The thing I had to learn to do was not to allow all the secondary characters to be helpful. Because, you know, you put them in the story to help advance the plot, and if you don't watch yourself, it's very easy to make them all Disney bunny rabbits, bright-eyed and cute and ever so eager to help the hero.
Remembering that your secondary characters have no intrinsic reason either to like or to help your protagonist can make a huge difference. If you give them an agenda of their own, ever so slightly at cross-purposes to the protagonist (not just turning them into blocking figures, because that's just the negative of the Disney bunny and still not much of a character), they tend to develop in less simplistic directions.
At least, that was a major breakthrough for me. Of course, as matociquala has commented, I now tend to go to the opposite extreme, and all my secondary characters are assholes. *g*
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2005-09-26 10:30 pm (UTC)Remembering that your secondary characters have no intrinsic reason either to like or to help your protagonist can make a huge difference. If you give them an agenda of their own, ever so slightly at cross-purposes to the protagonist (not just turning them into blocking figures, because that's just the negative of the Disney bunny and still not much of a character), they tend to develop in less simplistic directions.
At least, that was a major breakthrough for me. Of course, as