Creating Memorable Supporting Characters

Once you have thought of an interesting idea for your novel, and you have completed the backstory for your main character, do you feel that something is missing? When you read the treatment, do you feel your story is lacking something? Is your story losing pace and action in places? One question you can ask yourself is, are your other characters strong enough? Have you neglected the backstories of the other characters in your novel? Maybe they are undeveloped? This is sometimes the reason why your story struggles, because the main character has no one to counteract with. Your novel needs to include a rich tapestry of character traits and behaviours.

So here are a few ways you can inject some life into your other characters.

1. Make one of your characters dangerous and unpredictable in their behaviour. A reader is always excited by danger, and not knowing what will happen next. Whether the character is going to have a spooky calmness or has volatile outbursts, this will keep readers' attention. Whenever this character appears, the reader will never know how the scene in the chapter will end. One can only look at the character of Norman Bates in Robert Blochs’ 1959 novel Psycho to get an example of this.

2. Make your characters complex. Remember, the other characters in the story provide the protagonist with their conflict, and are the reason why they are having such a hard time achieving their goal. If they are a villain, why not make them a volunteer at a pet rescue centre. Other possibilities are to make your character small in stature but evil to the core. Are they are a kind person outwardly but have a secret dark side? All you need to do is to create characters that have traits that go against their physical appearance, job or surroundings. Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather created one of the finest complex characters in Michael Corleone.

3. Make the dialogue for every character strong. If you have a wacky piece of dialogue that you want to use and it doesn’t suit your main character, then give it to another. One angle you can consider is to ask yourself if all your characters were in a film, how could you convince an actor the role is worth playing? Judy Blume, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers of dialogue. Her novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret contains entertaining, honest but realistic dialogue that teenagers can relate to.

4. Give your characters distinctive physical traits. Prominent facial features, a silly haircut, or a scar. They will not only give the character some three-dimensional qualities, but the reader will easily remember them. You only have to look at the work of Charles Dickens to realise how distinctive looking characters enrich a story.

To conclude, to spice up your supporting character dish and make it memorable to your reader, try the following. Add a pinch of unpredictable powder followed by a spoonful of volatile sauce, and ladle on some danger. If it still tastes flat, stir in some wacky and daring dialogue and present it with unusual facial features.