Much has been written about developing three-dimensional characters in a novel. How do we animate secondary characters?
Writing Tip for Today: Here are some tips for writing animated secondary characters.
Iron Sharpens Iron
Your protagonist, or main character has this passionate desire. Yet too many novels leave the MC on stage alone for too long. If you keep readers trapped in the MC’s head for very long, readers start to get restless. They want action, not explanations.
Explanations usually show up as back story to provide motivation for the MC. One reason backstory is unwise at the beginning of a novel—you haven’t had time or scenes to familiarize readers with your fictional world. If readers only hear about a MC’s past—especially in the opening—they’ll start to wonder why it’s not unfolding in real time.
Secondary characters give your MC a way to fight through all the obstacles you put in the way of the goal. The sooner you introduce the important secondary characters, the sooner you’re able to get the real time action started. Review the Wilson Principle for more on character soliloquies.
Role of Secondary Characters
When you create your fictional world, think about the different roles each secondary character plays in the story. If all your secondary characters sound and act the same, readers will have a harder time signing on to the journey. Be sure each character who interacts with your MC has a solid reason for appearing on stage.
According to The Writer’s Journey, some of these roles include a sidekick, a main adversary and his sidekick and perhaps one or two more characters who assist in showing all the conflict and tension. If you throw out a cast of thousands, readers won’t be able to decide who fits best in each of those roles. Keep your character list as short as you can.
And what about names? Only give names to characters who either have speaking parts or who bring about a big change in the story. All the rest should be “extras” who are only identified by their role in the story. You can differentiate these characters with some kind of tag—the thief wearing a black hoodie or the beautiful dark-haired girl at the coffee shop.
The Wilson Principle shows you how to prevent long monologues in your opening.
Make Them Work
These secondary characters have an important job. They aren’t there to be filler. Think about each character’s job in either helping or thwarting the MC on the way to achieving the goal. Interactions, dialog and body language provide the best way for your MC to grow and change.
Unless you’re very skilled, don’t rotate POV characters to show readers who the secondaries are. Leaving your MC’s POV is risky. Readers can become confused about who is important. Instead write scenes that force your MC to clash with the secondaries in a way that either helps or hinders the MC’s progress.
Remember, every scene is a microcosm of the novel-at-large. Each scene must have a winner or loser to propel the story forward. Vary your secondary character’s attacks or helps so that each scene isn’t a repeat of the one before it. Ideally, you’ll make each scene a little more tense than the last one, squeezing your MC until the climax where the story goal is either won or lost. Animated secondary characters shouldn’t upstage your MC, but they should add color, humor and excitement to your MC’s quest.
