Why you like your side characters better than your hero

No offense to your protagonist, of course.

You’re in the middle of writing a draft, and you suddenly realize you’re obsessed with one (or two, or seven) of your side characters. At first, that makes drafting more fun—you can’t wait to get to their scenes! But then you start to realize you like them more than your hero. In fact, maybe your story would be better off from their POV. Pretty soon, you’re questioning everything.

I’ve seen this happen a lot in my writing workshops! Here’s how it usually plays out:

The story starts in one POV. The catalyst happens. The protagonist moved into act two, into a new world (literally or emotionally or metaphorically or whatever). They meet the B story characters. A few fun scenes commence.

Then suddenly there’s a scene from the POV from one of those side characters. It’s usually entirely backstory. Here is the tale of this fellow’s fascinating life up to now. We go back to the protagonist’s POV, action happens...whoops, here we are in another side character’s POV! This time it’s a scene in which the protagonist isn’t even present, and honestly it doesn’t move the plot forward much, but the side character does something super clever and funny. Back to the protagonist and the main plot—ah, here’s another POV! This time we head hop between two more side characters. They have a conversation and the dialogue is fantastic. And on it goes, with the writer unable to stop herself from darting back over to those shiny, fascinating side characters.

Every scene in your story needs to serve the story, right? We can’t go off on tangents in our novels because readers rarely want to follow. So you might think I tell my students to either scrap those scenes or find a way to rewrite them in the protagonist’s POV and make it relevant to the plot.

But I don’t. 

Why? Because more often than not, those side character scenes are the student’s best writing. Because they’re fascinated by the character, or this thing that character does, or this amazing argument between two other characters with all this tension, and they’ve just gotta write it. 

That feeling? The one that borders on possession? That’s writer goals. It’s passion. It’s fun. And those scenes are story gold. Right? So why would I ask them to cut that stuff?

Here’s what’s really going on.

When most writers get an idea for a book, the idea usually falls into one of three categories:

• a character with a specific need or issue

• a premise or specific type of conflict

• a “what if” question

I’ll use a few of my novels as an example to illustrate each of these. In OLIVE AND THE BACKSTAGE GHOST, my idea was “there’s this girl who loves singing but can’t find her voice thanks to her unbearably controlling stage mom.” In THE KAT SINCLAIR FILES, my idea was “a kid who does NOT believe in ghosts joins a ghost hunters TV show and experiences real paranormal stuff.” In SPELL & SPINDLE, my idea was “what if marionettes could steal children’s souls and become real?” In other words, I had a character idea, a plot idea, and a world idea. 

More often than not, when I see writers run into this side character issue, they didn’t start out with a character idea. They had a plot or a world idea. And just to be clear, not one of those three are better than the others. Story ideas come to us in different ways, and no matter which kind of idea you have, you can and should eventually develop your character, your plot, AND your world. I’m just talking about the entry point. 

And that brings me to the root of this problem. Why do you want to spend more time with your side characters than your protagonist? This is gonna sting. But you need to hear it. 

It’s because your protagonist is a Mary Sue. 

I don’t mean your protagonist is flawless and annoyingly perfect and everyone in the story instantly falls in love with them—no. When I say Mary Sue, I mean this character is a self-insertion. I know your protagonist is probably not YOU. Maybe a better way to put it is this: your protagonist is a vehicle through which you are exploring this idea. If you had a premise/plot idea, you’re attempting to steer this protagonist down that road. If you had a what if/world idea, you’re driving her around and scoping the place out. 

I have done this before, and the folder full of unfinished manuscripts on my desktop is proof. And I’m sure you, like me, did your due diligence. You gave the protagonist a want and a need and a few good flaws. But let’s face it, she was never your story’s spark.

Now, that side character over there? The one with the backstory you felt a compulsion to write, or whose personality makes you want her to be in every single scene, or whose voice is just coming to you way way more strongly than your protagonist’s ever did? That’s something you need to pay attention to. You had the premise idea or the world idea. You explored it—and you found THIS character.

Maybe they need to be the MAIN character. 

Now, I do need to clarify one thing. Multi-POV novels exist and are great and there is no rule that you MUST tell your story from one POV. But! Every character who gets a perspective in a multi-POV novel must have a complete arc that justifies that POV’s existence. A common problem I’ve seen is new writers who jump right into a seven-POV book even though there is clearly one main character; they just haven’t yet developed the skills to tell the story solely through that POV. The protagonist meets this B story character and the reader needs to know their backstory but instead of weaving it in through dialogue, showing it through character traits, through actions, through details and hints and perhaps the hardest thing to do of all, trusting your reader to read between the lines and fill in the gaps, they just head hop on over, pitch a tent in that guy’s brain for a few pages and let him ramble. 

That’s not necessarily an indication that the writer needs to rewrite the story from that guy’s POV. It just means they need to practice working that kind of information into their story more naturally. 

But when you find yourself plodding or rushing through scenes from your protagonist'’s POV, while the scenes with that side character absolutely sparkle and you find the most joy in writing THAT? That tells me something different. To me, it suggests that after all that driving around and exploring, you’ve just found the heart of the story you’re trying to tell. 

The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every other Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every other Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle