In chess, pawns are humble pieces but valuable participants in your overall game strategy. Likewise the nameless functionary characters who walk through your stories, with only a brief mention, represent opportunities to enhance the thematic fabric of a scene.
Let’s say Kevin plans to propose to his girlfriend at dinner in a posh restaurant. Let’s say the reader knows this is a bad idea, but Kevin is full of hope and expectations. Ironically, the waiter who serves the young couple is a tired, cynical old career plodder who just won’t warm up. The scene progresses, the proposal flops.
Notice that the waiter comes and goes without any essential involvement in the action, but give him a couple of key personna features and he effectively injects a note of foreboding into what, sure enough, turns into a disastrous evening.
New writers too often identify “the waiter” and stop there–just a wait person with a label, who brings the food and is gone. The invitation to make use of him him as a subtle but effective buttress for the scene is implicit, but left untouched.
One of my favorite examples of doing it right comes from the movie Hannah and her Sisters….
Woody Allen’s character, a hypochondriac, is whining into a pay phone, complaining to his personal assistant about some routine medical tests that he’s sure will predict his death. In the background, two sidewalk extras pass quickly by, a very old man and a young woman. They’re only on screen for a couple of seconds, but the image is very clear: an ancient old thing, chatting away, arm in arm with this much younger woman, a spring in his step, the picture of vitality.
The irony is obvious: here’s a septugenarian, happily alive, while Woody, a young man, is already in mourning for himself.
I’m sure many viewers didn’t pick it up on the conscious level. Probably the reason I did was that I actually knew the male extra, a delightful old actor (now dead, of course) who was a friend of my mother’s. But the image works beautifully where it’s supposed to, below the radar of consciousness, framing and enhancing the theme of that scene–the ridiculousness of Woody’s narcissistic death phobia.
Don’t let these small opportunities passed by unnoticed. Be aware of how your walk-ons can help you, and let them.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I own that movie and I’ve seen it so many times that I actually DO know that scene and remember the man. I’ll have to watch it again more closely. This is a great tip and I’ve used some walk-ons recently, intentionally tried to give them some small detail that might be memorable — but what I didn’t do was consciously think about how well they are bolstering my themes. I suspect I need to let them show up as they might the first time through and then pay closer attention to the role they are playing when I go back through the second time. Moving forward, I’ll be much more aware of how I’m using these walk-ons — hopefully, not too aware.
No–then the awareness leaks out and you telegraph it. Notice Woody Allen had them stride by so quickly you barely noticed.