A great story has three types of characters: a protagonist, an antagonist, and at least one supporting character. While most of the spotlight goes to the first two (who are typically your “good” and “bad” guys, respectively), supporting characters also have essential roles to play in a story.

Writers use supporting characters to further flesh out a main character’s story and development. Their biggest role is to bring conflict and change to the story that will affect the main character for better or worse, which helps readers better understand the protagonist.

Many supporting characters serve as “sidekicks” of sorts for the protagonist. For example, Frodo had Samwise Gamgee, Oliver of Oliver Twist had the Artful Dodger, and Han Solo had Chewbacca in Star Wars.

Types of Supporting Characters

Sidekicks, love interests, best friends, henchmen, mentors, underlings, etc. — all of these can be classified into three general types of supporting characters. Some characters will often function as more than one type. Check them out below.

1. Antagonizers

Yes, the overall villain in your story is an antagonizer. But you shouldn’t limit your antagonizing players to just one. If there’s an ultimate enemy, then there should be some smaller ones too.

Some of the best stories are well-balanced with a combination of small-scale and larger-scale conflicts. You can achieve this by adding antagonistic elements frequently into the story.

They’re not necessarily bad guys, but anyone who can affect a negative change to your protagonist is an antagonizer. If they effectively annoy, anger, alienate, provoke and injure your protagonist, then they’re doing their part in the story.

Some examples of antagonizers are:

• Draco Malfoy and his gang from Harry Potter
• Armand from Interview with a Vampire
• Randal Flagg from The Dark Tower

2. Supporters

Supporters are the antithesis to antagonizers. They exist to provide assistance as your protagonist deals with the story’s conflict.

They’re also there as a way to ground your protagonist’s morals and ethics, and keep them on the right path. Without supporters acting as voices of reason, it’s easier for your heroes to turn into villains.

One of the most important roles of a supporter is to inform the reader about the protagonist’s emotions, thoughts, and actions. This is done through the interactions between the supporter and your protagonist.

Some examples of supporters are:

• Mat and Perrin from The Wheel of Time
• Simmon, Willem, and Manet from The Kingkiller Chronicles
• Karrin Murphy from The Dresden Files

3. Informers

Informers are supporting characters without a direct place in your protagonist’s journey, aside from bringing them information or inspiration.

They can appear in the form of supporters or antagonizers. Whatever their form, their biggest purpose is to drive the plot forward by revealing any relevant and useful information to the main character.

Though it’s great to make your protagonists proactive by making them move on their own, sometimes it’s good to slowly feed your readers information by offering your protagonists tidbits of knowledge as they progress and meet people.

Examples of informers:

• Father Christmas from Chronicles of Narnia
• Cinna from the Hunger Games
• Angela from the Inheritance Cycle

Understanding Supporting Characters

Just because they’re supporting characters aren’t the stars doesn’t mean they’re less important. Supporting characters have their own role to play in making a cohesive story.

They’re not one-off characters you can throw away after use. Once you remove them from the story, there will be a noticeable effect that will hinder the narrative. That’s how important they are.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when constructing supporting characters.

1. Make them three dimensional.

Characters, like real people, have mannerisms, personalities, dreams, and histories. Your supporting characters’ backstories should be as developed as those of your main characters.

Remember, their usual roles are as foils to your protagonist. They should be able to stand side-by-side with your protagonists.

2. Create different personalities.

To further develop your main character, create supporting characters with different personalities from the protagonist’s. This creates variety and friction, which you can use to advance the plot.

Contrasting personalities also highlight the unique traits of certain characters, giving them more complexity. The more you differentiate a supporting character from the main one, the more both characters evolve.

3. Use memorable names.

A mistake a lot of writers make is creating characters that blend into their story’s figurative walls. Readers will frequently backtrack to reread information about forgettable characters.

One easy way to make sure your readers remember your characters is by giving them distinct names. Make it match their personas. Use their heritage as inspiration. Avoid the dull and boring (unless your character is intended to be perfectly average).

4. Don’t create too many!

Don’t get carried away with creating too many supporting characters. Not only will you confuse yourself, but you’ll also confuse your readers.

Minor characters can poke in and out of your story, but most of the narrative is focused on a central cast. As you create more and more characters, you’ll make the story more complex and create more of a burden for readers.

A basic rule of thumb is that if you can’t keep up with your cast, neither will your readers.

5. Turn your supporting characters into protagonists of their own stories.

No, you don’t need to write another book just for them, but you will need to think of them as independent characters that can stand on their own, even without your protagonist.

Build a character profile and consider all the important aspects your character needs to have. Not all of the details you’ve written down need to be in the book, but it’s good to know your characters from the inside out.

6. Get the dialogue right.

Dialogue is a great way of separating characters from each other. In real life, no two people speak the same so you shouldn’t make your characters talk in the same way too.

It’s important to take note of each character’s education, upbringing, career, worldview, and generation. These five elements affect how a person speaks. Understanding them will enable you to write unique dialogue for each of your characters.

7. Make them unpredictable.

A boring character is someone who’s easy to figure out. There’s no suspense to a story when you already know how they’ll speak and act.

Avoid making them predictable by subverting character tropes, adding in some twists and turns, and using the readers’ expectations against them. Once you make them unpredictable, readers will feel the need to get to the end and learn what’s really up with them.

8. Don’t be afraid to revise or cut supporting characters.

If one of your characters isn’t functioning as you hoped they would, either change them or take them out of the story. Leaving them in means possible difficulties in the future, where you might have to revise large chunks of your story.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the characters you’ve created, but if one isn’t working, then you’re far better off revising or removing them.

Writing Good Supporting Characters

Supporting characters take as much effort to create as main characters. They need to seamlessly fit into your narrative, otherwise they’ll stick out awkwardly, or only serve as distractions.

As you go through your story, always be aware of your characters’ purposes and how they’re developing. Even with a small cast, it’s easy to forget about certain aspects. Your supporting characters need to grow along with your main characters.

If they fall behind, there’s going to be a noticeable imbalance to the narrative. Your main character can’t carry the entire story themselves!

Have you created your own supporting characters? Share your process in the comments below!

 

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