I have noticed I am sort of an anomaly when it comes to reading. I hate main characters. It’s true. Very rarely do I find a story I enjoy AND like the main character. This must seem rather strange coming from the girl who swallows books like they’re candy, but I find most main characters rather annoying. Now I know, I know, without the main character, or characters, I wouldn’t have a story to follow. There isn’t a plot without the MC. You see, when I read, I make start a story because of the plight of the MC, but I <strong>continue </strong>reading because of the supporting characters.
Let me ramble off a few examples:
I think I have made it quite clear that I love Harry Potter. I use JK Rowling as a reference for…well, nearly everything writing related. I’m the epitome of a fan girl. But if I may be quite honest (and I am 99% of the time), if I had read Harry Potter and there was little interaction with Ron, Hermione, or even Neville, Professor McGonagall, and Nearly Headless Nick, I would have hated the stories. To me, Harry as a character is whiny, annoying, and pretty much a coward. Harry went through a lot in the seven books, but without those supporting characters, I wouldn’t have cared if he saved the world or not. What would he have even fought for? Fighting for the sake of being a good character is just not real. But hey, what do I know? I like evil.
Remember in Deathly Hallows when everyone complained that the trio spent too much time in the woods and it was dull and blah blah blah complaint complaint? Personally, I think it was because there weren’t any supporting characters to drive that part of the story along any faster. Readers became accustomed to the hustle and bustle of Hogwarts with different students, their different personalities filling each page, that they felt the trio on their own was quite a boring shift (at least subconsciously).
The supporting characters are why Harry Potter succeeded in the first place. If you asked a group of 20 different HP fans, “Who is your favorite character?”, I’m sure most would answer differently. (Mine is Professor McGonagall fyi.) By having a distinct group of minor characters, you allow more characters with whom your reader can relate. <img class=”alignright” title=”McGonagall is badass. Trelawny cracks my shit up too. But in a different kinda way. ” src=”http://mugglemeetswizard.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/mcgonagall_trelawny.jpg” alt=”” width=”300” height=”209” />
Supporting characters are my bread and butter in stories. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons I couldn’t get through Twilight (among other things). I know it was a love story about a girl and her marble statue, but I couldn’t relate to either of the main characters. There was zero connection for me. Which I usually try to push past because as I’ve stated, I didn’t much care for Harry either. (Yea, yea, poor boy living with his cruel family, lalala. Give me some Malfoy interaction!) Despite the horrible MCs in Twilight, I tried. I really tried, but there was nothing there for me. The minor characters, the other vampires and classmates, were just too generic. It was like they were last minute additions to the story because B-Swan couldn’t go to a school with ONLY I-think-you-smell-yummy-boy.
I recently read a book that had almost everything I want out of a story – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you do. This is the kind of book that isn’t a shining stand out of everything great about literature. Will it be a classic? Probably not. But for me, it does everything right. When it ended, I didn’t *want* it to end. I wanted to curl up with all of the characters and be their best friends too. As both a reader and a writer, when you can feel that connected to the characters, both and big and small, I think you’ve achieved something.