I have a passion for side stories — stories that are embedded alongside the main story. Side stories must, however, both entertain and serve the main story. Good side stories will keep your reader interested as they will want to see what role a side-story character will play as the main story forges ahead. Knowing a side-story character’s backstory will make it more meaningful if something happens to him back in the main story. In addition to entertaining the reader, side stories serve the story by providing insight into key characters. In The Remains of the Corps: Volume I: Ivy & The Crossing, there are four side stories of note:
- Pvt. Clarence "Dusty" Rodes delights his fellow Marines by relating his Texas family's rich history in a cowboy dialect.
- Pvt. Finn "Red" Murphree reflects on his family's escapades during Ireland's Easter Uprising in 1916, foreshadowing events in the main story.
- Navy Chaplain Father Alfred "Father G" Galasso mesmerizes his "congregation" with a story from his past that no one could have predicted.
- French Capitaine Jean Berthoudrelates to Kenneth a personal odyssey that is as poignant as it is heartbreaking.
One planned side story for The Remains of the Corps: Volume II: Belleau Wood & Beyond will be told by Top Sergeant Douglas MacCallum who, in 1901, had served under Major Littleton Waller on a march across the Island of Samar, an ill-fated trek that has become the stuff of Marine Corps legend. Top MacCallum, a survivor of that star-crossed ordeal, enthralls his listeners with a tale of jungle terror that includes heavy rains, starvation, exhaustion, mutinous Filipino native carriers, and death. As the sergeant has a reputation for being a grand storyteller, before I tell the story, I am planning to take "The Art of Storytelling," offered by The Great Courses in order to do the veteran Marine justice.
I can’t wait to start!