Alpennia: The Logistics of Background Characters
One of the failure modes for a modern writer of historical fiction--and especially of historical fiction focusing on upper class and well-off characters--is to neglect the vast human infrastructure that lies behind all those fun, glamorous activities that our primary characters are enjoying. I have my own serious blind spots here: I am a modern person, and an American, and middle class (whereby I have never seriously been part of or enjoyed the benefits of the personal service industry). So it takes a conscious vigilance when plotting and writing to be aware of just how many people my protagonists have around them, doing things for them, and assumed to exist for the purpose of doing those things for them. Even for characters who are not among the elite of Alpennia, it's a fairly good rule of thumb that the majority of characters will either be servants or have servants.
I try to remember this, and include casual details of who is opening the doors, bringing in the tea, helping with the dressing, and so forth. When I started working out the background logistics of Luzie Valorin's rooming house, I asked myself how many servants she would have, what their duties would be, how the primary characters would interact with them. And I gave them names. I haven't actually used all of those names and some may never get used. (Nobody except me yet knows that Margerit Sovitre's butler Ponivin bears the first name of Azric.) But it was important to me that they have names, and in many cases back-stories of their own that the protagonists may be only vaguely aware of.
I hold by the maxim that everyone is the hero of their own story. It would be fascinating to think about what the events of Daughter of Mystery would look like if Margerit's personal maid Maitelen were the protagonist. (When you think about it, she has a rather exciting character arc, including a perilous flight across the countryside playing the decoy so her mistress can escape pursuers.) And one of the reasons that I decided to make the laundry maid Rozild the viewpoint character for Floodtide was exactly because I wanted a chance to look at Alpennian society from a very different angle. (I also wanted that story to be told by an "every-girl" who isn't special in any way except in how she intersects with other characters and brings them into contact with each other.)
But with a cast of hundreds (literally), my preference for seeing even the minor background characters as individuals can get cumbersome. There are already a lot of names to keep track of. People with walk-on roles may be addressed by name once (because you do address people by name, and you get the form of their address correct because it's part of your relationship to them and it's important). And then the reader may never hear of them again. I sometimes wonder whether it would make more sense in terms of story structure to skip over that sort of detail. But it matters to me that Luzie's cook has been with her family since she was a little girl, and that Luzie still addresses her sometimes by a childish nickname, and that the cook in turn takes the liberty of addressing Luzie's boarders as if they were Luzie's children. But does all that get in the way of the story?
Only my readers can tell me that.
I try to remember this, and include casual details of who is opening the doors, bringing in the tea, helping with the dressing, and so forth. When I started working out the background logistics of Luzie Valorin's rooming house, I asked myself how many servants she would have, what their duties would be, how the primary characters would interact with them. And I gave them names. I haven't actually used all of those names and some may never get used. (Nobody except me yet knows that Margerit Sovitre's butler Ponivin bears the first name of Azric.) But it was important to me that they have names, and in many cases back-stories of their own that the protagonists may be only vaguely aware of.
I hold by the maxim that everyone is the hero of their own story. It would be fascinating to think about what the events of Daughter of Mystery would look like if Margerit's personal maid Maitelen were the protagonist. (When you think about it, she has a rather exciting character arc, including a perilous flight across the countryside playing the decoy so her mistress can escape pursuers.) And one of the reasons that I decided to make the laundry maid Rozild the viewpoint character for Floodtide was exactly because I wanted a chance to look at Alpennian society from a very different angle. (I also wanted that story to be told by an "every-girl" who isn't special in any way except in how she intersects with other characters and brings them into contact with each other.)
But with a cast of hundreds (literally), my preference for seeing even the minor background characters as individuals can get cumbersome. There are already a lot of names to keep track of. People with walk-on roles may be addressed by name once (because you do address people by name, and you get the form of their address correct because it's part of your relationship to them and it's important). And then the reader may never hear of them again. I sometimes wonder whether it would make more sense in terms of story structure to skip over that sort of detail. But it matters to me that Luzie's cook has been with her family since she was a little girl, and that Luzie still addresses her sometimes by a childish nickname, and that the cook in turn takes the liberty of addressing Luzie's boarders as if they were Luzie's children. But does all that get in the way of the story?
Only my readers can tell me that.