Last week we talked about what it takes to make a realistic main character. We discussed how to start by making some decisions for him, but then letting him make other decisions for himself.

We even went through the character creation process. The end result was Nathan, a 17-year-old boy with OCD who lives with his dad. Through the process of using improvisation rather than planning to develop his personality, we also discovered that he’s a picky eater, he avoids intimacy with others, and he’s observant of people.

His character still needs considerable amounts of prewriting and improvisation to make him ready for a novel. But for the purposes of this demonstration, we’re going to instead focus on the secondary characters that fill his world.

The secondary characters are the ones who help or hinder your main character on his quest. They’re his best buddies, his love interests, his enemies.

And they require just as much time and attention as your main character.

Don’t believe me? Think back on the Harry Potter series. Be honest. Would you have kept reading if it weren’t for Ron and Hermione, for Sirius and Snape? Those aren’t some of the bestselling novels of all time because we care about Harry. We care about all of the characters in that world. Even if there are some characters we don’t care about, it’s not because they’re flat. It’s because they have strong personalities that we genuinely don’t like.

Would The Princess Bride have been a cult classic without Inigo and Fezzick? Would Firefly fanboys foam at the mouth without Wash and Kaylee? What’s The Lord of the Rings without Gimli and Gollum? The Chronicles of Narnia without Puddleglum and Reepicheep? Romeo needs Mercutio and Tybalt. Woody is nothing without Buzz.

I rest my case.

The process of developing realistic secondary characters is simple. It’s the same as the process for developing realistic main characters.

Secondary characters are the main characters of their own stories. They need to be just as thought out, just as rich, as your primary protagonist and antagonist. After all, that’s how real life is. Other people are just as real as you and me.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that secondary characters are only there to serve the protagonist. They’re not. If they’re good characters, then they’ll be interested in making society better, though how they define better is not necessarily how the main character defines it. And if they’re selfish, they’re only out to serve themselves.

This is why Shakespeare’s work has lasted this long. Every character was vivid, every relationship real. We can see eye-to-eye with Macbeth and Macduff and pity one and cheer the other. We can facepalm at Beatrice and Benedick because they’re so completely self-absorbed. We forget that they aren’t actual people.

Let’s put it into practice. Just as we did last week, let’s create a character to go alongside Nathan.

This time let’s make a girl. Same age. The temptation here is to start characterizing her by how she feels about the protagonist. Don’t fall for it! She’s a person in her own right. I do believe that she needs to come from a strong, nuclear family, let’s say the middle of five children.

And what does she want from life? She may not have it all figured out, but I bet she feels very passionate about a particular cause she volunteers with. Orphans? Too cliché. Let’s say she’s trying to get an internship at a physical therapy clinic.

—

Erin leaned back against the tile wall and sighed. Her nose rankled at the faint smell of disinfectant. Her arms were killing her. Mister Peters was a really nice man, but that didn’t make massaging his knee any easier.

Doctor Duval had said her muscles would build up with the practice. Erin knew she was right, as usual. She just wished it didn’t take so long.

Someone cleared his throat nearby. Erin hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes. She opened them and looked up.

Gary stood over her, arm in a brace, goofy smile shining in the fluorescent light.

Erin sighed. She wanted to close her eyes again, but she didn’t know him well enough yet to trust him.

“Hi, Gary.”

Gary apparently took that as an invitation to sit down. He glanced at her, then carefully adjusted so that he was sitting just like she was.

“…H-Hi, Erin.”

Erin didn’t want to start the conversation, but she didn’t want to be rude, either. “How do you feel today?”

“G-Good. Great. Even.”

“Good.”

“You know what would make me feel better?”

Erin winced. “No, Gary. What?”

She waited patiently as he stammered. “T-t-t-taking you out for dinner tonight.”

She’d guessed as much from the way he’d gawked at her over the last few weeks. The way he asked for her help even though he was assigned to someone else.

Telling him no would hurt him. She hated to see that look on someone’s face. But she couldn’t lead him on, either.

“That wouldn’t be very ethical,” Erin said.

That confusion, it was so innocent. “Ethical?”

“It’s not right for therapists to date their patients.”

There it was. He was beyond crestfallen. He looked like a deflated zeppelin.

Do no harm, indeed.

—

How about that? I wanted to find some kind of flaw, some mistake for her to make, but I just didn’t get an opportunity. No matter. I can use another scene to find her character flaws. This one showed me how responsible and level headed she is. She isn’t flighty, but she’s still compassionate. That’s a lot for fewer than 300 words.

I didn’t make it a scene where she interacts with Nathan, not yet. That’s for next week, when we discuss the most important part of character creation. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.

This article took four read-throughs.

Fatherhood [fah-ther-hood] (n): The delicate balance between making a child into the person he is going to be and letting the child decide who he is going to be.

You won’t find that at dictionary.com. But as my first child continues to grow and my second child has just announced his/her plans for imminent arrival, it’s what I’ve decided ought to be the definition.

On the one hand, when I tell my son that we aren’t going to watch TV, and he plants his feet, balls his little fists, and screams into my face, I engage in the process of making him into the person he’s going to be. If he remains as he is, it will invite complications later on.

On the other hand, when breakfast is over and I let him decide what he wants to do next, I engage in the process of letting him decide who he’s going to be. His decision between running around in the back yard and banging on the coffee table because it sounds really cool will have lifelong consequences as surely as a butterfly beats its wings.

And so it is when creating your main character.

Sure, you’re going to make big decisions about your character that she has no say in. But here’s a truth to parenting as much as writing: the more you decide the tiny details of someone else’s life, the more that person becomes only a caricature of you.

There’s an author out there. Really famous one, too. I read a lot of his books. But lately, I’ll be frank, I’ve been getting annoyed. The protagonist is always the same: young male, nerdy and awkward but snarky, and he always seems to know the right answers and he really knows how to manipulate people. Honestly, it’s most of his books.

The worst part is that I’ve read enough of his non-fiction stuff to know that that’s kind of how he is. Not young, no, but male, nerdy and awkward and snarky and he thinks he knows all the right answers. He essentially makes all of his protagonists young versions of him.

So I stop caring about his protagonists. I get tired of reading about the same people over and over again. I like his style and his plots. I want to be a fan. But it’s really hard when it seems like all he’s doing is subconsciously fulfilling all his deepest fantasies.

You can do better. If you make your characters unique individuals, trust me, you’ll keep your oeuvre much more enjoyable.

Now, Thomas, it’s one thing to say that. But how do you let your character—a fake person—make decisions?

It all starts with prewriting. Courtney can tell you more about this, and she does every Monday. The process is crucial for making basic decisions about your characters. John Grisham does this with every novel—with great results, I might add.

Then, once you’ve done the work of prewriting, write short scenes with your characters. Not the novel, not yet, but episodes, certainly. Prequels. Let your intuition guide you. Don’t pause to plan. Just throw circumstances at them and write down the first actions and dialogue that come into your head.

Still uncertain? Don’t worry. I’m going to walk you through it. With our philosophy of character creation firmly established, you and I are going to make a baby.

Male or female? As a male, I can create male characters more quickly, so let’s say male. Age? Adolescence and young adulthood are the most dynamic periods of a person’s life, so let’s say 17. Milieu? Building a fantasy world or doing historical research come with their own processes, so let’s say modern.

What about his personality? The world has expectations for him; which ones does he accept and which ones does he rebel against? And which of those were conscious decisions, and which of them were decisions that were made for him by genetics, epigenetics, or upbringing?

I can, and will, put together a fuller profile of this character later, but since space is at a premium right now, we’ll just establish a few basics. He’s more athletic than average. He’s of moderate intelligence. He lives with his father but not his mother.

But every character needs a twist. Just for the fun of it, let’s say he has the pure-O variety of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, wherein he is plagued by obsessive thoughts that do not manifest themselves in compulsive actions.

I’m going to take a moment to think through how a real teenager would develop under these conditions.

And now I’m going to throw stuff at him and see how he responds.

—

“That’ll be $3.78,” the girl at the Starbucks counter said through her plastic smile.

Nathan pictured a demon with a rusty pair of pliers shoving her back against the wall and pulling out her teeth one by one.

He pulled a five out of his wallet. “Keep it.”

The girl’s smile turned up at the corners, turned a little more real. “Thanks.”

Nathan took the coffee. “Thank you.”

—

What do we know so far? Because Nathan gave no outward reaction to his thought, we suspect that this is something he’s experienced before and has practice containing. We also know, through the description of the girl’s smile, that he’s observant of people—I’m using a limited point of view, so I’m only describing what he’s noticing.

Let’s continue.

—

Nathan walked back to the armchair in the corner, his heart pounding, the sound of the barista’s screams, her muffled pleas for mercy, blazing through his mind. He breathed deep the steam from his coffee, letting it wash the filth and sin away.

He sat down and took a sip. This Starbucks tended to put more cinnamon in his coffee than they were supposed to. He much preferred that to the one on Brooks Street, where they tended to make things to spec.

His cell phone buzzed.

We all go to hell toothless, he thought.

Dad’s picture graced the screen of the phone. Nathan answered.

“Yeah?”

“Black beans.”

“I don’t like farting when I run.”

“They’re good for you. Full of protein.”

“So is chicken. I don’t want beans.”

“Fine. I’ll eat the beans. You can get constipated.”

Nathan glanced up at the counter. The barista was giving him a coy look. She met his gaze with breathless hesitation, then turned away to help a customer.

“Deal.” He ended the call.

Nathan stood and left. She seemed like his type. That would make it hurt even worse when she left him.

—

I didn’t mean for Nathan to be particular about food. And he probably only really likes cinnamon because I like cinnamon, so that’s a little leakage there.

But the biggest decision he had to make was about the barista. He’s a hot-blooded teenaged boy. But he’s plagued by insistent thoughts of blasphemy and violence, and we know, though the reader doesn’t yet, that his mom’s not in the picture, suggesting another source of anxiety.

I wanted him to go after the girl. She’s really cute. But he knows he has too much baggage. So he made the choice a real person like him would make, not the choice that I, the author, wanted.

That’s what I meant by letting him make his own choices. The more you know about how people work, the more you can have your characters act like real people and not like tools of your plot.

I’m going to write a little more about him on my own, and next week we can decide what kinds of people surround him.

This article took eight read-throughs.