When it comes to stories, the more bizarre and interesting a character is, chances are the more I’m going to like them. Let’s look at a couple where the secondary characters sometimes greatly outshine the primary protagonists.
JK Rowling
Not only gifted at creating a sustainable and pretty believable magical world, what I think Rowling’s greatest gift is creating characters that readers genuinely care about. I think this goes doubly so for all the secondary characters that she creates.
Harry- Well the books are about him, and while I do feel bad that he’s an orphan and has to live with the horrible Dursleys, when it comes to his character I just don’t really care about him. In fact in one of the books I downright despised him. I’m not certain which one it is, but its the one where he’s the most angst ridden and annoying. I understand why he’s a main character and it definitely works for the character, but my question is why? His whole story is about how incredible he is at everything without even trying and how he has dead parents. Revenge may or may not be involved. The strongest part of Harry’s story, no doubt, is the incredible friends he makes along the way.
Hermoine- She’s smart and basically has to do all the intellectual heavy lifting of the three. That’s about it.
Ron- Not sure what he’s really good for…that being said he’s my favorite of the three.
What I’m trying to get at is that I think in pursuit of creating our protagonist (more than likely the hero of the story), we end of stripping them bare of any quirkiness, oddity, or anything deviating from the shining hero. Now in my villain series I’ve already talked about how many (many, many) writers do this with their antagonist. Just create a character that has no good in their heart, who seeks immortality or ultimate power, and will basically destroy anything and everything to get it. Sometimes they just want to destroy the world for the hell of it.
Now let’s take a moment to look at Harry Potter’s secondary characters, which are numerous and just about all of them are incredibly rich in character. In fact I don’t think descriptions or reasons are even necessary.
Snape
Dumbledore
Umbridge
Hagrid
Luna Lovegood
Mad eye Moody
Peter Pettigrew
Lockheart
Sirius Black
The list of endearing characters goes on and on. Now while I think Harry Potter is obviously integral to the story (hence his name being the title for the series), I would argue that it is really the secondary characters that make the story. Let me rephrase that, it is the secondary characters and their relationship with Harry that makes the story.
Now I’m not chastising those that make heroes who are full of goodness and who seem to match the status quo, because I’d be a hypocrite for saying that. Perhaps it’s hard to create a protagonist that is too different from the mold we know as the hero. Of course on the other hand people have made stories involving off characters that would have usually been saved for a supporting role. For example:
Jack Sparrow- A brimming example of a secondary character taking the reigns of the leading man. He’s goofy, delusional, hardly trust worthy, but also absolutely hilarious and honestly makes the movie.
Now how did they manage to pull that off? I suppose one answer is that he’s not the hero, he’s more the antihero. If that’s so I’d like to pose another question. Can the antihero exist with only themself? For all of Captain Jack’s craziness he has the incredibly dull Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan. In this story they take the role of the hero who is uhphasing and emotionally solid (at least mostly). So the writers give the whole switcharoo and the secondary characters take the role of the hero and the primary character takes the role of the wild card.
But even as I write this I can think of a story where there doesn’t seem to be a hero at all. In fact just about every character is either evil or an almost psychotic antihero. I would of course be talking about Alucard from the anime Hellsing.
Alucard...does he have any redeeming qualities other than he's unstoppable and a nut?!
Hmmm. This has got me thinking. And I’m still not very sure to what the answer is. Perhaps its all based off the individual story and the ability of the writer to craft a character that is off kilter yet lovable enough. I’ll try to give this more thought and see what else I can come up with.
