Downgrade Your Minor Characters

Not all characters in your story are created equal. Some are of the utmost importance while some are fairly insignificant.

The most important characters are the ones who face and overcome a number of serious problems and obstacles in a story. They are called major characters. In Antoine de Saint-Expiry’s “The Little Prince,” they would be the Little Prince and the boy narrator. In “The Godfather” (both novel and movie), they would be Don Vito Corleone and his sons Michael and Sonny.

In contrast, minor characters face few obstacles and often none at all. Because of this, minor characters have few lines of dialogue and usually appear only incidentally. They are part of the background, necessary for advancing the plot and giving the story a semblance of reality, but they are not who the story is about. In “The Little Prince,” they would be the fennec fox, railway switchman, and the merchant. In “The Godfather,” they would be the singer Johnny Fontana, the henchman Luca Bras, and Connie’s husband Carlo Rizzio.

Developing all of your story’s characters isn’t necessary. In fact, the fewer you develop the better, especially if writing a short story or novella. This allows the reader to focus on a single character (or small band of characters) who must overcome the story’s central problem.

At the same time, don’t skimp on minor characters if they’re needed in your story. The tale about the scientist professor making a startling but dangerous discovery probably needs to include a research assistant, department secretary, and bored students. There’s nothing wrong with including these side players. Just make sure they seem real (that is, they shouldn’t be stereotypes) and that they don’t attract the reader’s attention too much.

Today’s sophisticated readers generally demand that your stories contain three-dimensional characters, that is, a protagonist who behaves like a real person and who probably grows by learning something along the way. But how do you create such a character? A three-dimensional, or round, character would do the following:

Express multiple emotions
In our daily lives, we rarely express a lone emotion all day or react to all things with the same single feeling. We are cheerful, we are frustrated, we are pleased, we are angry, we are lustful, we are bored. In fact, whenever a person constantly displays only one emotion – sadness or anger, for example – we tend to worry that there is something wrong with him. Except for the most dire of circumstances, such as to show a character has sunk into deep depression, always have a character express a number of emotions, as the plot permits.

Struggle with conflicting emotions
Most of us find ourselves doing what we think is best though we don’t feel like doing it or vacillating between thoughts as our feelings play tug of war inside us: we want to tell off someone but know we need to bite our tongue; we don’t want to attend our loudmouth neighbor’s party but know his good-natured wife will be offended if we don’t. Have your main character grapple with his emotions as well.

Possess flaws
No one is perfect, except for hackneyed story characters. Allow them to make mistakes, to have weaknesses and fears. If they don’t have a flaw, they risk becoming a comic book-like caricature. Make their flaws integral to the plot so that it stands out.

Undergo change
As a real person, you experience and learn something new everyday; though it may not be earth-shattering, it does affect who you are so that the person you are today is not the person you were 20 years ago. In a story, a protagonist ideally will experience and learn something that changes – for the better – his perspective on himself or the world.

Display some unique quirk
Each of us has some habit or subtle tic that sets us apart from others – biting one’s fingernails when nervous, twirling one’s hair when uncertain, winking at others when feeling happy. Your main character also should have some quirk that is uniquely his, that can come to be associated with him.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

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