Your main characters, your hero(es) and/or heroine(s), are unique and special, one of a kind creations. They dance and sing on the page, are fascinating beings you’d love to watch simply drink coffee.
Your secondary characters are…well…secondary. They’re faded backdrops to your main characters. They all act, look, speak similarly.
But who cares, right? They’re secondary characters.
Your readers care. I receive more messages and email from readers about my secondary characters than my main characters. Readers want a certain secondary character’s story to be next. They care about them.
And if you need a vivid example of why creating diverse secondary characters is important, watch The Riot Club. The Riot Club is a movie about an elite club at Oxford. The members come from wealth. They’re all male. They all look and act similarly. They are so similar; a secondary character remarks that he can’t tell them apart.
They are CONSCIOUSLY the same. Old members vote in new members who could be their clones. Diversity is bad. That’s the social commentary in The Riot Club.
This sameness makes the movie as confusing as hell. Of course, every member of The Riot Club is different on the inside but, because they’re so similar on the outside, I spent most of the movie not knowing which character was which. It was distracting, annoying, frustrating, and it drew my attention away from the story.
This is what your readers experience if you don’t make your secondary characters unique. This isn’t merely physical uniqueness (though that is nice too… and necessary for realism if your characters are living in today’s world). I write cyborgs. Many of these manufactured males come from the same batch. They’re very similar physically but they have different personalities. They have different ways of speaking. They use different words and actions.
Yes, secondary characters shouldn’t overshadow the main characters. If they do, reduce their time on the page. But they should be interesting and different.
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Crash And Burn
Crash was manufactured to be one of the best warriors in the universe. The cyborg has spent many human lifespans fighting the enemy. But, unlike his battle-loving brethren, he doesn’t enjoy killing. When he escapes the Humanoid Alliance, he vows to never end another life.
Then he meets Safyre, an infuriating human female, and he considers breaking his vow.
Safyre will do anything to save her friend, the being she loves like a sister. She’ll ravish a huge hunky cyborg, kiss his best friend, and invoke scorching hot desires the male never realized he could feel. Dark soulful eyes, a quick wit, and a tempestuous passion won’t divert her from her mission.
Love, and a planet-destroying weapon, however, might stop her permanently.
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