WEEK NINETEEN OF THE SURVEY FOR AUTHORS!QUESTIONS ARE HERE!
Today's question: Favorite minor character that decided to shove themself into the spotlight and why!
Minor characters. Minor characters. Well, I don't have too many great answers for this. My minor characters haven't stolen the spotlight too often. They're pretty well behaved. But I can discuss a few.
In Bad Fairy, the original version of the story didn't include much interaction with the other students in Delia's fairy school. When I rewrote it as a trilogy, there were quite a few more connections with other people, and so I expanded some characters' roles and ended up with some pretty significant relationships. Fiona was mentioned in the original version, but all she was was a throwaway line about being someone Delia could come close to calling her friend. Fiona's definitely a friend in the new version of Bad Fairy, but she didn't really do much time in the spotlight. I also have a character from the far future of Bad Fairy who wasn't even planned to begin with, but he ended up being essential to how the novel turned out. I don't know how long it will take for people to understand the significance of this, but Marshall wasn't planned. ;)
In Finding Mulligan, I again don't have spotlight-stealing characters, especially not minor ones. I can't think of anyone who fits that description for Joint Custody, either. And in Stupid Questions, I guess there aren't really any characters that developed more richly than I expected them to. So many of my novels have tiny casts, so everybody's important and not many people are minor.
In The House That Ivy Built and Negative One, I definitely had some folks start as a brainfart and become important people. Weaver was one of those in the original book. Hard to imagine the series without that guy! In the webcomic, the kind-hearted homeless caretaker, Theresa, wasn't originally intended to be fully developed as a character, but she was a great addition; she just never dreamed of stealing any spotlights. Maybe a good character for spotlight-stealing would be this obscure character:
Ahh look, it's Shelshay, the fan favorite. Shelshay was in all of six issues of my comic (and it's almost up to five hundred issues, so that should give you some perspective). And yet, in the polls for favorite characters, Shelshay got more votes than certain major characters. She sure made an impression for the short time she was on stage. I think that might have been because she was incredibly quirky and said very odd things sometimes, and since Negative One is almost never funny, people welcomed the comic relief.
Too bad she can't be in the story anymore. Good luck stealing the spotlight from way over where you are, Shelshay. (I'd better not say that too loudly. She'll find a way.)
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