Authors often spend a lot of time highlighting their main characters and helping readers to analyze them and know them better, but what about the side characters? I thought I would take some time today to dive deeper into the supporting characters of my dystopian trilogy. So let’s get started. All photos are from Pinterest.
So I wanted to start with Bast because he is my favourite character. Bast’s name actually came from “The Name of The Wind”, an epic fantasy novel written by Patrick Rothfuss. There is a character in the book named Bast and I loved it so much I had to use it. Of course, my Bast is short for Sebastian, because it’s not a fantasy and the names have to be based on our modern era. Bast’s personality stemmed from my desire to be more carefree. I’m a very uptight person and it was so liberating to write about the jokester of a friend group. Bast also shares my love of puns and my love of food, though he definitely eats more than I could. Bast also likes to pretend he’s fine when he’s not, emotionally speaking. He feels like he always has to uphold the image other people have of him.
The second character I want to talk about is Blake. She got her name because I wanted an uncommon unisex name for my character to kind of break free of gender stereotypes and Blake was one of the first that came to mind. Blake is a very strong individual physically and represents what I want to be. She is also very nurturing and loves children, like I do. She’s quiet like me but she is also a very assertive leader. She doesn’t take any nonsense. Another distinguishing feature of Blake is her ever present braid, which I love but have never been able to do myself. One of the things I love most about Blake is that she is a woman of colour, but that she lives in a society where that is not a problem. There is so much hatred between the Guild and The Resistance that neither side can afford to discriminate amongst themselves on a matter like race.
The third and final character I want to share about today is Natalie Sophia Roseanne, or as my MC likes to call her, the Princess. Natalie was inspired by a girl I used to go to school with that treated everyone poorly and pretty much no one like her. She was rude and self-entitled, but had no real friends. Natalie’s full name came from the fact that I wanted a really pretentious name that still sounded sort of natural. Her last name, Roseanne, is actually the first name of her deceased mother, which sets her apart from her father, Nicholas Ross. I wanted Natalie to be rude from the start and to truly embody the dumb blonde stereotype. However, she has since transcended her 2 dimensional world and developed into a character I never saw coming.
So those are some insights into a few of the supporting characters for Silent Night and Sacred Ruse. Let me know if you liked this type of post and whether you wish to see more of them. My next post will be about some current authors that I respect and what I like about them and their work.