r/writing • u/scumerage • 18h ago
Discussion How much does a lack of background characters limit genre, setting, and the story in general?
As far as I can tell, everyone goes goo goo gaa gaa over setting. 1800 revolutionary France, furturistic techno-dystopia, modern vampire secret societies, ancient Chinese dynastic turmoil, etc. It's not simply skill at writing style, plenty of talented and popular authors tell a grand ol tale that even committed fans will say "Yeah, that representation of Spanish monasteries in 1600 Mexico was clearly written by a British Man" or "His historical drama about Marx's family clearly self inserts his own theological beliefs and doesn't fit in with the German culture of the time." Even with fantasy or scifi, adding magical realms and galaxies of planets, suspending disbelief for massive worldbuilding projects involving science, magic, entirely artificial creatures and rules to reality is a difficult task. Culture, history, and especially background characters seems to define the environment in which the characters, main, supporting, side, or stock, get to operate in.
Why have there been so few stories without background characters? Only ones that seem to do this are (A) survival stories, like horror monsters or trapped in the wilderness or (B) closed room dramas, like murder mysteries, or the medium of stage plays. Either unstable environments, from a single house to a large uninhabited area, versus stable environment, usually indoors with very defined and limited areas. Is it just because of characters are not trapped in a small area, and are not cut off from society, the story doesn't really make sense or have a believable setting/environment without background characters?
Thoughts?
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u/LoveAndViscera Self-Published Author 16h ago
It’s what you said: the characters aren’t isolated. But they will feel isolated without background characters. The lack of background characters becomes a theme.
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u/ProfessionalAgitator 16h ago
While there are a few genres that can't exists without background characters or a large cast, your premise is in general not true. There are loads of books (new and old, various genres) that have no or minimal background characters.
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u/JRyanGreatfish 3h ago
Have examples? I agree with you completely, just wanting to see some examples
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u/ProfessionalAgitator 2h ago
Sound of the mountain, by kawabata. Actually a lot of Japanese lit fic 19xx+ are quite minimalist in characters : murakami, tanizaki, etc. Also, Dandelions from Kawabata is basically two characters talking and is great.
Tbh, then more I think about it, I'm sure I've read more books that don't really make use of background chars; if you want some specific genre/nationality recommendations I can probably think of something.
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u/JRyanGreatfish 2h ago
Yah that’s a good call on the Japanese minimal style. I don’t need any recommendations, just chatting haha
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u/MeepTheChangeling 16h ago
Unless isolation is the point or a major theme of the story, lacking background characters make your world feel flat and fake. If your world feels fake, why should I care about your character? They're not pretending to be real, so there's not a scrap of tension or intrigue to be had. Thus, there's no point in reading.
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u/Mejiro84 11h ago
How often are people entirely isolated from other people? That's pretty niche as a general event - and when it happens, that's generally a fairly major thing ("getting in an accident in the wilderness", or "everyone else died, I'm the only one left"). So being along for extended durations is quite rare, both in life and in stories.
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u/Dismal-Wallaby6813 16h ago
background characters shape the vibe of the world way more than we realize fr
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u/-Clayburn Blogger clayburn.wtf/writing 6h ago
Background characters are setting, that's why. When I lived in New York, I remember how I loved the difference being out in public versus my small hometown. People would always say "Oh, it's too crowded! It must get tiring being around so many people!" but strangely it was the opposite. Being home in a small town felt crowded because every time I'd go to the grocery store, I would see 3 or 4 people I knew and would have to chitchat with them. In NYC, even though I'm surrounded by people all the time, they're....not real. Like sure they have lives of their own and all, but they're not real to me. They're window dressing. They're part of the setting.
So, with a story, if it takes place in a particular time or place, you have to consider the society as a backdrop. When genres require specific settings, that's going to dictate a need for background characters or not. Apocalypse stories are naturally going to have few people because the genre norm is that the setting is empty and desolate. A fantasy is going to need background characters because part of the genre means creating fictional societies and cultures, which requires people to express them.
So you could certainly have a genre/setting that needs background characters and exclude them, but it would be a challenge because you'd need to find alternative ways to convey the setting and genre.
Stage plays usually find effective ways around this because they can't have a huge cast of actors. They rely on things like "news from outside" or characters describing events and other characters, and the action stays largely confined to a few locations.
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u/Neurotopian_ 6h ago
Yes, NYC streets are so crowded that you can feel invisible unless you’re actually doing something to draw attention to yourself. In a small town, everyone notices you. They either know who you are, or if they don’t, they wonder why they don’t.
I don’t necessarily agree that a supporting cast is part of the setting, but I think there’s so much variability that it’s hard to say what universally “works” and what doesn’t.
There are riveting one- and two-person stage shows, and there are also successful novels like GRRM’s ASOIAF series with dozens of characters existing primarily to add a sense of place and world flavor in the way you mention.
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u/CarinaLune 3h ago
background characters are basically the load bearing walls nobody notices until they're gone the shopkeeper who remembers ur face the guard who's bored not evil the kid running past who has nothin to do with the plot. remove them and the world feels like a movie set three walls and nothing behind the camera i think the reason survival closed room stories skip them isn't that background characters need chaos to exist it's that isolation is the whole point so their absence IS the theme. curious what you think happens if you write a stable setting but strip the background cast anyway does it just read as eerie uncanny instead of broke
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u/Nethereon2099 3h ago
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby wouldn't exist without background, world building, and supporting characters. Why? Because the storyteller, whom the reader experience the narrative through, isn't the main character. Fitzgerald tells the story in first person POV through Nick Carraway - a support character - about Jay Gatsby - the main character.
Without a rich cast of characters, there isn't much of a story to tell.
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u/sufferable_gaucho 3h ago
Frankly I don't understand the question; your first paragraph seems to have more to do with authenticity and accuracy when depicting real or imagined cultures. What that has to do with "background characters," I do not know.
I'd push back at the idea there are"few stories without background characters," but I guess that depends on what you call a "background character." I read a lot of fiction which primarily follows a single person, and while there are other people in the world, they are the only named character, or are one of a small number of people with names or impact on the story. This isn't dictated by genre.
So yeah, my answer is I don't think the number of "background characters" limits anything in writing; some people write party scenes where you know the names/histories of most of the people in attendance, some people don't describe the attendees beyond their presence.
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u/TarotFox 18h ago
People like to see characters interacting with one another. You barely have a character if you don't have a society.