Pen to Paper: Walk-ons

Author Bill Henderson, at Write a Better Novel, has an interesting article up about walk-on characters and how powerful they can be. As he says, real life is made up of lots of people outside our main cast of characters. They play important roles even if they don’t take up a lot of time on our stage. Bill shows us how to make the most of these characters in our stories.

Most of what I write is too short for walk-ons, but this will come in handy for me someday when I tackle my version of the Great American Novel — if not sooner.

While you’re at Bill’s blog, be sure to click on the About page to learn who one of his writing teachers was.

Pen to Paper: Naming Your Characters

When I write my stories, I need to know the characters I’m dealing with. I can permit their personalities to develop during the course of writing, but I must know their names. I can start by writing, “Then X crossed to the window and spotted Y doing something unnatural with a tennis racquet.” But before I can go much further, I will have to stop and name both X and Y. The names help to shape the story. If X is Ralph and Y is Aloysius, we will have a very different story than if X were to be Rajit and Y were to be Miyuki.

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