Secondary Characters: Adding Depth, Conflict & Surprise to Scenes

“Too often we think of the secondary character as inconsequential, there to meet a plot need," says instructor Lori Ostlund. "When I write a secondary character, I want the reader to feel that they would be happy to follow that character home from the scene instead of the main character.”

Secondary characters can be the key to adding surprise, depth, and tension to scenes and the work overall, though not if we writers are unwilling to see them as characters in their own right. In this class, we will talk about ways to build more interesting secondary characters, study common relationship types, and do exercises aimed at creating more dynamic interactions between characters by thinking from the perspective of the secondary character.

In addition to looking at examples from novels and short stories, we will focus on writing exercises aimed at developing secondary characters with an emphasis on dialogue and actions that create tension and surprise and that nudge other characters into conflict, revelation, and action. We will workshop these exercises in class.

Lori says, “My goal is for students to leave the class with a new way of thinking about secondary characters, both as a means of jumpstarting revision on old projects and approaching new projects from a different angle.”