I’ve started two new stories recently, and it has me thinking about the sort of characters I’m drawn to writing. Secondary characters, I think they could often be called - characters who would not always be considered to be the star of the show, whether literally or figuratively. I’m sure this says something about my own psyche — probably something I’d prefer not to complicate too closely — but I also think that it makes for a more interesting narrative.

In the first of the two stories I’m working on, our two protagonists are professional basketball players, but they’re bit players on a championship team. One is benched while recovering from a serious injury and is struggling to cope with the emotional and physical fall-out of going from being a crucial piece to being very nearly irrelevant. The other is a recently acquired player with a mediocre record who is just hoping to be able to play often enough and well enough to make a difference, to earn himself a middling contract either on this team or the next one that comes along. They’re unlikely allies, but they spend a lot of time sitting together while the champions, the great players, take care of business.

The other story is about a musician and a fan, but while that sounds like a very common story, in this case the musician in question is a period music specialist and the fan is Hard of Hearing. This is not a story about sold-out crowds and social-media stalking but instead about a disciplined but obscure talent and someone who ‘shouldn’t’ be able to appreciate the art in question, but is passionate about it instead.

There’s a theme here, I think, and I see it run through my novella Catch Me If I Fall, as well — dedicated specialists who are unlikely to reap much reward beyond personal satisfaction; characters who care deeply about things, and who then meet other characters who also care deeply about those things. I’m not sure I can put the appeal of this type of character or this genre of story into words, if I’m honest. I’ve always been attracted to them in literature, also: Marra in Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, for example, a third child in a small kingdom who tries to dedicate herself to useful obscurity, or Nerilka in Anne McCaffery’s Nerilka’s Story, a high-born healer who rejects the edicts of her station to work against a plague.

What sort of characters do you find yourself writing? Are they the same as the characters you like to read? Why or why not?