More Than a Sidekick

4 tips for crafting side characters that feel alive

Sidekicks. Best friends. Mentors. Innocent bystanders. Redshirts. Random citizens in desperate need of saving. These are the people who populate the pages of our stories, filling our main characters’ worlds, interacting with them, supporting them, and sometimes seeming to exist just to push their stories forward.

To provide the humorous banter. To drop the snappy quip when all hope feels lost. To be the listening ear and the friend who’s always there and the character who conceals their bloody wound beneath their jacket until the battle is over so readers know what it costs. (Honestly, I’m always a sucker for that particular reveal.)

But when it comes to writing our supporting cast, if we’re not careful, they can start to feel like puppets tugged on strings, pulled here and there to serve the main character’s whims, which makes them feel less like real people and more like NPCs running in place until the real player makes a move.

Truly memorable side characters, however, feel like they have a life and purpose of their own, and today we’re going to dive into some tips for writing side characters who feel as real and authentically human as the main characters they interact with.

Tip #1: Give them a memorable entry into the story

It’s no secret that most of the story time goes to the main character, which makes every moment that a side character spends on the page invaluable for establishing who they are and what they care about, and I’d argue that their initial entrance is the most important of all.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I do just generally love character entrances. It’s like a candid snapshot where you catch a character in motion, giving readers a few choice details that help them to piece together who this character is and what they were about prior to the moment the story caught up with them. When it comes to side characters in particular, I love to think of their first introduction as providing readers with a quintessential snapshot of their character—from costume, to props, to dialogue, to their currently occupying activity.

With that in mind, it can helpful to intentionally plan their introduction to the story to reveal what’s most important about them to readers. Or, at the very least, to give them an interesting or memorable entry that highlights their unique personality.

Tip #2: Give them goals and dreams of their own

If I could leave you with only one tip for writing side characters, this would be it. Because at the end of the day, no side character is aware that they’re a side character in someone else’s story. From their point of view, they don’t exist to support the main character. Their purpose (in their mind) isn’t to aid or hinder the main character’s quest to reach their goals. Their internal lives don’t revolve around the main character. They’re not spending every moment of the story-day thinking about the main character’s problems, fully primed to deliver that helpful bit of advice or that snappy quip or that bit of humor for comic relief at a moment’s notice.

That means that side characters should have their own priorities and motivations too. They should have their own strengths and weaknesses. Their own problems and setbacks.

They should have their own dreams and aspirations—and even better if those aspirations sometimes bring them into conflict with the main character because their priorities are at odds.

Not only does this apply to your side character’s life goals but also to what’s driving them in each scene. Giving them objectives they’re trying to accomplish can contribute to the sense that they’re living, breathing human beings who aren’t just waiting to spring into action when the main character needs them.

Ultimately, of course, the main character’s goals matter most to the story (that is why they’re the main character, after all), but surrounding them with fully developed side characters can add authentic relational conflict to the story, up the sense of challenge your main character has to face, and ultimately make your story feel grounded in reality.

Tip #3: Let them own their voice and perspective

Don’t be afraid to let your side characters disagree with your main character, hold to a wildly different philosophy of life, or even to “get it right” while your main character “gets it wrong.” If everyone instantly agrees with your main character and bows to their every whim, there’s a chance you’ve actually written a villain and everyone is afraid of them. (Just kidding.) But in reality, human beings are infinitely complex, and if we all thought, chose, and acted the same, the world would be a far less vibrant place.

So let your side characters voice dissenting opinions. Let them challenge the main character’s ideas, recognize your main characters’ flaws, or be the voice of truth that challenges a false belief. And you can take it beyond the words they speak to the big picture their actions help create on the page. Your side character might provide an inspiring contrast for the main character, serving as an example of what they could become as they embark on their journey of change. Or your side character might provide a distorted reflection of your main character, like a fun house mirror exaggerating their flaws and acting as a cautionary tale of where they might end up.

Tip #4: Know what they were doing before they stepped on scene

Just like your main character, your side character has a life that they’re living off the page, both before the story starts and in between the scenes readers see. That means their relationships may have history (good and bad), they may have a past the main character might not know about, and they’re dealing with the usual roller coaster ups and downs of normal life even when you’re not throwing plot problems at them on the page.

Back in my community theater days, we were given one piece of advice that I feel like carries over powerfully to writing: we were encouraged to make sure we knew what our characters had been doing the moment before they emerged from the wings so we could enter with the right intention to create the illusion for the audience. And that’s something I try to think about every time a new character enters a scene I’m writing.

What were they doing before this moment? Who were they with? Where were they going? What do they think they’re trying to accomplish? Only then can I let the needs of the scene sweep them away.

Remember, at the end of the day, your side characters don’t picture themselves as the ensemble or supporting cast but as the star.

And while that can lead to side characters who burst onto the page with true main character energy and try to claim center stage (and yes, sometimes you have to haul them off with a shepherd’s crook and promise them their own spinoff), the more you let your side characters function as fully realized human beings, the more your story can start to feel three-dimensional.