On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [67]
Creating too many secondary characters—filling the landscape with friends and co-workers and neighbors—is a common problem for new writers. Every secondary character takes time and space and attention away from the hero and heroine. Before you create another character, think about those who already exist and ask yourself if one of them could take on an additional role. I sometimes think, "If this were a movie script, would this part be worth hiring an actor to play? Or would I assign the lines to someone I've already agreed to pay?"
If your heroine has two best friends, can you combine them into one? If she has four kids, do you really need them all, or can you show her as a mom with one or two?
Types of Secondary Characters
Romance novels don't have a standard cast of supporting characters. In many books, the heroine has a best friend in whom she can confide, but there's no requirement to construct such a character. There are some types of secondary characters that appear frequently, however. Each type offers potential for the story but can also detract from the main romance.
The Significant Third
A good many modern romances involve a very specific kind of secondary character, one who falls into a gray area between a main character and a secondary character. This significant third character is far more important than other secondary characters. Typically, this person is the cause of the conflict, or the reason for the story—she's central to the action. Because of this character's important role, there is generally only one significant third in a story.
The significant third character is most often the child of the hero or heroine, though she can be a parent, sibling, or friend who plays a very large part in the story. If the hero and heroine are together only because they've been named guardians to an orphaned six-year-old, the child is the significant third character. If the hero needs the heroine to provide care for his very sick father, and much of the story happens at the old man's bedside, the father is likely to be the significant third character. If the story is a psychological thriller in which the hero and heroine know exactly who's chasing them, the villain is often the significant third character.
It's a challenge to keep this character in her proper place—at the edge of the main story, not in the middle. It's easy to get careless and drift away from the main characters toward the significant third, particularly when this extra character is a child. We're almost programmed to put a child's needs before those of adults, and that carries through in odd ways when writing about a child. The result—anything from a textbook on child raising to a dictionary of baby talk—isn't a romance.
Many a romance novel has been destroyed by a significant third who became too important. The romance must remain firmly fixed on the two main characters.
Even if the most troublesome problem between them revolves around the significant third, it is the tension between the two main characters that is important.
In the first chapter of Penny McCusker's long contemporary Noah and the Stork, the significant third character appears just as the hero, Noah, and the heroine, Janey, are about to say good-bye after their first meeting in nearly a decade:
"I guess I should head out," he said, but instead of leaving he had the audacity to step up to the fence and offer his hand.
Janey was going to take it, too. There was no way she'd back down from the challenge she saw in his eyes, no matter what it might cost her to actually put her hand in his. She took a step forward, then stopped short at the sound of her daughter's voice.
"Mom," Jessie called, racketing out the front door and down the steps, jumping the last three as had become her habit. ... "Mrs. Devlin called. They're riding out to bring in the spring calves this weekend, and she asked if I want to go along. ..."
"Mom?" Noah