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5 Steps to Creating Great Supporting Characters
Anybody Can Write a Novel

Chapter 3 “Characters” – Section 4 “The Antagonist”

With Links to Supplementary Material

With your Protagonist and Antagonist up and ready to go, you are now ready to create your Supporting Characters. These are the people in your story who show up multiple times and play an important role in the plot—not to be confused with Universe Filler Characters, who may only show up once. The following is a step by step process for making your Supporting Characters into something much greater than just plot devices.

Step 1: Identify and compile a list of all your planned Supporting Characters.

These characters will be mentors, sub-protagonists, sub-antagonists, friends, family members, rivals, apprentices, and anyone else that is meaningful to the story. Find them, and create a Word Document Page devoted to each one. To start off, just give some basic information about them. Keep in mind that you will be adding to this list as you get to know each character, and as you see the need to add new ones later in the writing process. I advise picking three major physical or behavioral attributes for each character to use as visual cues when you begin to write the story—so that a familiar image comes to mind each time that character or their attribute is mentioned.

Step 2: Identify how they contribute to the Story—their role—and then branch from it.

Ask yourself, is this character a love interest? A sidekick? A mentor? A comic relief character? Once you figure that out, write it down and then recognize that this is as deceptive a facade as identifying a friend as only being “funny.” Sure, they may be funny, or wise, or hot, but these are but one attribute that should never be able to define a complex and dynamic character, any more than a real person. And while your mentor character may be that to your protagonist, he/she is somebody's child, or enemy, or lover. And just like we find a comedic character who is also admirable much funnier than one who is ONLY supposed to be funny, each supporting character will perform their role better as you make them more complex and complete.

Step 3: Write down how each Supporting Character sees/would see the other characters in the story.

Doing this, with some basic character attributes and their role in mind, will cause you to begin to see your Supporting Characters outside the context of what they represent to the protagonist. Maybe the love interest sees the mentor as a jerk, because they don't get along and maybe the mentor IS a bit of a jerk or maybe he/she is racist or sexist. Figure these things out, and attempt to make these character relationships dynamic and complex. It will add interest and reality to your story, and will also make your characters so much more wonderfully human—both the heroes and the villains with attributes that make them a mix of good, bad, funny, scary, admirable, and pitiable.

Step 4: Fill out a Plot Premise for each supporting character.

Now it will be difficult and in most cases impossible to give your Supporting Characters a complete Three-Act micro-plot to themselves, but it is important that each of them be affected by the story taking place. That each have their own goal, struggles and obstacles in achieving that goal, and a resolution where they try to rise to the challenge—their own story of success, failure, and transformation—contributing to making your story more complex, and making your characters seem like important members of the story and not decorations on the metaphorical Christmas tree. Using the plot premise will do just that, but without the unnecessary tedium of doing an entire Three-Act Outline, as well as help you to get yo know the Supporting Characters even further.

Step 5: Combine and get rid of non-essential Supporting Characters.

This is perhaps the hardest part of the process—and there is no shame in waiting until the second or third draft of your novel to do it (I've combined/eliminated characters even into my seventh draft). But ask yourself and really think critically about whether each Supporting Character's role and presence actually contribute to the plot as a whole. Would things be simplified if one character took on the role of another, and would this make the remaining character more dynamic for it? Would the plot still be completely intact if a certain character were removed? These are excellent questions to ask a writing partner, who is not as emotionally invested in these characters as you will be. And it's extremely difficult, for myself included, but remember that everything that does not serve the immediate story is a distraction. And you will be doing that unnecessary character a greater honor to leave them out of the story they're not needed in, in order to save them for a story that actually needs them and where they can truly shine.

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