When I write a story, I sometimes realize that my plot requires a new character. This secondary character,¹ therefore, is created as a facilitator of plot (including character arc); he gets the protagonist from point A to point B, or he acts as a spy for the antagonist, or he leads the army the protagonist and antagonist are battling to obtain control over. I have a need in the story for something to be done, and the character is built-to-order for the purpose of doing that thing. He’s not a main character, not the story’s backbone, but he is essential to its structure- a rib, perhaps. These characters, due to their functional origin, can be easy to write as functions, character who exist only to do what you needed them to do. This path, however, both wastes their potential and actively harms the story.

These secondary characters must have motivations. The king the protagonist supplicates for military aid can’t just be an army-dispensing machine. He should have desires of his own. He may desire conquest, peace, personal revenge, a particular piece of art, the death of the only guy prettier than him in all the world, or to demonstrate that his national cuisine is the truly superior offering. He may just want to romance the protagonist. He may already be on the antagonist’s side because of his motivation. Regardless, people don’t just operate as functions. People act because they want to act (even if their reason for wanting to act is that they don’t enjoy the consequences of not acting). The travel guide who gets the protagonist over the mountains may be in it for king, country, lucre, or persona achievement, but he’s in it for a reason.

These motivations don’t need to be complex. Indeed, secondary characters generally aren’t going to be that complex. In most stories, you only have so much room for each character. Further, the page-space you can give to each character’s development is going to vary in proportion to that character’s importance to the story. Thus, secondary characters, given their middling importance, will have time enough to develop into characters (more than what I’ve termed bit characters), but they won’t have the time to reach the level of development we’d expect out of a main character or a regular POV character. The exception, of course, is that sometimes you just have a lot of room. If you’re writing a million word magnum opus of a fantasy series (with appropriate levels of plagiarizing Tolkien), you’re going to have enough room to want and sometimes even need to turn secondary characters into much more complex individuals, equivalent to another story’s main character. In the absence of such space, though, be cautious, as lingering long on a secondary character can be an active detriment to the story’s focus.

For most secondary characters, ones that need enough complexity to be believable but not so much they are distracting, a single-sentence motivation is a good start. The king wants to achieve simultaneous military security and romantic fulfilment; the singer-songwriter wants to make enough money to feed his family without compromising his principles; the guardsman wants to satisfy his curiosity about a magical abomination without unduly endangering his companions.² You’ll notice that these motivations have some complexity to them, an interplay of factors, but they’re easy to comprehend nonetheless.

The goal of a secondary character, from a meta perspective, is to fulfil a function, but as a character it must first reach a basic standard: a believable imitation of a real person. The secondary character is somebody you interact with semi-regularly but with whom you are hardly intimate. He’s not your best friend or a long-time friend. He’s a cousin who lives a ways away and can’t talk much; he’s a contractor you work alongside on a regular basis but wouldn’t think to invite to a party that wasn’t about work; he’s the boss you really wish would stop being so annoying but don’t really hate. This is the reader’s perspective on the secondary character; he gets a surface-level impression of the guy, learns a bit about his strongest characteristics, and moves on. As the writer, you may want to suggest that the character has more depth, but you don’t need to create that depth for real (unless that’s your writing method). The reader needs to understand the salient aspects and motivations of the character, just as he would with the character’s real-life original.

This motivation, as you’ve probably realized, is only half of the story. These characters can’t just be motivations with bodies; that’s not how people are. These characters need to actually have character. They need to show intelligence, stupidity, greed, impulsivity, or naivete. These characteristics will not be as deeply rooted or widespread as they would be in a main character. The king, though, should not be just a conqueror. He should have a potion of bravery and vanity and anger all stewing around in him, working on his motivation and affecting how he acts on his motivation. Think of Richard the Lionhearted in Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman, how he grows a very clear humanity, incomplete but undeniable, through his actions and reactions in the narrative.

Let’s return to these characters’ real life counterparts. All real humans are complex. None of us quite understand ourselves, and most certainly none of us truly understand each other fully. Indeed, God alone fully comprehends even a single man (Prov. 15:11). In our eyes, a person is like the proverbial iceberg. Part of him is visible- some of his actions, some of his words, some of his bodily cues-, and part of him is deducible- what he probably heard (because he was there when you heard it), what he saw, what he knows (because he read that book on the topic)- albeit this is a less certain area than the first due to an incomplete basis for these deductions. Much of him, however, is hidden; even the greatest intimacy between two individuals has its limits.

People can’t read each other’s minds; people don’t have a perfect semantic correspondence; people are mysteries ineluctable to themselves and therefore incapable of communicating their fullness to others. For some people, the iceberg’s visible portion is effectively nothing, as with the clerk at the grocery store in the city you’re visiting for business purposes; for some, it’s quite obscured but not complete, as with the guy you say hi to in church every week but never meet anywhere else; for some, it’s even more open, to an extent that highlights rather than hiding the immense proportion still hidden, as with your kids, your parents, your significant other. As a writer, therefore, who is reflecting that second set of people in a secondary character, your job is not to create or exhibit complexity, like you would with a main character who needs to foster intimacy with the reader. Your job is to provide enough detail to suggest complexity, whether it exists or not.

Inside this rubric, two aspects of these characters remain to be considered: flaws and contradictions (apparent and actual). Flaws, of course, are an integral part of every human character. Because all men are sinners (Gen. 3:16-20), all men have flaws; characters, as imitations intended to evoke man, must therefore have flaws. Like all other aspects of a secondary character, however, his flaws will be rooted in less complexity, will have less development. They should be coordinate with the rest of his character, however.

For contradictions, apparent and actual, the same rule applies. Main characters can be self-contradictory because humans, broken by sin, are often self-contradictory, though we must be careful if it starts getting to the point of incoherence (only reach that point by intention). Secondary characters follow the same rules but to a much lower resolution. As a result of this lower resolution, however, they run a much higher risk of incoherence, lacking the room to explain and coordinate inconsistent elements of their character into a believable whole. Thus if you want to include this aspect, do so with great care; often you’re better off suggesting rather than showing. Further, be careful not to imply a promise of an explanation which you don’t intend to actually provide. Broken promises, even if the vow was made accidentally, are deadly to a reader’s investment in the story.

In sum, then, a secondary character, even one designed for a pragmatic plot purpose, must have a consistent motivation and character, with realistic traits and flaws, without surpassing a page-space appropriate to his importance and role. Implication of complexity rather than a full realization is the name of the game. In this way, the potential of the character can be exploited without pulling attention from the parts of the story that need it. Such secondary characters provide color and tonal vigor to the world. They give also opportunities to develop and explore more important characters, acting as dynamic forces towards change or revelation, sources of conflict even. Sometimes a character will show up and make the functional role he was designed for go a lot slower or more involved than you anticipated. Sometimes that’s a bad thing, and you need to change the character to fit the role. Sometimes, though, the change is an actual benefit, an increase of verisimilitude and an opportunity to make the story better. As always, this calls for good judgement in the circumstances. Remember the principles, apply them, and praise God for the opportunity.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – See this article (specifically this segment) for a discussion of different character types. I’ll be referencing its terminology throughout this article.

2 – Borrowed, with modification, from a current project.