Secondary Characters Can Make or Break a Story
There are usually one or two characters I’m heavily invested in, at the start of a new writing project. They are my dilemmas to figure out, my problems to solve. Who are they, why do they do what they do, and how can I get them into more trouble?
I used to believe that if I got these characters right, the story worked. Not true.
My main characters actually don’t get fully realized on the page until the secondary characters, the circle of people that surrounds them, also comes alive for my readers. Why is this?
Because our environment, our community, reflects who we are at the core.
What we love, hate, envy, admire, crush on, follow—all this creates a keen mirror reflecting who we really are, beyond pretenses. Secrets we had in high school. Our grief and losses. Past betrayals. Envy and sacrifice.
This is what tells the reader who the main character really is, apart from how they present themselves. Their human environment is the key to making them come alive.
Putting your narrator, your main character, into a story without any relationships makes them unreal to the reader. Relationships are what make us real. How people treat us, how we treat them, what we’d sacrifice for their love or attention.
Of course, making all this work is a lot of work.
Community reflects us
Story is about community, in my view. Even if the character is isolated, like in Emma Donoghue’s amazing novel, Room, where a woman is kept prisoner, there’s still someone or something that amplifies their beliefs and values. Someone to fight against, in Donahue’s story. Without that, the character is flat, bland, static.
So the writer creates a community on the page to tell the reader who this main character really is. True in memoir, in fiction, even in nonfiction (via excerpts and stories used).
These secondary, or minor, characters end up being just as important as the main people. Consider who Harry Potter would be to us without Ron or Hermione. Or Scout without Jim. Or the people in line at the bank who wait with Anders, in Tobias Wolff’s brilliant short story, “Bullet in the Brain.”
Your main character shines more brightly because of the people in their lives. But you get to decide the weight of each person in this cast. Who is going to be featured, who is going to be background.
Triaging your cast
Every single person in your story—whether it’s a true story about the crazy aunt and uncle who raised you or a fictional account of a schoolyard gang—has a purpose. The cool thing to realize, something I’ve learned over the years the hard way, is that most of your cast must be relevant in some way to the main character’s narrative arc, how they grow and change (or decline) during the course of the story.
When you’re choosing your cast, there’s a certain triage you can use. I like to divide my characters into three groups. The second two groups are decided by how strongly they affect the main character’s arc.
You start with the center of the circle, the sun, if you will. Everyone else will orbit around this person’s (or persons’) story. This is your narrator, main character, protagonist, the person who carried the point-of-view chapters or scenes. This is the character you focus on as you’re figuring out your story.
It’s the character who drives the arc of the plot, carries the story’s theme. Who, ideally, changes the most.
But there are two other groups, and they are part of the cast too.
Secondary, or minor, characters. These are close to the protagonist in some way, and they also have arcs or chartable pathways of growth, but usually their arcs echo the protagonist’s.
Supporting cast. These might be the townspeople, who walk on and off stage and are present in the story but not necessarily characters who change a lot or have an growth arc.
If you’re like me, you focus first on developing the main character(s). I write these point-of-view scenes early on, trying to get a sense of how they see and act in the world. Point-of-view means we’re inside their heads and have access to their thoughts and feelings as they navigate life. (That’s a simplistic explanation of POV, and there are more complicated ways to work with it, but it’ll do for our argument here.)
Influence of minor characters
I’m catching up on this year’s TBR pile—such a fun way to spend fall evenings. One of my favorite recent reads was Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It’s a remake of Little Women, in a way, and the four sisters are all main characters in the story. But I was equally intrigued with the minor characters and how strongly they influenced everything.
The three who stood out most clearly, to me, never had point-of-view scenes. Yet they shifted the story trajectory.
Rose—the bitter mother, who refuses to accept her out-of-wedlock granddaughter and even moves away, but is always a feature, never forgotten
Charlie—the poetry loving father, who dies early in the story and changes everything
Izzy—the daughter of one of the sisters who never knows or wants to know her father but who becomes instrumental at the end in welcoming another character back home
All the sisters interact with these three, constantly; even after Charlie dies, he’s a vibrant presence in their lives. How did Napolitano choose to bring these characters from supporting cast into true minor character roles?
This is one of the challenges, something we test as we draft and revise. As I said, I first hone the main character’s story, figure out how they move through their world, then I ask how they’ll interact with others. I test out whether these others are true secondary characters, meaning they will serve the protagonist’s story in a strong way. Or if they are background to it.
Over the years, I’ve drawn up a little list of questions to ask. You may have your own list, or you may have ideas to add to mine. If I can respond to most of these questions with answers that contain some electricity, the character is more likely to be someone who counts.
Questions for your minor character
When I’ve sketched out the idea for a new character who might be more than a background feature, I run through all or most of the questions on this list as a freewriting exercise, just to see the potential.
What secrets do you keep that have to do with the main character? What do you know that the reader can know, but the main character won’t know? This makes for delicious tension in story. Maybe you are privy to a secret about the main character? Or you witnessed something long ago that affects their future but you’re not telling?
What’s your history with the main character, how did you feature in their past? Maybe you played basketball together in grade school. Maybe you both shoplifted candy from a local store. Maybe you both crushed on the same person in high school or college. What unites you, what pushes you apart?
How does your voice or characteristics (clothing, music loves, habits, childhood) different from the main character’s but in some way echo theirs? (I’m searching for those opposites that attract, that create a pull of tension.)
How might you serve their story? Are there places your lives will be a crossroads of decisions, and having you on the scene will greatly influence the outcome for the main character?
What keeps you up at night? If there’s a conflict or tension that makes them an interesting player in their own right, it’s possible that it will be strong enough to provide a distraction, an interesting subplot. Or even strong enough to cause temporary abandonment (the minor character abandons the main character to take care of their own needs, and the main character is bereft).\
Finally, the big determiner for me is: Do I want to hang out with you, figure you out, learn more? If I can imagine spending page time with this character, they’re more likely to be more than supporting cast. Some of my favorite minor characters have come to be just because I feel something for them. Maybe even repugnance.
But that makes for a strong minor character too.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Choose one of your minor characters in progress, and ask two or three of the questions above. Free write for 5-10 minutes, see what you get.
Are you able to write clear and interesting answers?
Add two of your own questions to the list. Share them here, if you like.
Who is a stellar minor character in a book you’ve loved? Why do you remember this character?