Dearly Beloved,
We are gathered here today to commemorate that which is present in most, if not all, novels: those shadowy effigies and blank, expressionless faces, those drab clothes and children running through the streets. We are here today to commemorate the background characters, young and old and bland as breakfast foods as they may be.
We are here today to commemorate, for it is the poor background character that has been dehumanized, mocked, and gone unrecognized for long in many stories told.
O, ye soldiers and guards, of which in real life would each have a history unto their own. A favoring of color or meal, or maybe a pet waiting for them at their own homes.
O, ye servicepeople, of which in real life would each have struggles unto their own, and bills to pay and others to care for and lean against after the toil ends.
O, even ye little children that sprint down cobbled streets and into alleyways, and follow the nobility’s cart in hope of having a coin or lump of bread tossed down, even ye have stark pasts and even brighter futures should we look up from our books.
To drop the dramatics, I think it’s a damn shame we (authors) don’t recognize background characters as being anything more than features of the background. Don’t get me wrong, we certainly do sometimes!
But only…sometimes.
Only when we’re in a very compassionate, self aware mood.
Only when we can weaponize the moral that everyone is a person, deserving of life and privacy and about twenty-eight other things at least.
Only when we want to villainize a character for having injured or killed many people, despite the same being true of the hero.
If you look out at all that’s been written in your genre of choice, whether you read in it or write in it, there comes this uncomfortable understanding that many main characters, audiences, and authors view all these unconditional human rights as very, very, conditional. And, as you guessed, this comes through quite clearly with how the background characters are treated.
Everyone is deserving of life!
…until you’re wearing that uniform, a uniform that’s dark and padded and marked with the Big Bad’s insignia. They’re just a background character anyway, so why worry about their motivations? They don’t have any! They’re on the side of the bad guy!
Watch the hero snap that ones neck!
Everyone is deserving of life still, though!
…until they’re a guardsman trying to stop the heroes from escaping because that’s their job, and since we’re reading from the heroes’ perspectives, we can simply assume that they’re evil and violent without ever considering how the guard was educated or if they were threatened into the position, or what they are protecting, or if they know what the heroes are even doing.
There’s no person in the armor, only a machine programmed to fight for plot and country for all we care.
Everyone is deserving of humility, of dignity, of a fair trial!
Everyone is deserving of love and compassion!
Everyone!
Until the character is in the background. Until we don’t know their name, or who they are, or where they come from. Until we don’t know anything about them. Then they cease to be a person. Often times they cease to even be a character. They become a set piece, a plot device, a way to force a developed character’s hand.
But why?
Why can we write background characters without humility or life, without giving them even the dignity of characterization, and never have it pointed out by readers?
Is it just that giving background characters with no plot importance or interest to the main cast such respects would be too difficult? Too time consuming, as we already waste hours and years away to our craft, and who would expect such a feat on top of that?
Or is it that we (speaking especially for authors in North America and Europe and whatever might be considered as the Western World) come from cultures of hate and easy bigotry, and so dividing people into an Us and a Them is second nature by now?
And if it is the latter, and our treatment of background characters is just symptomatic of these greater societal ills, then what good is going to come of treating our writing with such compassion?
Whatever the answer to such heavy questions may be, I still extend thanks and regards to background characters.
May the factory workers, the schools full of teenagers and children, the armies, the medical professionals, the couples eating in a high class restaurant, the commuters on the bus and trains and planes and boats, the merchants with their large bejeweled rings, the bustling crowds at concerts and markets and coronations pressing forth to see the newly crowned ruler, the servants, the masses and the riots and the protesters and the small children, may all of them be recognized.
Cheers.
TGM 