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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26018
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26018
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Are you writing this in first person? The choice of first person is the cause of many writing woes because it is a POV that essentially puts the writer in a box. If you are writing first person and your protagonist is withdrawn and friendless, any people she meets are going to be two dimensional to her, and thus two dimensional to the reader as well, since the reader can only see them through her eyes.

Now, this might be a legitimate way to tell her story. The characters do not become three dimensional to us until she reaches some epiphany and they become three dimensional to her.

But if that is not what you want to do, then write in the third person. The difficulty goes away at once because not you can turn the narrator's focus, and thus the reader's attention, to the secondary characters and make them as lively and well rounded as you like.

Half the help-I'm-stuck questions on this site come down to the author having made choices about POV that don't fit with the story they are trying to tell, so I am guessing that is the case here too. If not, please clarify your question and I will update the answer accordingly.

Original score: 3