Writers: Who Has Your Hero’s Back?
No hero succeeds alone.
Except for Jason Bourne, of course, but think of the $30 million over 5 years it took to train him. Does your protagonist have access to similar resources?
Supporting characters fill out a story, add depth to your theme and make your hero look good, whether they want it or not. They’re a challenging voice to our hero’s motive, a kernel of wisdom when success is on the line, the comic relief in the face of death.
The change in how the protagonist treats a secondary character at the beginning of the story and later on is a common way to confirm our hero has overcome her flaw and is ready for the showdown with the antagonist and the climax of your narrative.
Two Fans, One Saboteur
Supporting characters fall into one of three categories.
If a character doesn’t squeeze into one of these, you should either rewrite them so they do or edit them out of your story.
The Good
Your protagonist’s pool of talent. They might be friends, an acquaintance’s cousin, or anyone who possesses a skill or ability necessary for our hero to reach her goal. But take care, because it’s not easy to write supporting roles that avoid Hollywood stereotypes.
I build my stories, layer by layer. As I begin to define just who my protagonist must be and what flaw would best prevent their success, I learn how and where she needs support, and then select the attributes and traits of two or three characters she’ll have to count on.
I prioritize their importance to our hero and then try and switch it up so whoever looks least helpful early on turns out to be the most useful when it counts. I try and introduce conflicting traits that oppose (or twist) my theme because you can never have enough conflict. I seek to create drama between them and our hero as well, so long as it won’t derail the ride (almost, but not quite).
At this stage, I still don’t know ‘who’ they are, only what I need from them. I’ll let them skirmish in the back of my mind as I run through the most likely environments and situations our hero might encounter in her existing world. Soon enough, they absorb their traits and begin to take shape.
It is better to use a pair of characters whose skills overlap but has opposing perspectives rather than two characters that lack a basis for conflict. Perhaps they have the same skills but one is old school while the other is about technological shortcuts — in this case, they’d have to find a solution to an obstacle that meshes their approaches in a novel way, and just in time.
By crafting my story this way, the characters reveal themselves. I don’t get involved until I can almost hear them squabbling over there, somewhere, and then it’s only to see if there’s a way I might make them hate something else about each other.
These secondary characters work best if, like above, they possess their own emotional arcs and must also change in a way that reflects your theme in how they resolve their differences.
Backstories are also important. These are useful not merely to define the supporting character, it’s an opportunity to include elements that illuminate our hero’s background or discreetly inform the source of the trauma behind her flaw. It’s like weaving a tapestry. The more links you can establish — the more threads you might add — the more tightly the warp marries the weft.
This is why investing the time to think about your story before you write, the more cohesive the result of your final product. Crafting a story this way permits you to find those details you would miss otherwise, or be difficult and time-consuming to change if you think of them on page 234.
The Bad
These characters might be allied with the antagonist, but not necessarily as henchmen. They could just as easily be a school bully who possesses attributes similar to (but not the same as) the antagonist, whose defeat sparks the idea for the climax strategy, or a boss ready to fire our hero if she fails to meet a deadline that coincides with something else crucial for her to win her goal.
Nor are these characters always intentionally malicious. They are often temporary, even momentary obstacles, like the tow-truck driver hauling away the van of essential equipment, or the highway patrol officer who feels it his sworn duty to carefully examine the contents of the van for drugs, leaving our hero less than an hour to drive ninety miles.
Every encounter with these barrier characters is a chance to add an unexpected obstacle to your tale. Maybe sitting on the seat beside the driver of the tow truck is the exact thing that our hero needs but couldn’t find and which delayed her return to the van. Or the highway patrol officer who, while examining a catch-all, pulls out a ball of twine with a supporting character’s stash stuffed in the core, then sets it aside while he keeps searching the bag.
Anywhere you can add tension or raise the stakes and make your reader stiffen, or hold their breath to the bottom of the page, do it. It won’t occur to you later, or at least not until a future draft.
The Not Necessarily Ugly
Also known as The Guy in the Chair, the mentor or teacher, this character type is a source of wisdom for our hero, sharing helpful bits of knowledge to solve the puzzle, just not in a useful order.
As a rule, this character is absent from the quest, remaining behind the lines, often due to age, disability, or other restrictions, though perhaps with their own side mission.
There is usually a conflict between them and our hero or at least history that makes their cooperation a gamble or reluctant.
This character may be a moral lodestone still upset over being lied to by our hero, resentful from previously being taken advantage of, or angry their government security clearance was used to learn about the antagonist.
Life Beyond the Hero
Supporting characters are most memorable when they have their own flaws that threaten their usefulness to the protagonist or cause them to abandon the field (for a time, anyway, and then return better able to help).
These helper characters’ struggles should reflect some facet of the protagonist’s internal conflict.
Supporting characters, even minor and cameo characters, need to ‘fit’ the roles required of them, but every last one needs an attribute you don’t expect them to have — either that or an attribute they need to fulfill their purpose pushed to an extreme.
Perhaps an elderly shoeshiner who has spent his life in the lobby of a city skyscraper shining shoes worth more than his monthly income. He is now blind from diabetes but still manages to shine oxfords as well today as he did thirty years ago. His memory is no less bright and recalls a minor but critical fact.
Don’t Accept Mediocrity
Never settle for your initial ideas for these support characters, the obvious choices. They are useful in their own way, to refine your need and suggest a direction for your imagination, but your goal is to offer your reader what they least expect and avoid clichés.
