Don't Forget Your Second Banana: Secondary Characters in Your Novel

Quick, think about the last book you've just loved. The one you've told all your friends about. You probably have a lot of reasons why you love it, but let's focus on just one.

The heroine's (or hero's) second banana (s). Their BFF's. Their sidekicks. Their adversaries.

Secondary characters are often orphans, i.e., neglected by their creators. Put in place so that the hero or heroine can accomplish some story goal. In other words, secondary characters are often underdeveloped and boring.

I mean, we spend so much time on our main characters, getting them just right, and that is an exhausting process. 

Think back on that beloved book I just asked you about. One that immediately comes to mind for me is Tracy Brogan's Crazy Little Thing, which I adored on about a hundred different levels. That book is still circulating around my Jazzercise class (since September). I will probably never see it again, but that's okay. The thing is, my friends and I are still talking about two characters in that book, the heroine Sadie's fantastic cousin Fontaine and her totally eccentric Aunt Dody. They are complex, three-dimensional, crazy characters who clearly touched our hearts. 

In Jen Probst's The Marriage Bargain, the heroine Alexa's best friend Maggie is not on scene very much but you can't help loving her when she is. Her personality shines from the page. (No wonder she got her own book :)

I looked for some wisdom from Donald Maass's The Fire in Fiction to help answer the question, what makes these secondary characters memorable?

Maass says it's not a matter of making a character beautiful or dangerous because what is beautiful or seductive or dangerous is not the same for everyone. 

He believes it is the IMPACT the secondary character has on the main character that makes that character special. 

Secondary characters must be EXAMINED or they will be BLAND. They must be out-of-the-box. Not a stereotyped Best Friend or Bad Guy or Bad Girl Next Door. They must have UNEXPECTED layers that take your reader by SURPRISE.  

How do we make these characters DEEPLY HUMAN? Maass suggests giving them internal conflicts and looking at them though your protagonist's eyes. What is a defining moment in their relationship? How has this character changed your protagonist? What's one thing your hero will never understand about their friend? How does your heroine resist this person? Are these characters stereotypical or do they surprise us with their unexpected, human qualities?

For more on how to beef up your secondary characters, see The Fire in Fiction, Donald Maass, Chapter Two, Characters Who Matter.

 "Sunshine on My Bananas."

Donald Maass: Tension, Tension Everywhere

I heard famed writing craft author and literary agent Donald Maass speak at a one-day workshop back in January. It was revelatory.

So I went back to my copy of Maass's The Fire in Fiction and reread Chapter 8, Tension All the Time.

How do you create the type of tension that keeps a reader reading every blessed page of your novel?
A page-turner. Can't put it down. Kept me up all night.

How? How? Well, Maass says, it's not by creating a big plot with a big question that will keep the reader turning the pages to find out who-done-it. Even if it's high-stakes. Really high stakes.

It's not setting each scene up carefully with a goal your character goes after, as we are taught to do.

It's not incessant action, sanppy dialogue, or reading about what is going on deep in your point-of-view character's mind.

Not saying that any of that stuff is not important. IT'S JUST NOT ENOUGH.

Maass says that an instinct for tension is the best predictability he has for which writers will go on to become career novelists.

This tension has nothing to do with the set-up of the book and all the other things I've just mentioned.

Rather it is about permeating your novel with constant tension that arises from CONFLICTING EMOTIONS, not from outer action going on but from your character's INNER CONFLICT.

No one will give a rat's arse about your beautiful passages of description, your careful backstory hidden in dialogue, your contemplative sequel where your character mulls over what just happened, your carefully choreographed sex scene, or ANY emotion your character feels UNLESS you infuse every single bit of it with MICROTENSION, which Maass defines as "the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story but IN THE NEXT FEW SECONDS." (Boldface mine.)

I am going to sticky-note that last part to the corner of my computer screen.

As Lori Wilde has said in her writing classes, it's all about EMOTION. That's why readers read.

Maass says tension comes from INNER CONFLICT, FEELINGS IN CONFLICT WITH ONE ANOTHER, not from the outer actions we put on the page.

If you are intrigued, read Maass's book. This chapter that I'm talking about has tons of examples and "Practical Tools" section that helps you workshop your own trouble spots so you can up the tension stakes in your own writing and create your own best-selling, page-turning blockbuster of a novel.