Sufficient sleep has eluded me lately, but it’s not been all bad; a tired, loopy mind is a fertile place for brainstorming to occur. I sat down this morning and wrote outlines for each of the secondary characters’ arcs, all four of them. I won’t include at least half of what I wrote down, because it’ll be happening off-screen, but I’m finding it to be an incredibly useful exercise. Now, when my secondary characters are off-screen, they won’t be like puppets: useless unless I have my hand up their asses. (Wait. What?)
Inevitably, my favorite character in (insert show/book/movie/fandom here) is a secondary character, but I’ve yet to quite capture a good supporting cast. I think this might be the secret: giving them lives outside of recorded events, especially when the tale is told in a limited p.o.v. (in this case, third-person limited, probably to two characters max, barring the epilogue). Of course, it does help that I’ve known these characters for 13 years, but still, they were never this vibrant before.
Now, to figure out how to make the main character likable and not just a whiner. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.