Saturday Snippet: Secondary Characters

Today's Saturday Snippet theme is secondary characters. Boy do I have a great secondary character: Gizmo the talking cat.

After meeting Gizmo, I'm not so sure I want my cats to talk. I imagine they'd be just as sassy and back-talking as him.

An Excerpt From: MAKE-BELIEVE LOVER


© Copyright ASHLEY LADD, 2006.

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave, Inc.

They must have trudged five miles over the arduous hills when a thunderous sound startled her. A moment later, wide-winged dragons straddled by primitive warriors roared from behind a mountain.

Her hand trembling, she pointed at the sky even as she squatted down in self-defense. “Oh my God, Giz. Do you see what I see?”

The cat gulped and he covered his eyes with his paws. “If you see big flying dinosaurs, uh huh.”

When one of the gigantic winged creatures nose-dived not far distant, Gizmo threw himself to the ground, covered his head, and hissed, “Hit the deck and don’t make a sound.”

Way ahead of him, she flung herself to the rocky terrain.

A lyrical voice announced out of nowhere, “You have walked six point two miles, seven-thousand three-hundred, twenty-one steps.”

Cripes! Her bigmouth pedometer chose this moment to go off?

Yanking the lousy thing off her elastic waistband, she dashed it to the ground. “Thanks for nothing.” The least it could do was tell her how many calories she’d burned or sing a decent song, instead of that funky aerobic workout music.

One of the flying lizards picked that instant to spin and make eye contact. Baring its filthy, razor-sharp teeth, the beast swooped down from the air, swallowed her pedometer, and then plucked her from the ground.

The no-good gadget kept chirping from inside the monster’s belly, mocking her. At least, it had gotten its just rewards, having given away her location to the fiend.

Kicking and struggling with all her might, she screamed, “Gizmo!”

She clawed at her barbaric captor’s eyes. “Put me down!”

The armor-clad creep astride the dragon guffawed and clamped meaty vice-like hands around her wrists pinning them to her side. His malevolent beady-eyed gaze bore into her. “Keep this up, wench, and I’ll drop you here—from a thousand meters. Your pretty face will get all mangled.”

The dragon turned its reptilian face to leer and dipped its right wing so that she would have tumbled off if not for the brute’s slimy hold. Then it snorted a fireball in her direction that fried the bush a mere foot to her right.

She got the message that she was their guest—or their Bar-B-Q. “What do you want with me? I have no money. This is dollar-store jewelry, but it’s all yours.”

“You will inform the King whose army you are spying for.” He fingered her tousled hair and grunted. “What kingdom has blue-haired nymphs?”

Then he tugged at her psychedelic nurse’s tunic. “And what matter of outlandish garb is this? What form of material?”

Army? Kingdom? Nymph?

She glanced down at her hot pink, cotton-blend tunic that rained cats and dogs. Should she give him her employer’s name? In the war movies the prisoners offered their name, rank, and serial number. “I’m Rebecca Weiss, I’m an office manager for a pediatric clinic, and I’m not giving you my social security number and having you steal my identity.”

“Stay cool, Becca! We’ll get out of this.” Gizmo yelled from the back of another dragon as it pulled around them.

The man’s bushy uni-brow puckered. “You speak in strange riddles. You will be truthful with King Heinrich or you will be locked in the dungeon.”

Dungeons? Dragons? King Heinrich?

Make-Believe Lover is available at Ellora's Cave.


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McKenna Jeffries
Ashley Ladd

How watching cartoons can help us create unique characters

I’m stuck waiting for my daughter while she practices softball, in the family lounge. A cute little boy is with me and the television’s been set to entertain him. He looks to be about four years old and so of course, he’s into cartoons.

A cartoon I’ve never heard of before is on with weird-looking,butt- ugly characters. Ugly as they are, however, they’re each very unique so I'm fascinated by this show against my will.

One has no neck and no chin. His face is a long, rectangular block that sticks into his shirt. He has teensy ears that stick straight out, a nose much larger than his hands, and huge bug eyes. His shirt is tucked in and his pants are pulled up to his armpits.

Another character has a gigantic circular face with a small button nose, a long smile, and a pencil-thin neck that doesn’t look large enough to hold up her head.

Yet another character has a pointy chin, a long straight nose that has a point on the tip. She has an extremely pointy widow’s peak dipping down into her forehead.

Then there’s an old evil scientist in a white lab coat with a chin a zip-code long, two or three times as long as the rest of his body. His hair sprouts out of his pointy head like the hairs at the top of an onion. His eyebrows are thick and slanted around kohl rimmed eyes. He’s hunch backed and has teeny shoulders.

Another boy has a triangular head with his bug eyes sprouting out of the top of his head.

A military man has one straight eyebrow, a flattop white haircut, and a long white mustache that stretches across most of his face. His nose looks like a big cube.

Not that we want our characters in to become caricatures. That would be too Johnny Depp for my liking. Just looking at Johnny Depp in “Alice in Wonderland”, “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory” or “Edward Scissorshands” freaks me out. Give me more characters like Captain Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean” who are intriguing multi-dimensional characters that push the boundaries without totally shattering them.

Caricatures like the cartoon characters staring at me on the TV today are good lumps of clay with which to mold characters.

The same can be done with their personalities. Start with personality types such as the evil scientist, the bubbly cheerleader, the maim-kill-die soldier, the geeky school boy, the computer nerd, the super jock, the cowboy, the rock star, the high school slut, the sweet and shy girl next door... Then round them out, smooth them down, add a few twists and turns. Maybe combine two or three character types.

Why can’t a cowboy also be a computer nerd in his off time? Are all cowboys macho men just because they ride the range and get dusty? Some will be practical jokers. Some will be sweet quiet dreamers. Some will be loud-mouthed jerks. Maybe one’s a serial killer or an ex-cop trying to get away from it all.

Play with the clichéd caricatures. Have fun with them. Put your cowboy in the city. Drop your computer nerd in the country or let him be drafted into the military and wind up in the middle of a war zone. Put the characters in situations uncomfortable for them and find out how they cope out of their comfort zones.

I absolutely loved watching Vin Diesel in “The Pacifier” when his big tough-guy character got dropped into the middle of four kids who were scarier to him by far than being dropped into the middle of the worst battle zone. The character was totally out of his element. His character started off almost as a caricature of a hardened military operative. He went through fire and came out a different, better person.

Do you have any tricks to create interesting, unique characters? Care to share?

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Life On Mars, cats, dogs, and birthday

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