How to compactly explain secondary and tertiary characters without resorting to stereotypes?
Sure, I understand the characters, but that's because I've been thinking about them.
But how do I transfer that knowledge to the reader without taking the time and space to flesh them out further??
The standard answer is "stereotypes", because stereotypes are broad generalizations about humans, and without the ability to generalize we must start tabula rasa in every new situation, no matter how similar it is to situations that we are already familiar with. (More importantly, stereotypes have a basis in fact -- or at least reporting -- no matter how partial, one-sided and/or outdated they are.
But since stereotypes have been declared Evil, I need some other method of KT (Knowledge Transfer) about these characters.
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I kind of feel bad writing an answer since everything I really want to say has already been said here. But it has been said by several different people in multiple answers and comments. So I kind of have to write a readable summary? Also for the things mentioned in comments, they are not written in the correct format. Even the answers are bit... Saying the right things but not necessarily in the right way to match the question?
Anyway, the key point to your question is that you want to be space efficient. The way to do this is to not actually supply a real description. Instead you supply the key points of the character and trust for the reader to fill in the blanks and generate the actual description. Many answers here do this exact thing in one specific form or another. You can use them as examples.
You say you have a good mental image of the characters. Use that. (Generally the first step would be to get that image but we can skip.) Make small itemized lists of the key points of the character that make them the person they are. One or two sentences. Note the relative importance of the traits and how they are connected to each other. They might be due to same background detail or one might have lead to another. These are also details you want to convey to the reader, not just the traits themselves. Otherwise they will fill in the blanks in some random way.
Priority would be based on how central they are to the character and story relevance. If it makes a difference for story, it is important even if it is a minor detail of the character.
Then think about how the traits express themselves in practice in small ways that can be observed in the context of your story. These do not need to connect directly to the story, probably should not, but they need to be in the same general context. Same time, same place, same general circumstances.
Then as shown in the other answers use small vignettes in the path of the story to illustrate those traits. ("Use vignettes" would have been a valid answer?) The important part here is that you have to insert the context for those traits within the personality of the character. That means those connections and priorities I was talking about earlier.
Why is this important? Well, back in the "list making" stage I said that otherwise the reader will connect the dots in a random fashion. This is not actually true. They will actually fill in the blanks so they best match a stereotype they are familiar with. Readers will not make new characterizations for you if they can avoid it. So they will match the character to a stereotype unless you supply them the extra data on how the trait illustrated fits the actual character.
This is the exact thing you wanted to avoid and asked about, so the above paragraph, that can be summarized as "attach metadata" is the answer you wanted.
Earlier example in another answer mentioned showing somebody is depressed alcoholic. In such a case you'd insert a small observations such as, "he has been like this since..." or "this is why..." or "but despite being like this he still...". Something to make the trait connected and grounded to the character, not the stereotype.
This also means you can use the low priority traits that do not deserve their own vignette in the vignette for a connected higher priority trait.
In general, you should vignette in the order of priority and so that story relevant traits are familiar to the reader before they become story relevant.
Caveat: This is not intended to work as an an actual "how to" guide. I lack both competence and motivation to write something like that. But it should illustrate the main concept and answer your question?
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I feel that Cyn and Sara Costa have explained how to avoid using stereotypes in the design of your story. My answer is to explore how to avoid using stereotypes in your prose itself:
Don't tell me someone fits a stereotype, let me draw that conclusion myself.
My uncle is your stereotypical depressed alcoholic has-been. He was a total mess, sat in his chair. He looked no better than when I last saw him a week ago. He'd been watching the game earlier, obviously it had upset him. He was shouting and raving about how it unfair all was, that he'd have done so much better if he was in there.
vs
My uncle sat, the smell of half a dozen cans of beer on his breath - like always - wearing his old team jersey, which he'd had on the last time I saw him a week ago, with the same mustard stain on it, too. He'd been watching the game earlier, obviously it had upset him. He was shouting, "I coulda done it! If I was in there, I'd have done it fine!"
Both of those take roughly the same amount of "space", but while one draws on a stereotype, the other focuses on the character themselves.
A reader may not know what a 'stereotypical depressed alcoholic has-been' looks like. Maybe my vision of a particular stereotype is quite different to yours. Maybe it would summon the wrong mental image. They may have their place in culture, but stereotypes are an unreliable source of information at best.
The important part is to isolate what traits of a stereotype you want to use and use them. Maybe the uncle in my example is also a stereotypical opera singer and I want to mix that into his description as well? Suddenly the first description would feel odd, but the second description I could easily work in a mention of him having a large jaw and booming voice.
It must be said though, it depends on who your audience is. Maybe referring to a stereotype is the right thing for what you're writing, especially if you establish what that stereotype actually means beforehand.
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There is a difference between stereotypes and simply not fleshing a character out.
For example, your main character goes into a coffeeshop, orders, and sits down to read. At the next table are two women he works with. What are they talking about?
Mind you, you're not going to get into their heads. The narrator won't give background about them or tell their point of view. They may or may not speak to the MC (if they do, it is probably quite brief). The reader doesn't know their hopes and dreams, and doesn't care.
Some gender-based stereotypes could be that the women have secretarial/clerical positions, aren't really into the work, and their favorite conversation is gossip about other women they know or their husbands/boyfriends.
Some women (and some men!) have one or more of these characteristics, and that's okay. It's a stereotype when most of the women in your story fall into this or another trope, with or without some "girls who are not like the other girls." These aren't the only gender-based stereotypes. The women could be young, scheming professionals, who are gorgeous and fashionable. Just to name one of many possibilities.
Take a minute to think of them. In real life, what sort of women might sit together at a coffeehouse during lunch (or before or after work)? Of course, the possibilities here are endless. Choose any one of them. Maybe one is the owner of the company who is grooming her daughter to take over when she retires and they're talking about problems with a client. Perhaps they're analysts with cubicles next to each other and they're talking about taking their kids together to the upcoming county fair. Or they could work in the company cafeteria and go to the coffeehouse so they don't have to make their own coffee, thank you very much, and one is inviting the other to watch her race motorcycles that weekend.
It doesn't really matter what you choose because they're not important characters. They're background, like the coffeehouse. I didn't describe the place but you already know it's the type of coffeehouse with chairs and tables where people can spend time chatting or reading. Say I make a comment about the MC being glad that the pie of the day was peach, so he got a slice with his iced mocha. Now you know the place is local, not a chain, caters to the modern whim of different coffee choices (so not an old-fashioned diner), and, yes, it's probably late summer.
With characters it's the same thing. Choose a couple details and suddenly the reader has an image in her/his mind. (Whether it's the same image that's in your mind is not important.)
A way to do this with stereotypes is to make all the non-primary characters fit neatly into tropes and other expectations, then make the primary characters ones that don't fit the mold.
The better way is to see non-primary characters as the same diverse individuals people in real life are and throw in details to match. You don't need much for background characters, like the women at the next table. Secondary and tertiary characters will have names, descriptions, and roles in the MC's life. But they have their own lives and they don't just exist to further the MC. Write that in.
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Pick your stereotype. Use it. Break it.
Do you need a dizzy party girl? Great. She dresses like a dizzy party girl. You've heard her talk like a dizzy party girl. But you see her at lunch, alone, scribbling and thinking and scribbling; then she rolls her eyes and scratches a long line through it; just as her friend arrives.
"Hey, what are you working on?"
Brittney looked up. "Hey Gina. Nothing. I had an idea, but it won't work."
Gina spoke as she took her seat. "Well I'll turn that frown, upside down, because guess who came to see me yesterday?" She leaned in for emphasis, "Jeff Davis!"
"Oh my god!" Brittney said, grinning. "Serious? What did you tell him?"
The girls talk, they get up to leave, and you walk by the empty table, and spot the page of scribbles Brittney was first working on, with that final line drawn through it. All densely compact handwritten physics equations.
Now, you can say this is a trope, but it isn't a stereotype. Tropes are things that have been used multiple times in stories, but that doesn't make them instantly recognizable to the general public.
Stereotypes are easily recognizable, and the stereotype of the "dizzy party girl" does NOT include any expertise in the mathematics of quantum physics (or any other science); nor does the stereotype of the nerdy science girl include any elements of the frilly party girl.
So, even if you think my example above IS just switching to another trope; the prescription is the same: Be creative. Include a trait or characteristic that, in your own mind, just doesn't fit the stereotype you need for the role. In this case, being a party girl, and fashion girl, and gossipy girl, does not require being academically challenged or mathematically incompetent. Her choices for fun can be divorced from her professional choice.
IRL people are often born with natural talents, and they pursue those talents because they are fun (often fun because they are praised for being good at them), and that may become a profession or life-long hobby. But that talent doesn't have to be the only way they have fun; culture also determines that, and it isn't that difficult to separate the two things.
Pick your stereotype. Leave it recognizable, but break it. Take something central to the stereotype and invert it, or discard it, or add a disability -- She loves fashion, but she's color-blind, but also not embarrassed by that, because it is who she is.
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