Characters Are the Lifeblood of Storytelling, But Not All Characters Are Equal

Let’s have a look at the categories of characters that will appear in your story

When we start working at our new novel, there are many things we should take into consideration, but one of the most important — I’d say the most essential — are characters.

Characters are among the most cryptic and elusive elements of storytelling. Complex and tricky, they’re difficult to fit into boxes, but it’s almost impossible to write an engaging story without them.

I always find it difficult to talk about building good characters, because what works for one writer, may not work for another. There are many good practises in building and handling characters, but there are authors who break all the rules and still manage to pull it off.

Characters are so deeply personal, so intimately linked to their authors, that I think it is often pointless to speak ‘in general’.

Characters also make mischief all the time. We create them for one purpose, and they end up doing a totally different thing. Characters are master shapeshifters. All authors know that.

But there are some characteristics that, though quite straightforward and simple, will help us navigate their role in the story, even when it shifts.

Knowing what category a character belongs too and being able to detect when a character shifts from one category to another will help us enormously in keeping the story coherent.

Some of these categories are better set from the beginning (though, as I’ve said, always expect mischief from your characters). We tend to know from the beginning who our Protagonist is, for example, though Antagonists might be more challenging to pin down. All the other categories of characters are fair game, as far as I’m concerned. A Secondary Character and even an Extra may climb the ladder to Main Character in the blink of an eye. They have done it to me countless time.

But the position and the impact of an Extra on the story is quite different from the position and the impact of a Main Character. So, we always need to be aware of what they are doing, even when they try to do it under our radars (and they will. Trust me, they will).

So, let’s have a look at the main categories of characters.

Protagonist

The Protagonist is the most important character in the story. Not necessarily because the reader especially identifies with them, but because the story is driven or deeply marked by that character’s action.

The Protagonist links to the story in a twofold way. On the one hand, the story is about the Protagonist. It’s about what happened to them and often the events that the story recounts paired with how the Protagonist handles them, express the theme of the story.

On the other hand, the Protagonist’s desires and fears drive the plot. Their personality heavily shapes the story.

It’s often quite difficult to tell the Protagonist from the story because their arcs go hands-in-hands and often coincide.

Main Characters

Main Characters are central characters to the story, though the story is not specifically about them. They often lead a subplot or a parallel plot, normally in service of the theme of the story, or a secondary theme that supports the main one.

They are so important that if we took away a Main Character, the story would change to the point to become unrecognizable, or to change the theme altogether.

Just like the Protagonist, the story impacts on the Main Characters and is in return shaped by them. Besides, strictly speaking, the Protagonist is the leading Main Characters in a story.

There may be stories that don’t have a Protagonist, but rather have many Main Characters. These are choral stories that often explore complex themes, with many nuances, each express but a different Main Character and their arc.

Antagonist

The Antagonist opposes the Protagonist. They get in the way of the Protagonist, preventing them from achieving their goals or desires, causing a reaction from the Protagonist that is often the trigger of the story itself (Inciting Incident)

The dynamics between Protagonist and Antagonist are vital to the evolution of the story because their respective actions will determine the plot.

The main characteristic of the Antagonist is to be on the opposite side from the Protagonist, which may happen for any number of perfectly reasonable motives, not necessarily because the Antagonist hates the Protagonist. In fact, the best Antagonists are those that have an excellent reason to oppose the Protagonist.

Although the Antagonist is usually a character, this is by no means necessary. A situation, a character’s flaw, an inner belief may act as Antagonist in a story.

Villains

We often identify the Antagonist with a Villain because that’s how Antagonists often manifest in stories. But just like the Antagonist is not necessarily a person, it is also not necessarily a Villain. Villains are inherently evil characters who act for a recognizably wrong or devious motive and often uphold negative messages.

Other common categories of characters

1. Supporting Characters. As their name says, Supporting Characters support the story and the Main Characters’ arc. They better define the theme and often make it richer. They don’t lead any subplot, but they participate in one (or more) in a defining way. Their personality, desire and fears may impact the subplot they are part of, though not the story as a whole.

Taking them away would probably harm the story.

2. Secondary Characters. Secondary Characters belong to the setting of the story and have significant interactions with the main cast (Protagonist and Antagonist, Main and Supporting Characters). They may help the evolution of the story, but they don’t determine its course.

Secondary Characters tend to be recurring characters who may appear in more than one episode. Their role tends to be accessory, and their personality not defining, to the point that Secondary Characters might be interchangeable and often can be merge when the cast needs to be contained. They may disappear from the plot, and the story wouldn’t suffer.

3. Extras. These are characters that wholly belongs to the setting, and their main contribution to the story comes in the form of enriching the fictional world and making events more realistic. Contrary to Supporting Characters, Extras often appear only in short episodes and very seldom appear again.

Conclusion

The position and importance of a character depend on the category they belong to. Having an idea of what role a particular character covers before starting to write a novel, certainly helps us managing the plot, since there are actions that certain categories of character wouldn’t do.

The category of a character determines the importance of their action, the place they cover in a plot, even how often they appear in a story.

This may change during the writing, but having an initial idea and being aware of all characters’ position in the plot at any time, will land coherence to the story and will save us a lot of rewriting.

How to write a character that impacts the story? By giving them not just history and character personality traits but also a strong narrative role. Create characters that leave a mark. Give them a strong desire, make them fight for it. That’s how to create memorable characters. Download The Protagonist Builder, a free worksheet and start creating your character right away.

Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently. She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/