Often times I like to patrol e-fed boards and read rps just for the fun of it, or to see some of the talent out there and more often than not, I'm shocked by the amount of side characters I see in their work. This also includes my own home feds of SVW and FFW at least in the past; because some of the people who were guilty of the too much is a bad thing crime are no longer apart of those feds. Hell, I was guilty of it myself early on in my 'career' in this little hobby of ours... having about thirty side characters for one single character is to put it simply as overkill.
Side characters are important to the longivity of our main character's stories and are often called NPC's, which I always found to be amusing because are we NOT playing these side characters when we write them? Are they not being fleshed out just as much if not moreso than the main character themselves? But here's the thing and I honestly believe this to be true, you really only truly need about four side characters, maybe six if you want to push it a bit. You need your antagonist for sure, that thorn in your main character's side, the driving force of the story if its needed. An example of this and I'll use one of my own creations for this one. My main known characters at least now a days are Katherine Stryfe and Liam Alexander McIntyre, the brother and sister duo, and with the Katherine Stryfe her main antagonist or this case antagonists are the duo known as Charlie Evans and James Anderson; these two are the main foil in an overarching storyline I've been doing with Katherine for over two years now... if Kat's in trouble, one of those two are somehow involved. You need a good villian to the story, there is no denying this and for me, these two are just that; they are vile human beings that only want to see poor Katherine lose her mind and sucumb to the darkness and hatred that curses her family.
Speaking of family, a good side character is a family member, but you don't need the entire family involved; because again it can and often does become overkill; trying to force your readers to keep up with so many names, personalities, and the overall agendas of all of these characters can take its toll on them and cause them to burn out from memory overload. So keep it simple, we don't need the great aunt Betty or the long lost uncle Bart. In fact unless the family member is going to be a big deal going forward, never bring them up... ever.
But what about the best friend or the rival from high school? Yeah, what about them? Do you as a the writer plan to make them a big deal in future rps you plan to write? Or are they just going to be a one-off character for this one rp you are writing because you got nothing else to write about? If you answered the second choice, don't do it... don't make us have to learn ANOTHER character just to never bring them back up ever again. I mean there is nothing wrong with the old rival showing up to try and rub salt in old wounds, but make it have a point to it if you plan to go down this road.
I read an rp here about a month or so back by a character named Neon, it was an introduction piece that showed flashbacks to her past and introduced some characters she herself had bullied. This would be the exception to the 'don't do it' rule because it was an intro rp for the character of Neon, it showed us, as the readers why she acts the way she acts. Now, I'd love to see in future rps a resolution of these past characters as a building of the Neon character. Whether its her going to these characters and asking for forgiveness and not being given it because of how she treated them or them actually accepting it and seeing that Neon has changed and is honestly sorry for how she acted all those years ago.
In fact I think the 'don't do it' rule really can be forgone for flashbacks to some extent... now don't for the love of God take this to mean I'm saying make every rp a flashback just so you can create a one-off character, if you do, I'm going to groan and wish I never written this paragraph in this blog and probably cry. Do you want to make me cry? Do you?
Pets, believe it or not, pets can be considered side characters because they are very much a part of our character's lives and they can be good storytellers in their own right. Whether its a characters fear of Dogs and having to overcome it for the sake of a child having taken a likeing to a stray one that just won't go away. Hi, Valerie Lamb, give Spike a hug for me. Again don't overkill this either, unless you want to be called the crazy cat person that has twenty-six cats that live with them... don't laugh, I saw an rp once where there were that many cats living in the guy's apartement... how he was able to get that past the landlord I never could figure out.
My final point I want to make here and if you take anything to heart about this blog, it's this... a good rule of thumb is if you don't plan to use a character more than once, don't name them... hell keep them genderless, the less we know, the less we have to remember and wonder about when 'Jenny that long legged red haired waitress from IHop' is going to return to "Billy Badass's" work?
Until next time, this has been yet another random musing of Jer. Have a wonderful day or night and remember I'm reading your work even if you don't believe I am.
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