The manuscript opened with a man, who would turn out to be one of the novel’s more minor characters, pulling over in a rainstorm to rescue a stray dog and take him to the shelter he had started and still funded. That immediately drew me in, dog lover that I am. By the end of the chapter, I’d also learned that this person with such a big heart for dogs had fleeced an entire town out of their pension fund. A good-guy, bad-guy package deal. Brilliant! I was hooked. And then the character all but disappeared from the novel.
Luckily, the author agreed that she had missed a stellar opportunity to turn this minor character into a major asset. She rectified that in her rewrite of what would turn into the cornerstone of a series that’s still going strong.
Minor characters, although often overlooked, can play pivotal roles in fiction, as long as they have a purpose and impact the story. They can also take on a life of their own.
In his 1902 novel written for adults, The Little White Bird, Scottish writer J.M. Barrie introduced Peter Pan, a week-old magical infant. Although confined to a supporting role in The Little White Bird, Peter Pan would eventually fly into history through Barrie’s play, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, which debuted in 1904, and seven years later in the novel Peter and Wendy, which eventually became known simply as Peter Pan.
Peter Pan may have been a bit player when he made his debut, but he was certainly not an afterthought. You want to be just as deliberate with your minor characters. Ask yourself these questions:
- Why introduce the character at all?
- What’s their relationship to the main characters?
- How does that relationship or the secondary character’s purpose impact the story?
- What features and personality traits will you give your minor character so they come off as a real person who stands out?
- What does their internal or external dialogue sound like? That distinctive voice can help communicate identity.
- How and where does this fleshed-out minor character make their appearance in your plot? Creating an outline with a brief description of each scene in one column and who’s in the scene in an adjacent column can help with both plot and pacing. Just remember that sometimes less is more when it comes to how often you write in your secondary character.
Whomever you decide to bring in from the minor leagues, I hope they’re as memorable as the flying boy who refused to grow up.
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