Though not commonly spoken or written about, supporting characters are as integral to your book as the main characters are. Even though their role is not central to the plot, supporting characters make the work complete. However, creating secondary characters is not as easy as it seems. Since the focus is usually on the primary characters in the work, many authors ignore their supporting characters which eventually leads to the failure of the whole story. Here are a few tips on how to create and develop them.

Avoid the trap of introducing too many characters

Fewer characters have the following advantages:

There is more space in your story for them to feel whole. The more characters you have, the more difficult it will be to create their backgrounds that will suit the story. When secondary characters are few, you can include snippets of their backgrounds, where they come from, how was their childhood, what is their profession…anything that is relevant to what you are writing about.

The reader will easily remember the characters and distinguish one from another. In most cases, it is hard to forget the heroes in the work. It is the secondary characters that many readers struggle to remember. To avoid this issue, use as few supporting characters as necessary.

It is challenging to establish each character’s voice in a way that they will be recognizable to the reader. Merging different perspectives from different characters to form one cohesive point of view is difficult to get right. With too many characters having an opinion, you are most likely going to get one person’s perspective wrong, which will make your story confusing.

You can easily control the pace of your plot with fewer characters. When you have too many supporting characters whose motives you must explain and whose actions you must cover, the pace of the work slows down which makes the work boring. With fewer characters, however, in the beginning, you can introduce them and in the following chapters concentrate on telling the story.

You will more likely carry each supporting character’s role to the end. Ever read a book only to notice a significant character in the work has been dropped without a clear reason? Too many characters will mean you will have to drop some along the way. This is okay if their role is only linked to one scene or they are intended to appear only briefly. However, if the trend is repeated continually, the reader - who by now may have a connection with a character’s role - will lose interest in the story.

Unless you have a very good reason to include many supporting characters, it is always wise to keep their numbers as low as you can. It will be easy for you to write your book and easier for the reader to read your work. When executed well, multiple characters can add to the work especially if they have similar stories to tell. Otherwise, just include a few of them.