Blog Guest – Nancy Jardine – Secondary Characters

Today’s blog guest is Nancy Jardine, who has some interesting points to make with regard to writing about secondary characters in fiction. She is visiting again as her new book, Take Me Now, has only recently been published (June). The previous blog is here

Nancy is becoming a prolific writer with a varied stable of books:

The Taexali Game - time travel historical adventure set in Severan Roman Britain AD 210 (Aberdeenshire) for Middle Grade/ YA readers.

Take Me Now - fun contemporary romantic mystery featuring fabulous worldwide cities.

Monogamy Twist- contemporary romantic mystery set in Yorkshire, England; quirky Dickensian plot.

Topaz Eyes- finalist for The People’s Book Prize Fiction 2014 – romantic mystery thriller.

Celtic Fervour Series of Historical Romantic Adventures - AD 71-84. Book 1 (The Beltane Choice), Book 2 (After Whorl: Bran Reborn) & Book 3 (After Whorl: Donning Double Cloaks); Book 3 ends in Aberdeenshire.

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Secondary Characters

Hello, Nik. Thank you for inviting me to your blog today! [You're welcome!]

I was once asked how I used secondary characters in my novels and I didn’t have a ready made answer. Since I’m mostly a ‘pantser’ author, my secondary characters appear as I write the story, some having larger roles than others depending on why I’m using them in the plot.

I also know some quite astute authors who are ‘plotters’. Those authors always ensure they plan the ‘arrival’ of a new secondary character with the view that that person might just be the one to feature in a sequel or subsequent novel in a series.

One reviewer for Take Me Now writes that she really adored Ruaridh, Nairn Malcolm’s father. Review comments like that are always great to read because I loved writing Ruaridh into the novel. He’s an incredibly likable ‘older’ man and at fifty-nine, he’s still very attractive to the local ladies. Ruaridh is so personable that he is, in fact, the creator of some jealousy between Nairn—the main male character—and Ruaridh. Nairn knows just how popular his father is with Aela Cameron—the leading female role— and is gutted that she could possibly favour his father more than him. A read of the story shows just how possible that scenario can be.

 

So far, I’ve not featured an older man as the main protagonist of any of my novels but Ruaridh would be a good character to feature if I ever wanted to make him a central character— romantic novel or not.
 
I’ve tried to make him a realistic old Scot, a man of the isles who loves his life at the boatyard on Lanera, a fictitious island off the west coast of Scotland. The weather there isn’t kind for much of the year but it makes for a pragmatic and tough older guy. When I wrote him into the story, I thought carefully about his age and the divorced situation between Ruaridh and Nairn’s mother. I know plenty of women who’d want to swap a windy and rainy Scottish west coast island for the much sunnier and milder climate of Barcelona, though Caitlinn stuck with the marriage till Nairn was of university age. That situation of sticking with trials and tribulations for a long time, I think, goes along with the almost Calvinistic attitude that still prevails in many parts of western Scotland.

Would a reviewer write that Caitlinn is a pleasant secondary character? I don’t believe so but it’s not because she’s a downright nasty bitch. The reader only learns about Caitlinn in the passing as she’s a very minor character, yet she does play an important function in eventually straightening out the jealous tension that exists between Nairn and Ruaridh.

 
Though this blog post is about the characters in Take Me Now, there’s also very likeable old man in Tully, the chief of the Garrigill Celtic Hillfort in my historical romantic adventure The Beltane Choice.
 
Hmm. Maybe I do need to give the ‘older’ man a role in a future novel?
 
Do you have any favourite strong secondary characters in a novel you’ve read…or in one that you’ve written?

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Thanks, Nancy. I wonder if your question will get any responses! Indeed, I’ll blog about this aspect myself, I reckon.

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Find Nancy at the following places

Blog:  http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com  Website:  http://nancyjardineauthor.com

Facebook  LinkedIN   About Me    Goodreads   Twitter @nansjar  Google+ (Nancy Jardine)   YouTube book trailer videos   Amazon UK author page   Rubidium Time Travel Series on Facebook  http://on.fb.me/XeQdkG

 

 

 

FFB - THE BEAST WITHIN

Published in 1992, this book by Adam Douglas is sadly out of print. (You don’t want to pay those dealers’ silly high prices found on Amazon for a new copy; I mean, a paperback for £116!) The Beast Within is also a popular fiction title, I counted at least twelve books using it post-2000.

This non-fiction work is subtitled ‘A History of the Werewolf’.

 

Lycanthropy, a condition in which the patient believes he or she to be transformed into a wolf, is one of the oldest – and oddest – afflictions in psychiatric literature.

Douglas’ researches range far and wide, covering such subjects as ancient cave-paintings, Greek mythology, Celtic sagas, Christian culture, modern psychiatry, and the cinema, in Europe, India, the Cameroons and beyond.

 

Prior to being hijacked for horror movies, the werewolf (man-wolf) was a powerful symbol to evoke fear of the beast within each person, a potent creation at the dawn of history, when superstition held sway; wolves were not the only creatures people ostensibly transformed into, but they were the most ‘popular’, mainly because at the height of the werewolves’ significance they were plentiful in Europe, and feared.

There were stories of beneficent werewolves, but they were swept away by the hegemony of the church and witch-hunters in the Middle Ages, to be replaced by the familiar monstrous creatures that signify disorder and deviance.

 

And when these werewolves were linked with the demonic host of witches and warlocks that sprang up in the late mediaeval and early modern era, their fate was sealed – they, like their true animal brethren, were hounded to virtual extinction.

This is a fascinating, serious and diligent study of the stuff of nightmares. Recommended.

Note: The shapeshifter archetype beloved of shamanism not only encompasses wolves, but also bears, snakes, cats, birds, buffalo, deer and dragons, among others. See Deerdancer by Michele Jamal (1995).