Deborah Cooke: Author

A few weeks ago, I went to see a production of Twelfth Night at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. This play is one of Shakespeare’s comedies, involving mistaken identities and a dreamy world, lost and found love, and all that good stuff. It’s a fun play, and one I always enjoy. In this particular production, though, the director made the decision to change the play into a musical. Essentially, Feste (the fool) is a rock star and sings various songs which comment on the action of the play. This is clever and fun, and the actor playing Feste does a fabulous job (it’s Ben Carlson), but there’s something that niggled me about the decision.

It’s the fact that Feste becomes the star of the the play as a result of this choice. He is interesting and he is funny and he has a lot of time in the spotlight. But putting him in the spotlight so consistently means that the audience becomes emotionally invested in him and wants to know his story – the issue is that Feste doesn’t have one. Feste is not written as the star of the play. He doesn’t have a story or a character arc or even any background. He is simply a secondary (maybe even a tertiary) character who comments on the folly surrounding him. Twelfth Night is Viola’s story, but she ends up in the background in this production.

There are some funny results from this. For example, the production runs longer because of the additional music. When we were leaving the theatre, a lady behind us complained of that to her companion, who said “well, they could have cut out all that bit at the end with those other people.” She was, of course, talking about the resolution of the plot. This shows you the focus of her interest – the actual play got in the way of her wanting to watch Feste perform.

As writers, this is an interesting phenomenon to notice and one to be wary of. Secondary characters have a tendency to try to steal the spotlight. They can claim the stage, so to speak, in a book as adeptly as they can in a play. This can happen because the secondary characters are more outrageous or more interesting or more flamboyant than the protagonists. It’s common for a sidekick, for example, to make the better jokes – maybe because the jokes are a bit naughty and would make the protagonist sound unheroic or unsympathetic. It also comes down to raw time, on the stage or the page – I read a book recently in which the villain had so much ink. I didn’t want to read about the villain. It was enough for me that he was evil. I wanted to read about the protagonists, but the balance of word count drew attention to the villain. Inevitably, the reader starts to think about the character who isn’t the star.

There are two obvious solutions for the play, but only the first one works well in books:

• Give the good lines to the star.
In this particular case, the protagonist in Twelfth Night is Viola. She’s the one who loses everything at the beginning, dresses as a boy, works in the court of a nobleman – and falls in love with him while she’s disguised as a boy. Ooops. And he’s in love with some other noblewoman. Of course, it all works out right in the end, but to use this idea of making the play a musical and have Viola keep the spotlight, Viola could be the one who becomes a minstrel.

• Take the commentator out of the story.
Breaking the fourth wall – i.e. letting a character on stage talk directly with the audience – is a technique that isn’t contemporary with Shakespeare. The only Shakespearean play I can think of with a commentator is Pericles – there is a narrator in that play, who introduces the story, then comments on it at the end. His comments bracket the production. In the modern tradition of breaking the fourth wall, that character often gives significant looks to the audience while he’s on stage in his role(s) during the play. Kind of “do you see what I see?”, which makes a joke with the audience. So, in this case, Feste could introduce the play with a musical number, participate in the play in his role, then close the production with another musical number.

I’ve talked about stage management in books before, but here’s a quickie list to keep your secondary characters from claiming the spotlight:

1/ Ensure that secondary characters have fewer space in the book than the main characters. This includes description of the character, inclusion of his or her thoughts, and dialogue. You can count uses of the character’s name. You can count paragraphs or lines of dialogue. You can eyeball it, but you should be able to recognize when a secondary character is claiming too much of the readers’ attention just by volume.

2/ Be careful with using the POV of secondary characters. I think you can include one or two scenes from a secondary character’s POV in a full length novel. More than that puts that character in the limelight, competing for the readers’ hearts. Once we know a character’s secret thoughts, we tend to root for him or her.

3/ Ensure that the protagonist outshines the secondary character in some superficial way. On stage, lead actors and actresses have more elaborate costumes, often in more vibrant colours than the supporting cast. In a book, you can ensure that the protagonist tells the better joke when it matters, for example. In a romance, the stoic hero often snares the heroine’s eye while his chatterbox sidekick is overlooked by her.

4/ Ensure that the protagonist outshines the secondary character in some consistent way in terms of characterization. Maybe the secondary character is funny, but if you are writing a romance, he or she might not be a considerate partner, or might prefer to have lots of partners. When the protagonist and the secondary character stand together, the reader should know which one is the star.

5/ Ensure that the protagonist has a more compelling character arc or journey than the secondary character. Secondary characters are often static, caught in some moment and unchanging over the course of the story. Because they have no character arc, because they don’t grow or change or modify their perspectives, readers know instinctively that this is not their story.

What do you think makes some secondary characters stand out from the crowd, or even overshadow the protagonists? Did I miss any suggestions?