When we write books, we often tend to gravitate much of our focus towards the main characters and protagonists of the story and sometimes find ourselves possibly neglecting secondary characters. Secondary characters are vital in shaping the narrative and add a lot of richness and unique perspectives to any story. Without well-developed secondary characters, your story risks feeling incomplete or lacking in depth. So, for today’s post, we’ll be going through five ways to add depth to your secondary characters and ensure that they add to your narrative rather than detract from it.
1. Give Them a Purpose Beyond the Protagonist
One of the first mistakes that some writers make when it comes to secondary characters is creating them solely to serve the protagonist’s storyline. Sure, there can be some characters that act this way and while it is true that secondary characters often exist to support or challenge the main character, they also need to feel like they have lives and motivations of their own.
You want to try and create goals for your secondary characters. These goals don’t need to be anything dramatic or intensive but they should exist to at least give some reason for why the character acts in this fashion.
Furthermore, you want to work on the secondary character’s backstory. Even if the backstory isn’t the most important thing about their presence in the story, having a known backstory can actually enhance your dialogue and your character in a great way. If you want to learn more about how to write backstories for characters, then check out this post!
You want to also show that the secondary character has a life outside of the peripheral of the main character. You can do things like introduce their relationships and their thoughts and feelings. The reader needs to feel like even if they got only a small glimpse of this character that the character isn’t just words on a page.
For example, in my series, The Fallen Age Saga, there are many characters that exist aside from the main characters but all of them have a purpose that doesn’t necessarily revolve around the main characters, even if their goals are the same or their motivations at least somewhat overlap.
2. Give Them Strengths and Weaknesses
Just like your protagonist, your secondary characters also need to have a mix of strengths and weaknesses. The key though is that you want to make these things feel realistic, believable, and relatable. Perfect characters and characters without any flaws are boring, unrealistic, and may feel far too one-dimensional. You want to aim for a round character and not a flat character, which is something I’ve talked about in another post.
You want to try to balance their traits and add complexity to them rather than give them a binary of dealings. You also want to try and explore how their flaws and weaknesses have consequences in the narrative. You want to show conflict existing as a result of their strengths and weaknesses.
Additionally you want to give your character some type of evolution and show readers how they change over the course of the story. Now, you don’t need to dedicate so much time in the writing to this, but showing just some brief scenes is a great thing to do for your story.
3. Use Their Dialogue to Reveal Character
Dialogue is probably one of the most powerful character development tools, especially when it comes to secondary characters because a lot of the characterization is done through dialogue in most stories. There’s not a lot of time to dedicate to just writing from these character’s perspectives, but dialogue reveals vital and important information to the reader without taking up too much of the story.
You want to give your secondary characters their own unique voices and it has to fit their personality, their background, and more. Additionally, you want to use dialogue in a clever way where you don’t 100% reveal everything in what is being said. For instance, a character might reveal some information via sarcastic statements, which means that what is meant is implicitly said.
Dialogue can help create and resolve conflicts as well. Characters might reveal their motivations, their beliefs, their views on the protagonist and more through dialogue. This can then create problems or potentially solve problems.
4. Let Them Challenge the Protagonist
The secondary characters do not necessarily need to be there just to support the protagonist in everything. In fact, challenging the main character is something that is perfectly acceptable for main characters as well. Challenging the main character, either by opposing actions, questioning decisions made, or offering up different perspectives are all valid ways to show the depth of the secondary characters.
You can do this sort of thing through ideological differences, where the characters may disagree on fundamental ideas and viewpoints in life. A great example of this is the show House MD, where the main character (Dr. House) is often at odds with his team over ideological views on medicine and patients as well as treatment methods.
You also want to try and give your secondary characters their own moral code and their own view on ethical principles. The moral code of your secondary characters doesn’t need to align with the main character, but it needs to have some sort of prevalence in the story and it doesn’t need to be outright told to the reader. Show, don’t tell is a great thing to keep in mind here, and if you want to learn more about that, then check out this post!
5. Show Their Impact on the Plot
Secondary characters also need to have some sort of prevalence in the plot in general. You’ve spent so much time creating them and giving them a backstory and all that, so it would definitely be a shame if your character was treated like an afterthought in the final product of the story. You want to give them a real role in the plot of the story and have their decisions actually matter. The secondary character should be given agency and their choices need to have real, visible, tangible consequences on the story.
Secondary characters are also great devices for showing unexpected twists and revelations in the story. Maybe they were the key to the plot all along!
Overall, the secondary character shouldn’t just exist in the background and they should have some sort of reason for being in the story. The reason doesn’t need to be outright and obvious, but it needs to exist somewhere in the depths of the story’s pages.
My series, The Fallen Age Saga, has a lot of secondary characters that all have a genuine purpose for existing and affect the overall progression of the plot, like Alex Rokner from Soldat and Kareem Mansouri from Malware. There’s more to come in Chaos Eve, so stay tuned for more information on that!
Conclusion
Creating deep and interesting secondary characters is something that is essential for creating rich, immersive story worlds that feel alive. Characters need to be more than just background pieces, but they need to have some sort of impact on the main story and they need to have some sort of prevalence.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on all my latest WIPs, book releases, posts and more!