Side Character Spotlight!

Hopefully, you haven’t lost too much sleep on this National Novel Writing Month 2020 adventure.

Or, hopefully you’re not too hard on yourself for wherever your word count is at whenever you are in your personal writing storyline.

Anyone who knows me knows I love me some good character-driven stories, and I’ve, personally, enjoyed responding to the character prompts from this month the most.

However, if you are anything like me, sometimes you can get stuck on just one character.

The main one, usually.

Today, whether you have one character that hold point of view screen time or multiple, choose a side character that we never get to spend time with and explore a side story for them.

What is something from their past that makes up who they are in the present?

How has that event shaped them as a character?

What relevance might it have to the story, even if you never get to physically write it out?

The main character is sometimes only as strong as their supporting cast, so delve into the minds of the people surrounding them, then get write on in to your daily session.

See you tomorrow!

My Response:

When Cochava was younger, she never asked to watch her sister get murdered. She never asked to feel like she was next, or to hide underneath her bed as she shook and waited for the murderer the leave. The murderer she had trusted at one point in her life. A man she could probably give thanks to for being alive. A man she once called father.

She never knew what her mother, her sister, nor her had done to upset her father so. But she’d never forgotten the last look on her sister’s face as her father sliced her neck open. The way their eyes met in a last look of pleading. Cochava wished, still to this day, that she could have done something to save her. It didn’t matter, for regardless of time — even that spent in the Lanniswell Hollow — she did not forget.

From that moment forward, she swore she would never trust anyone. Her father had looked at her after he killed her sister, and it seemed as though seeing her crouched underneath her bed forced him to realize what he had done. He let her go, for whatever that meant, and left her, alone and scared, to fend for herself. She was all of nine years old when that happened, and no amount of time passed could change the effect it had on her psyche. She’d never seen her father again after that, but she swore if she ever did, he’d never live to see another day.