January 19, 2021

HWSWAnswers: Supporting Characters, Other Genres, Writing Advice, Pen Names, Why????

Emily asked:
I’m struggling with secondary/side characters at the moment – of necessity I have seven of them trucking around with the main characters. Most of them, while they have a backstory and a life (I wrote short stories for each of them, trying to get myself in their heads) there’s not much that appears on the page because it moves things away from my main story. How do you know when you’ve got the balance of that right? There’s two in particular that I keep trying to give a little more story to, but every time I try it drags things away from the main action.

Jenny:
What’s your main story, the narrative that has all the juice that draws your reader into the story? (more…)