The Motley Crew

I've always figured that the secret to creating an effective cast of characters involves two things:

First, each character has to be unique, and consequently fleshed out in a logical and realistic manner. If readers are going to be stuck with the same group of people for a number of pages, they need to be able to relate to these characters in one way or another. Some characters are distinct in terms of height, weight, build or age. Some characters speak only certain languages, or in marked accents. Some characters have certain personality quirks, or physical enhancements, or physical limitations. Loading up on these differences basically ensures that the characters don't end up looking like a bunch of clones.

Second, the interaction between characters has to be played up without necessarily affecting the story itself. This might be seen as a corollary for character uniqueness, yes, but where uniqueness helps characters stand on their own, interaction allows the reader to see just where the characters stand with respect to each other. Character interaction also helps keep the storyline plausible - after all, there's got to be some reason why certain characters stick together, or why certain characters fly at each others' throats.

Generally, the more important the characters are to the storyline, the more important these tenets tend to be. Readers will probably look upon the supporting cast with various levels of interest, but they'll definitely end up putting the main characters under intense scrutiny.

I'll delve into an example from Antaria. Let's assume that we've got three mercenaries that appear as characters in the story.

If the three mercenaries only appear in a single scene, then I think we can safely ignore the rules here. In fact, the audience just has to know that they're mercenaries. Accordingly, they'd be known as First Mercenary, Second Mercenary and Third Mercenary in the closing credits. Heck, if they don't even get to chew scenery all that much, then we can even hold off on the "mercenary" label.

If they have non-prominent supporting roles, then a bit of description can come in. We can say, for example, that they're two males and one female. We can say that they're dressed in the leather armor that indicates that they're experienced mercenaries, or that they're difficult negotiators. We can even name them, say... Artrem, Roth, and Vién, although that's not really necessary.

If they're prominent supporting characters, then we'll have to start showing how they walk, talk, and otherwise schmooze with each other, although we can choose to leave out the finer details. Artrem acts as the group's scout and backup man, can spot inconsistencies from a mile away, and is handy with a crossbow. Roth holds the nickname "Bonecrusher", walks seven feet tall, and always speaks in the third person. Vién plays the smooth talker, takes more than her fair share of anything, and fights ferociously with two swords.

If they're main characters, then we can turn up the level of detail significantly. Artrem and Vién used to sleep with each other till their recent falling-out, and while Artrem would rather forget about the relationship completely, Vién takes a perverse delight in rubbing his nose in it. Roth tends to gravitate to advice from the others because he thinks that they're a lot smarter than him, although he's got a bit of a moral center and won't enter any needless fights. Vién thinks of Roth as something of her toy, and is not above ordering him around on seemingly innocent tasks.

The farther we go up the ladder, the more work that needs to be put into these characters. It takes a bit of a while to get just the right balance for each level of character usage, of course. If anything, though, as long as such efforts end up gaining the reader's attention, then crafting character detail should remain a worthwhile endeavor.