by Liz Johnson, @lizjohnsonbooks

Over the last few months, I’ve shared several posts about creating characters that come to life. But that’s not just for your main characters. Secondary characters play an important role in novels too, so don’t ostracize them to the land of cardboard cutouts and paper dolls. Give them dimension and they will enhance your hero’s journey. And your book at the same time.

Here are five tips for creating secondary characters that shine.

1. Give them at least one defining characteristic or quirk and reveal it the first time we meet them. In Charles Martin’s When Cricket’s Cry, the town doctor always has candy in his pockets. All the kids know this, and when they see him, they run to get a treat.

Or in the middle-grade novel Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead, Bennie, the man who owns the corner store, always counts the change back to his customers. When the protagonist gives Bennie a dollar for a seventy-five cent candy, Bennie counts back “a nickel makes eighty, a dime ninety, and another dime is one dollar.” Think about how unique that is in this day and age of speedy checkout lanes. This shows the reader who Bennie is and what’s important to him. He’s cautious. He’s careful. He’s never trying to rush someone out of his store.

Sometimes that defining characteristic is as simple as a character’s name. Another of the secondary characters in When Cricket’s Cry is named Termitus—and folks call him Termite. The author never has to remind us who this character is. Termite is exactly the kind of teen you’d imagine from his name, and it’s an absolutely defining characteristic.

2. Give them a goal. Kurt Vonnegut said, “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” The secondary character’s goal is just that. Secondary. But a waitress who’s in a hurry to end her shift and is pushing your main characters to hurry up and finish their meal adds tension to what could be an otherwise lackluster lunch scene.

3. Give them some influence. A secondary character’s motives will push them toward their own goals, but those choices can influence the main character. For example, in the Harry Potter series, Harry is clearly the main character. And Hermione, while important, is a secondary character. But she wields quite a bit of influence. In the third book, her decision (motivated by her desire to excel in her studies) to use a time-turner to take extra classes presents Harry with a decision that he might not have otherwise had. Without Hermione’s help, he couldn’t have gone back in time to rescue Sirius Black. Her choice affects Harry’s options. On the other hand, a secondary character’s motives might be in direct conflict with the hero’s. This adds tension and conflict to the journey.
4. Give them a place to call home. It’s easy for secondary characters to pop up all over the place, but you can help your readers get to know them by establishing a context in which they interact with the main characters. Is your secondary character a work friend? If so, they might not pop up at the hero’s family reunion. Keep work friends at work. If your heroine works in downtown and lives on the other side of the city, her neighbor probably isn’t going to show up at the food truck parked outside her office.
5. Give them flaws. No one wants a know-it-all preaching in the story. Sure a secondary character can be a voice of truth in the midst of the hero’s most turbulent times, but make sure the reader sees the other character has flaws, or they’ll want to forget him.

When you incorporate these into your secondary characters, you’ll make them more interesting and memorable to your reader. And often secondary characters show up again later in a series and become reader favorites. So give your secondary characters some life and let them help make your stories shine.

A Sparkle of Silver

Ninety years ago, Millie Sullivan’s great-grandmother was a guest at banker Howard Dawkins’ palatial estate on the shore of St. Simons Island, Georgia. Now, Millie plays a 1920s-era guest during tours of the same manor. But when her grandmother suggests that there is a lost diary containing the location of a hidden treasure on the estate, along with the true identity of Millie’s great-grandfather, Millie sets out to find the truth of her heritage–and the fortune that might be hers.

When security guard Ben Thornton discovers her snooping in the estate’s private library, he threatens to have her fired. But her story seems almost too ludicrous to be fiction, and her offer to split the treasure is too tempting to pass up . . .

By day Liz Johnson is a marketing manager. She makes time to write late at night—that’s when she thinks best anyway. Liz is the author of more than a dozen novels, a New York Times bestselling novella, and a handful of short stories. She’s a Christy Award finalist and a two-time ACFW Carol Award finalist. She makes her home in Phoenix, Arizona, where she enjoys exploring local music, theater, and doting on her nieces and nephews. She writes stories of true love filled with heart, humor, and happily ever afters.