As I set to work on asking the six essential questions to my characters, I found that I was able to do so to more than just the core four main characters I had originally envisioned. Once I got going, I started seeing that I could apply this to every character that played some sort of important role in the narrative.
It started out with testing this writing tool on the secondary characters that were crucial to shaping the story, though not necessarily themselves pivotal to the plot. And as I was working my way through them, I looked to see if I could delve into the tertiary level of characters, and felt satisfied that I could.
Here is an example of the tool applied to one of the secondary characters:
Who are they? Captain Chester Samuels, a former captain overseeing previously contested borders with hostile natives.
What do they want? To supply steady income for him and the men, approximately 12 to 15, still following him.
Why can’t they get it? No one will hire them – society looks down on them.
What do they try? They try to collect on bounties that are posted in two frontier towns for outlaws that pose a threat to a vital deal for a new rail line.
Why doesn’t that work? Samuels and his men experience various setbacks, among them suffering casualties in pursuit of failed apprehensions, as well as having another claim a bounty where they failed.
How does it end? Running low on funds, and with their failures cementing the public’s unfavorable impression of them, they scrounge together the last of their resources in a last ditch effort to pursue the outlaws with the biggest prices on their head, making them the most dangerous targets to go after. The decision might bring them all to violent ends, but if they don’t, they’ll meet slower ones from starvation, and if they succeed, they’ll have not only become rich, but reversed public perception.
I’ll go into the analysis of how effective this writing tool was, next time.