Secondary characters should not the
focus of your story, but they make the difference between a great
novel and a ho hum one. Shakespeare knew this when he gave us great
secondary characters like Bottom in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Bottom
isn't the focus of the story, but his antics are a welcome relief
from the tension between Oberon and Titania.
Secondary characters can add comic
relief, or give background color. They buy the reader into your story
because they make it real. Major characters even the great tragic
heroes don't live in a vacuum. Hamlet needed Polonius.
Sometimes writing a character driven
piece, the author can forget that the protagonist isn't the only
character in the world. I recently reviewed a book, Bellman and
Black by Diane Setterfield. The writing is good, but the plot is
thin, and the major character fills the story to the exclusion of
everyone else. William, the major character is a self-centered
workaholic. That's fine, but the other characters were flat. They
made their appearances, spoke their required lines and moved off
stage. I felt the lack of more complex characters made the story
shallow. I wanted at least one other character to be other than a
foil for William.
On the other hand, I'm reading Queen
Sugar by Natalie Baszile. This book is also a character study.
There's more plot, but the real difference is the secondary
characters. Charlotte, the main character has a family full of people
with individual traits that help to show us the environment in a
small southern town. Although you follow the main character, it's
always fun when one of the secondary characters like Miss Honey,
Charlotte's very determined grandmother, tries to take control of the
action.
I'm not trying to encourage you to let
the secondary characters take over, but making them real people with
identifiable traits lends fulness to your story. Also, readers can
become attached to secondary characters. One way to keep them reading
is to give glimpses of their favorite characters.
Make your secondary characters come
alive. They can make the difference between an unforgettable novel
and one your reader puts down before it's half finished.
