Writing Compelling Secondary Characters 

Great ideas you have on secondary characters.

Another solid video with excellent advice.

Shaelin, Readsy- you lot are a well of good advice. Thank you for sharing.

thanks for the upload :) love this series

Yes, secondary characters are as real and complex as main characters: and should have goals outside the story, good point. Our lives at certain moments blend reality with dreams. Virginia Woolf called it the marriage of granite and rainbow. In her writing she wanted to eliminate deadness and superfluity: moments which blend thought, sensation and the voice of the sea. In life there are people we glimpse for a moment and never see again: like the sparrow at dusk in the story told by the Venerable Bede. This is from Virginia Woolf's novel 'The Waves' published in 1931: *I like best the stare of shepherds met in the road; the stare of gipsy women beside a cart in the ditch suckling their children as I shall suckle my children ... I shall have children; I shall have maids in aprons ... I shall be like my mother, silent in a blue apron locking up the cupboards.* See 'The Novels of Virginia Woolf' by Hermione Lee (1977) the best introduction to the writer's work by a first-rate critic.

Severus Snape is Good example of someone reader senses has back story but does not see understsnd till book 6( I think it’s 6)

My main cast is a very tight circle, and something I realized is that i hate reading and writing friendship. Usually my most interesting and complex relationship dynamics in fiction never happen between friends, but conflicted acquaintances and resentful family members. BUT lately I found out one of my protagonists simply is not a person of few friends, like he is popular and never hangs out alone. Now I don't know how much the reader needs to know about his friends, like should i only focus on the closest friend and rest has just name? Should all of them have a personality since they will inevitably have lines? Ugh i just wish he was introverted like the rest of the cast lol

I am a little intrigued by the fact that characters sometimes define their own roles. I've had side characters begin life as a walk-on who eventually establishes themselves as a full-blown Buddy Love character. I've discovered that if you flesh out your characters and do your best to inhabit their personae, often they will assume some of the plot creation duties, almost as if they are active collaborators (and I can use all the help I can get). They partner with you to tell the story. This is almost like in film and television, where they bring an actor in as a walk-on with maybe one or two lines, and they somehow win the writers and the director over and become regular characters for the rest of the series.

This video was perfect timing for me. I'm working on story and I'm not sure if one of my characters is a second character or do I have two protagonist.

Well Actions Speak Louder The Words, so the tool of Showing instead of Telling is quite useful.

so usefull👍

I get so much help from you Thank you Suggestion - at end of your video how bout a tag line that gives Listener a sense of continuity for next episode In my Readers ‘ companion podcast, Tales from Tudor Times, I have both a standard intro and exit line Intro like yours “hey I’m so glad you downloaded this x th episode of …. The final tag line is See you in the 16 th century ( my novels are time travel)

Just don't make your secondary characters more compelling than your lead character/s. That's a primary mistake that writers often make.

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