In this week’s fabulous Editor’s Corner, Shawn talks about the background or supporting players that are foils for the archetypes. Great reading and always so helpful!
All Characters, Great and Small.
Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
…Mason Cooley
Characters drive fiction. As Faulkner said, we create them, then “just run along after them and put down what they say and do.”
Today I thought to talk not about heroes and villains – the archetypes that form the moral (or immoral) heart of a tale – but about the supporting and cameo players who are like diamond chips, reflecting all about them.
More than short stories, novels lend themselves to these flashes of light and color. The scope of a novel, even if not epic, almost demands supernumeraries as flesh upon bones. Think of the multitudes inhabiting Shakespeare, Dickens, Hugo, Austen, and Twain – each so alive you could pick them out in Grand Central Station at rush hour.
“Hamlet”’s gravedigger, the porter in “Macbeth,” Bumble the Beadle, Wilkins Micawber, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, Azelma Threnardier, Sid…
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fabulous re-blog, thank you sincerely !
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Shawn MacKenzie writes for us ontheplumtree. She is the plum tree books editor. I am glad you enjoyed this, I have A Voice!
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Going to check out post! 😀
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Bravo!
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