How Much Focus to Give a Supporting Character?
Asked by: Paul Berry
What makes a good supporting character?
A well-written supporting character will have a character arc, a strong point of view, and clear personality traits. In many cases they will be the types of characters a reader might recognize from their own life and—like main characters—they will grow and change over the course of the storyline.
What is considered a supporting character?
A supporting character is a character in a narrative that is not the focus of the primary storyline, but is important to the plot/protagonist, and appears or is mentioned in the story enough to be more than just a minor character or a cameo appearance.
How do you come up with good side characters?
Here are three ways to develop supporting characters.
- Give Supporting Characters Independent Goals. …
- Focus on Speech Patterns of Your Supporting Characters. …
- Let Your Supporting Characters Represent Some Aspect of the Story.
Can a supporting character be a protagonist?
Some writers like to mix it up by choosing someone that does not have the central role in the story and tell the story from their perspective. This is the Supporting Protagonist: someone who would normally be a secondary character by conventions of the genre but is actually the main character in the story.
Can an antagonist be a supporting character?
Antagonizers aren’t always necessarily bad guys. Yes, you can use them in the form of henchmen and such, but they can often just provide a way to anger, alienate, estrange, annoy, provoke, offend, aggravate, irritate, rile, or vex the protagonist in any way, shape, or form.
What is the most important character called?
Protagonist
Protagonist: The main character of the story is the protagonist.
How many supporting characters are in a novel?
A good rule of thumb might be: Include as many characters as needed to tell the story and evoke the proper style and scope—and no more. For intimate novels, this number might be as small as 2-5 secondary characters, and for broader stories, this number might be 20-30.
Is a deuteragonist a side character?
The deuteragonist is the secondary character, right behind the protagonist in importance. The deuteragonist may be on the protagonist’s side: for example, a love interest or sidekick. Or the deuteragonist can be a villain, like the protagonist’s main rival. The deuteragonist could also be a neutral character.
Who supports protagonist?
The deuteragonist often acts as a constant companion to the protagonist or someone who continues actively aiding a protagonist. The deuteragonist may switch between supporting and opposing the protagonist, depending on their own conflict or plot.
What is the purpose of a deuteragonist?
The deuteragonist often serves as a foil character to the protagonist, sharing some similar qualities and embodying certain very different ones in order to highlight the traits of each (for instance, an anti-hero protagonist may have a very heroic deuteragonist to highlight the differences of each character).
Is Sasuke a side character?
Once creating Sasuke’s character, Kishimoto decided to use him as a protagonist rather than supporting character in order to start his development at the same time as Naruto.
What is the fourth protagonist called?
Protagonist means “one who plays the first part, chief actor”, and is the main character of the story. The Deuteragonist is the second actor or the second most important actor in the narrative, Tritagonist is the third actor, Tetartagonist is the fourth actor, Pentagonist is the fifth actor, and so on.
What is a Tetragonist?
°A leading person in a contest; a principal performer.
What is a tritagonist?
Definition of tritagonist
: the actor taking the part of third importance in a play (as in the ancient Greek theater) — compare deuteragonist, protagonist.
Can a deuteragonist be an antagonist?
Deuteragonists can also serve as the antagonist who opposes the main character, or they can be a neutral party. While sidekicks, villains, and other archetypes can appear as a secondary main character, they’re not all deuteragonists by default.
Is Hermione a tritagonist?
Hermione Jean Granger is the tritagonist of the Harry Potter franchise and the film series of the same name.
Can there be multiple deuteragonists?
Another name for the deuteragonist is a “window character”, and there can be more than one. A window character is a pretty self-explanatory concept.
What is the love interest of the protagonist called?
The antagonist
Some of these roles can overlap. A deuteragonist might be the MC’s confidante. The antagonist might be their foil. Or the antagonist might eventually become the protagonist’s love interest!
What are the 4 types of characters?
The 4 Main Characters As Literary Devices
- The Protagonist.
- The Antagonist.
- The Confidant.
- The Love Interest.
What are the 4 types of characters in literature?
If you love to read literature, especially fiction stories and novels of if you are an aspiring fiction writer, you would be knowing about some basic character types, i.e. a hero (protagonist), opposite to a hero (antagonist), a changing character (dynamic) and a non-changing character (static or flat).
What are the 6 types of characters?
The different types of characters include protagonists, antagonists, dynamic, static, round, flat, and stock.
What are the 5 methods of characterization?
An acronym, PAIRS, can help you recall the five methods of characterization: physical description, action, inner thoughts, reactions, and speech. Physical description – the character’s physical appearance is described.
How do you develop a character?
8 Tips for Character Development
- Establish a character’s motivations and goals. …
- Choose a voice. …
- Do a slow reveal. …
- Create conflict. …
- Give important characters a backstory. …
- Describe a character’s personality in familiar terms. …
- Paint a physical picture of your characters. …
- Develop secondary characters.