RACHEL BRADY

No Sloppy Seconds: Write a Purposeful Supporting Cast

RACHEL BRADY lives in Houston, where she works as an engineer at NASA. Her interests include health and fitness, acoustic guitar, and books of all I kinds. Final Approach and Dead Lift are the first two installments in her Emily Locke mystery series. Dead Lift was nominated for a Watson, an award presented for the best sidekick in a mystery.

 

 

Selecting the cast for your mystery or suspense novel is no trifling thing. Everybody agrees that it’s important to have a well-formed, unique protagonist who is capable of carrying your story. And it’s equally important to have well-formed, unique secondary characters. After all, these are the guys who will support your protagonist—or try to kill him. What good is the best hero in the world if there is nobody sinister or special enough to challenge his abilities?

I’m sure you can name someone important who helped you become the person you are today. If pressed, you might also be able to identify an individual who, in some way or another, tried to hold you back. There were certainly many people in between—folks who came in and out of your life without leaving a lasting impression one way or the other.

The pace required for mystery and suspense novels doesn’t tolerate the inclusion of characters that fall into this last class. That leaves two main groups into which our supporting characters must fall. Secondary characters in your novel will either (1) help your protagonist or (2) hinder her. The ways in which this happens will not always be obvious to your readers, and that’s okay. But you, the writer, must be clear about why each of your supporting characters gets the honor of being on your page.

Consider the people who bring out the best in you. Who makes you laugh? Calms or comforts you? Refocuses you? Choose one name. This is the person I’ll call your Helper character.

Now think about folks who really push your buttons—the backhanded-compliment-giver, the overbearing know-it-all, or the consummately together soccer mom who unwittingly makes you feel inadequate when she simply enters a room. Got a name? That’s your Inhibitor.

Imagine pulling into your driveway one evening, exhausted and stressed, muddy and wet, and for kicks, starving, too. A familiar car is waiting there.

How do you feel if the car belongs to your Helper? Contrast that with your reaction if the car belongs to your Inhibitor.

If we let them, the people we encounter every day can profoundly influence our outlook, mood, perspective, productivity, and ideas. It’s exactly the same way for our protagonists. We can mess with them or throw them a lifeline simply by who we choose to put in the driveway.

Sometimes an antagonist will be disguised as a good guy, sometimes the reverse. A single character—take a love interest, for example—may serve both roles at various times, depending on what happens in the scene. The important thing to remember is that a good supporting cast member always does something to help or hinder your protagonist. Ambivalence is not allowed.

Fashion designers say, “Less is more.” Similarly, a manuscript will be tighter if every supporting player serves to aid or divert your sleuth in some way, whether physically, intellectually, emotionally, or otherwise. Think about your cast in terms of less is more. If a character isn’t moving the case forward or slowing it down, or boosting your protagonist or demoralizing him, consider deleting that role or combining it with another, more useful character. In this way, everyone on your pages will count.

Supporting characters don’t always help or hinder on purpose. A sick child has no idea that his stomach flu is severely limiting his single dad’s freedom to investigate a crime. Conversely, a random word of encouragement from an aunt or a sister could be the boost your amateur sleuth needs to shine up her magnifying glass and try again. These players may not be integral to your plot, but they should influence your protagonist in some fundamentally meaningful way, even if your main character doesn’t recognize it. In every scene, ask yourself about the reason for the exchange or confrontation.

A main character should come away from every scene a little bit changed from the way she went into it. This could be a big external change, like interviewing someone and finding a clue or a small internal change, like feeling better or worse about her progress on a case. But if nothing has improved or grown worse for your protagonist, you probably don’t need the scene, and you may not need the secondary character.

Like real people, secondary characters have their own agendas. Their motivations and goals drive their actions and their interactions with your main character. Ask yourself what each of your secondary characters wants in every scene. Your protagonist obviously has an agenda, too. When conflict arises, he’ll have to be resourceful and creative to affect the outcome he wants.

EXERCISE

1. Identify your protagonist’s main Helper and main Inhibitor. Go back to the driveway scenario you imagined earlier. Let your frazzled, depleted protagonist take your place. Write dialogue for each scenario, first for the case in which the Helper is waiting, then for the Inhibitor. Notice how your sleuth’s mood and responses change depending on who steps out of the car.

Secondary characters are helpful pacers. When you need to increase tension and raise the stakes, bring in the characters who present the biggest roadblocks. Make things miserable for your protagonist. When it’s time for your sleuth to decompress and explore new clues, give him a Helper, a sounding board to offer fresh ideas and play devil’s advocate in a nonthreatening way.

2. Few things confuse us more than unexpected behavior. Write a scene in which your character’s main Helper inexplicably behaves in a way that slows your sleuth down. Write a page in which his Inhibitor strangely lends him a hand.

Why did these secondary characters do those things?

Scenarios like these, in which things don’t happen in an expected way, present all sorts of opportunities for you, the writer. Unexpected behavior leaves a story ripe for misdirection and misunderstanding, two critical ingredients in mystery and suspense.