Recurring Characters

[Kyuuketsuki]

You can't have a story without some, unless you have a very strange story.

How do you handle them?

I make them appear every few chapters, and they don't stay around long enough to become a Main Character unless I had planned them to become a Main Character all along.

What role do they play in the story?

Mine are mostly just course-correcters. When my Main Character is uncertain about something, lost the plot, or has some problems, the Recurring Character's role comes into play.

What type of characters are they?

I always try to make them a character. Sure, they might serve as a tool for the story to go on, but they still have their own personality, history, goals, events, and their own story that is happening behind the scenes of the one they appear in as a Recurring Character.

Main Characters VS Recurring Characters.

This depends on the role they play in your story. In mine, they are usually, as I said, course-correcters. So to me, they are more important than the Main Character, because the story can on while the Main Character isn't around, but the Recurring Character is the one who allow the plot to be read.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

 

[Gama]

The character of mine that I immediately thought of when seeing this thread was The Scientist from Rival's Story, who Blue meets on four separate occasions, if memory serves, but then I realised there are far more recurring characters than that.

For example, Oak, Rex, Clair and many others in Dragon Days.

I think, for me, recurring characters represent a certain part of the storyline. For example, in Rival's Story, whenever The Scientist was about, it was the Team Rocket storyline of the fic and whenever Red was about it was the rivalry storyline, etc. Similarly, in Dragon Days, when Oak is around it is generally the Pokemon League storyline, Rex represents, well, I won't say here in case anyone is hoping to read but I think all my readers know what Rex represents.

My point is this, each characters carries with them a part of the overall storyline and, as they leave and return to the story, that story strand comes and goes with them.

 

[Cabaret]

Well generally it depends on what story I'm working on and who the set of characters are:

For Infinite Joys, (which is near completion by the way) I give them an introduction that really defines them, so if they turn up in the story again, you really know why a certain character is acting a certain way or talks in this format. A recurring character, Marcy is the main characters cousin and remains a recurring character throughout the first seven chapters, she has a lengthy scene in the second chapter with the main character, that really defines her. After the first seven chapters Marcy becomes needed in the storyline, but when she's thrown into the action the reader knows her mannerisms and by that time she doesn't feel recurring. There are other recurring characters in the story that move the plot along, and rarely are they used for filler (though it's happened before).

Recurring characters have any number of personalities, one of my favorite I've written was a character who had traveled from his region to confess his love to his friend (and former employer), things go awry and the main character has to intervene. I make sure that if it's a recurring character that doesn't appear very often, that they have a little focus in the parts that they do appear in.