Ah, the secondary character (or deuteragonist). Sometimes I feel for them, pushed aside for the protagonist, but the main character of their own lives. Hang on…they are the main characters of their own lives, aren’t they? If you’re thinking about your secondary character(s) now and answering ‘Well, I don’t know…’ then we have some work to do.

Your protagonist needs to have a supportive team of characters around them. In this context, I don’t mean supportive emotionally, but rather, characters who seem just as real and well thought through. There are some wonderful examples of this in fiction. The most obvious? Probably Samwise Gamgee. Tolkien even considered Samwise the hero of the story, and if we’re talking about well fleshed out deuteragonists, you can’t get better praise than that.

But how do we do this? Let’s see.

1) As I’ve said, consider each of your secondary characters as the main character in their story. After all, we are all the main characters in our lives, aren’t we? Take Samwise, for example, who wants different things than Frodo (a good meal, for starters), or Lizzie’s sisters in Pride & Prejudice. Lydia’s desires are so different from Lizzie’s, her life goals so at odds, that she drives herself right into a rushed wedding to a soldier and changes the plot of the story. Your secondary characters need their own goals in life. Make a list, and consider what they each want, and how that impacts the journey your protagonist is on.

2) To help you do this, consider making them a character arc. A character arc is like a plotline for an individual character, and it focuses on how they develop as a person. Let’s look at Lizzie and Lydia again for this. Lydia runs off and marries Mr Wickham. This brings to light everything from Wickham’s history to Mr Darcy’s generosity. It allows Darcy to step into the role of hero. Lydia’s character arc, therefore, impacts the story, and her development as a person impacts our protagonist, Lizzie.

3) Focus on something unique to your secondary characters. For example, in Witchborne, Saskia smells so strongly of honey to the main character, Agnes, that everything becomes poisoned with the scent. As the story develops, Agnes even begins to taste honey and bans it from the house. This means that whenever Saskia is near, the reader only needs a faint whiff to pass their nose to know what is happening. In fact, we humans even process scents we associate with danger earlier than those that have a positive connection with! If that isn’t a sign to tie a scent to an antagonist or secondary character in your work, I don’t know what is.So, as you see, it’s not just the characters that will benefit from having their own lives, but your plotline and story, too.

Found this useful?

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