From the page to the screen, secondary characters aren’t just props. They’re pressure.
Generally, by the fourth season of a television series, there’s an established pattern of how the episodes will play out. It becomes almost paint-by-numbers, having developed a formula of its own. For better or worse, the audience knows what to expect. That’s not always a bad thing. The fourth season Stargate SG-1 was terrific. Actually, now that I think about it, so was the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and yep, even Voyager had truly found its legs by season 4. Over on the comedy front, Ted Lasso‘s fourth season shook things up with a shifted focus onto a women’s soccer team. On the drama front, ER‘s fourth season brought us both the remarkable live episode of Ambush and the insane disaster episode of Exodus. More recently, seasons 4 of Will Trent, The Rookie, and Slow Horses were all substantial meals, worthy of their air time.
And yet, they all adhered to formula. Their formulas, but nonetheless, each series had a pattern per episode. You knew what to expect of each character.
Then there’s Netflix’s The Diplomat. Season 4 jumped out of the gate and immediately broke the series’ formula. While the previous seasons had been compelling, season 4 was something else. Compelling in new ways. Thought provoking. At any given moment, I wasn’t sure what to expect and that in itself was a treat.
And it all boils down to how the main characters of Kate and Hal Wyler (both taking turns as protagonists/antagonists) had the rug pulled out from beneath their “usual” routine by two of the most compelling secondary characters to come along in modern television: President Grace Penn (Alison Janney) and First Husband Todd Penn (Bradley Whitford). Not only are these actors award-winning powerhouses, the characters themselves were unexpected with motivations both clear and confounding. The Penns pushed the Wylers to act (and react) in new ways yet to be seen in the show’s four years. To insure complications ensued even further, showrunner/writer Debora Cahn yanked/blew up/destroyed many of the established support systems (aka supporting characters) so the Wylers had no choice but to act (and react) in new, never-before navigated ways.
Whether you’re crafting a short story, novel, stageplay, or screenplay, you want to push your protagonist(s) AND antagonists out of their “ordinary” and into situations and circumstances that bring out their best and their worst. That’s where secondary characters come in. A great secondary character does something a great antagonist can’t: they make the protagonist more themselves. They force choices the protagonist would never make alone, hold up mirrors the protagonist can’t look away from, and refuse to let the story settle into one person’s point of view. The protagonist carries the plot. The secondary characters carry the protagonist.
Put another way: antagonists push protagonists toward conflict. Secondary characters push them toward change.
On screen
In seasons three and four of The Diplomat, Grace Penn and her husband Todd aren’t subplot — they’re pressure. Grace’s quiet maneuvering reframes everything Kate Wyler thinks she knows about power, and Todd, the one person in the room who sees Grace clearly, becomes the unexpected moral compass who forces Kate into alliances she would never have chosen on her own. Kate doesn’t just react to the Penns. She becomes a sharper, lonelier, more decisive version of herself because of them.
On the film front, Han Solo in Star Wars is the classic case. Luke’s belief in the Force only lands because Han refuses to buy it for most of the film. Less obvious but just as sturdy: Donkey in Shrek. Shrek wants to be left alone. Donkey will not let him. Every ounce of Shrek’s growth is Donkey’s fault. More recently, Igor in Anora (2024) is a masterclass in restraint. He barely speaks for most of the film. His quiet decency at the end is what finally cracks Ani open — a secondary character who makes the protagonist stronger by refusing to perform.
On the page
Michael Connelly’s Bosch novels (and television series) has two long established side characters named Moore and Johnson, LAPD detectives Harry Bosch nicknames Crate and Barrel — do what no amount of interior monologue could: they externalize Bosch’s doubts about his own methods every time he walks past their desks.
Lady Jessica in Dune makes Paul Atreides more dangerous, not safer. Her secrets — the Bene Gesserit breeding program, her defiance in giving Leto a son instead of a daughter — are the ground Paul’s crisis grows out of. Without her compromises, there’s no messiah to question.
And in Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow, nine-year-old Nina Kulikova refuses to let Count Rostov retreat into dignified house arrest. Everything the Count becomes in the second half of the novel starts with a child who wouldn’t accept his resignation.
The craft point
In every one of these examples, the secondary character isn’t there to be interesting. They’re there to make the protagonist earn their arc. Which is also what any ending worth writing has to do — the second twist, the one that lands as a gut punch rather than a gasp, almost always rides on a secondary character the audience didn’t know they’d been watching. Plant the secondary well, and the ending plants itself.
Three Exercises
1. The Refusal TestTake your protagonist’s biggest moment of growth in your current project. Now identify which secondary character caused it. If no single secondary character caused it, your protagonist is doing all the work alone — which is usually why the moment doesn’t land. Rewrite the scene so a specific secondary character’s words, silence, or action is what forces the shift. |
2. The Mirror PassPick one secondary character. Write a half-page scene — pulled from any point in your story — in which that character says or does nothing new, but your protagonist sees themselves differently because of their presence. If you can’t do this, the secondary character isn’t doing their job yet. If you can, you’ve just found a scene your story probably needs. |
3. The Second-Twist PlantLook at the ending of your current draft. Identify the moment that lands as a gut punch (or should). Now trace it backwards: which secondary character does the gut punch depend on? Can you find three earlier scenes where you planted their contradictions, loyalties, or buried needs? If not, those scenes are missing — and that’s often why endings feel earned on paper but not on the page. |
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