: Re: Will an unrealistic character be out of place among other realistic ones? Most of the characters in my story are well thought out and have realistic motivations and backstories, as I think most

@Vandalay250

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It's generally fine for minor characters to be shallow, especially if their impact on a scene is minimal, and putting more effort into your main characters than your side characters is perfectly normal.

However, when you say:

Really I just need him to get in the way of my protagonist in minor situations.

...that's a bit more worrying. If you don't have a reason apart from 'the plot requires it' for this character's behaviour, it's not unreasonable to expect the readers to pick up on that.

He doesn't need a great deal of depth, but at bare minimum I'd say what he should have is a motivation. 'He's insane' isn't really sufficient; even insane people generally have an internal logic that makes sense to them—they don't simply stop thinking. It doesn't need to ever be made explicit in the text, but as long as you know why he keeps getting in your protagonist's way, and write him accordingly, his actions are much more likely to be internally consistent—and thus, much less likely to break the reader's suspension of disbelief.

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