4 weeks with me.  I look forward to hearing from you.