“…don’t pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t.” – Anne Lamott

    “So I told you about Annie Rage an’ my band, an’ you wont tell me about your artwork, so you gotta draw me a picture.”
    He took the paper and pen. “What do you want me to draw?”
    “Can you draw me a picture of someone drowning in a tub of vomit?”
    He thought about it for a moment. “Does it have to be their own vomit?”
    “Nah.”

In my novel The Clubber the main character is Andre, a Death Rocker and an artist who makes his way through underground clubs, basement art showings, and spends much of his time hanging out with the many interesting and chaotic members of the city’s alt-lifestyle crowds.

The story follows Andre as he tries his best to become a big art sensation in the black bedrenched art circles of the underground scene in San Francisco. He does everything he can to promote himself and make connections. There is one chapter late in the book when he goes to visit a friend’s drug dealer, a character named Preston who is a character I’ve used many times in much of my writing. The main crux of this chapter is the visit and subsequent drug deal and for Andre to start an emotion-killing drug binge. To fill out this scene, I had a minor supporting character at Preston’s house, an obnoxious punk named Annie who was there to fill out the scene and provide some more color to this particular narrative.

I use supporting characters all of the time, and I try to make sure they are real characters, not just generic cutouts meant to be fillers. I try to give them personality and quirks that fill them out and make them interesting, even if they’re only in a few scenes or only a couple of lines, such as the record store manager Tandasil in my current novel-in-progress. (I wrote a blog post about her as well!)

In the realm of drunks, punks, Metalheads, Goths, and crazy clubbers, obnoxious punks are a dime-a-dozen. Any experienced clubber has had crazy punks flying in their face, obnoxious rockers invade their physical or mental space, and have witnessed a couple of sketchy punks in ratty denim and leather jackets try to pummel each other at a punk dive or club.

As a character, Annie initially only had a couple of lines in her script. She was supposed to chat with the main character Andre and then get out of the scene. They had their chat, as planned, and for some reason after that conversation started the story began to go off script. Annie asked Andre if he wanted to go to the liquor store for a twelve pack of beer, something she was not supposed to do. It was a hook that started out on its own and fit in quite nicely with the narrative.

I was still filling out this chapter when I wrote Annie’s scenes. The previous chapter before this one was quite easy to write. I already had a crystal clear idea of what was going to happen, I just had to fill out the finer details. This chapter was not quite as clear, and I knew I would have to work out the arcs of this chapter as I wrote it, which may be one of the reasons why the story veered off of the road because Annie grabbed the wheel and started driving it.

By the time I had detailed their short yet intense adventure of going to and coming back from the corner liquor store, Annie and Andre started to bond. In a chapter where Andre was supposed to be getting intertwined with his punk friend and a new drug dealer, an obnoxious punk was starting to take over the story. Andre started bonding with the young woman who insisted that Andre keep her company as they drank booze, snorted speed, and started practicing with Preston’s musical equipment.

While all of this was going on I was getting perplexed and annoyed. I thought “What the hell? You were supposed to say a few lines and then get the hell out of my book!” Instead Annie stuck her tongue out at me and forced herself into the chapter, a development that was completely unplanned.

It turned out to be a really good thing for the story as a whole. Andre starts off as a self-obsessed anti-hero, and we see him develop and change as the story goes on. Andre gets contrasted with Annie, as she pulls him along and he follows her and becomes enveloped in her energy, for reasons which are not completely clear to him. It was an unplanned interaction which not only filled out a significant arc of the entire work, but actually provided an important fulcrum for the character study as a whole.

Which goes to show that Anne Lammot is right. You don’t know your characters, and you shouldn’t pretend that you do. I had no idea my crusty punk hit-and-run character Annie was going to turn into an enabling party monster Frankenstein and take the narrative into new territory.

Which makes me think about the record store manager Tandasil, the bit character for my current novel-in-progress. There’s no room in that story for her to expand into any of the other parts of that story, her role can only be as a supporting character for some very specific scenes. But I went ahead and created a minor character who is just too interesting. She is due for a short story or as a more substantial character in my next book.

https://www.amazon.com/Clubber-Tale-Eighties-Jeffrey-Matucha-ebook/dp/B0719M67LX/