Do all main characters require equal development?
I have been doing some work on character development for my novel. I found that though I can write pages about the main character, other characters, who have an important role and will be there for most of the story(ie, they are not minor characters), only get a small paragraph.
So my question is: Other than the hero, should I do some work trying to develop these other characters as well? At the moment, they are just 2D figures, with little personality.
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I would have to say that the extent to which you develop your characters determines how "main" a character actually is. Even if a character with less exposition is more important to the plot, a character with more exposition is likely to be easier to identify with, and thus viewed as a main character.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/3065. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Complex, well-rounded characters can add a lot to a story; on the other hand, lots of good stories manage without them.
What you want to avoid is characters that feel flat, unbelievable and/or cliche. That's because if the reader feels that way about a character, he feels that the story is false, artificially constructed. The reader will often react in one or both of the following ways:
- "Sheesh, that character makes no sense - a real person would never act that way!"
- "Oh, yawn - it's another by-the-numbers (choose one: Romantic Love Interest/Kooky Friend/Vulnerable ArchVillain/etc./etc.)."
If your writing isn't outright bad (which, hey, it might be), then simple characters might work quite well for a lot of types of books. The rule of thumb is, the more central character, personality, and relationships are to the book - the more crucial it is for the characters to be complex and detailed. In other words, your character work needs to be strong enough to bear the weight you're going to put on it - you can't let it be less; it doesn't have to be more.
For example, you can't have a deep exploration of your protagonist's soul and his relationship with his dysfunctional family, if you portray him as being deep and complex, and the family as a bunch of twits. It doesn't match up - and calling the reader's attention to the depth of your protagonist's character will have them looking for the same in the rest of the cast. It'd be like watching a fight between Dostoyevsky and Bugs Bunny.
But even when you can manage without them, having more complex characters is a major plus. It contributes to a sense of depth and realism; it avoids not only bald cliches but also the familiar and not-terribly-interesting; it earns more reader involvement and investment. Of course, this too can be taken too far - you don't want to swamp your story with irrelevant details, or lose reader interest in the protagonist because you're trying to devote attention to a bunch of characters who really aren't very central.
The concerns I've laid out here are, IMHO, good ones to guide you when developing and portraying characters; from here, what you need to do is be aware of these different concerns and considerations, and find a good balance them that works well for your characters and story.
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