I Shot The Sheriff

Howdy!

There is no reason for me starting this blog post this way except that I’ve always wanted to do that and I am far too Yankee to try it in person. And the fact that I’m going to talk about secondary characters and Bang!, which is a Wild West card game.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, here’s a quick summary. Each player gets a role card that determines how they win the game: either sheriff, vice, outlaw, or renegade. Only the sheriff is allowed to reveal his role. To win, the sheriff must kill the outlaws, the vices must keep the sheriff alive, the outlaws must kill the sheriff, and the renegade must kill everyone…ending with a one-on-one showdown with the sheriff.

You’d think that, since everyone is trying to win, it would become immediately clear who is who. Not so. There’s an obvious way to play your character, and several more subtle ones.

That’s true with secondary characters. Most of the time, we expect them to fit certain stereotypes. Sometimes, though, other kinds of characters can be more interesting and actually help advance the plot instead of serving as human scenery.

Five Things Characters Are Not

Writers are supposed to create characters. Nothing wrong there.

But sometimes we get this mad-scientist-type sense of power from the process: I can create anyone to do anything I want. BWAHAHAHAHA! (Or however you transcribe an evil laugh.)

As it turns out, we can’t do anything we want with our characters. There are some rules of believability, and the people holding us to those rules, our readers, don’t want us to be mad scientists. (Yeah, I know. I was disappointed too. That was one of my main career goals.)

Here are some things I’ve learned not to do when creating characters.