JANUARY, 2020
FIRST CLASS SECONDARIES—HOW TO CRAFT
GREAT SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
By: Alice Orr
“What is wrong with
this relationship?”
That could be the
cover banner of many
very popular women‟s
magazines. It is the
central question of
every women‟s popu-
lar fiction novel you have ever read or
written. It is also the central reader attrac-
tion of most of those stories.
Relationships are the bread and
butter of the women’s fiction market.
How a relationship is found. How to
sustain that relationship once it has be-
gun. How to regain a relationship that
seems irretrievably lost. How to correct
the flaws that caused it to be lost.
These mysteries haunt the heart
of every love story. The love stories we
dream about, lust after, seek and suffer
through in our storyteller imaginations,
and in the reality of our lives. Readers
harbor similar dreams, burn with similar
lust, seek and suffer through similar sce-
narios.
This is why romance entangle-
ments are prime reader interest terri-
tory for women’s fiction. They are
prime reader interest territory beyond
this category as well, but let‟s focus on
women‟s fiction. In particular, let‟s focus
on its power in the story marketplace.
Is your goal to be published, to
attract a readership, to become a be-
loved author? If your answer to any of
the above is “Yes,” maybe a resounding
“Yes!!” you should give more than a
passing thought to writing women‟s fic-
tion. Savvy you may have done so al-
ready.
Approximately eighty to eighty-
five percent of U.S. book readers are
women. That statistic has remained sta-
ble for a long time. The majority of this
female audience reads women‟s fiction in
some form. Literary stories, mainstream
commercial novels, category romance.
An immense market where agents, edi-
tors and, most crucially, readers search
for enthralling author voices.
Your storytelling voice should be
among those. The key to sought-after-
author status in women‟s fiction is the
heartfelt, convincing relationship that
comes to blazing life on your pages. Such
relationships are the backbone of this
flourishing segment of the publishing
marketplace.
Your anchor story relationship
centers on your protagonist, but it
takes two to tango. She needs another
character to relate with, and not always
romantically. Great stories may pivot
upon a deep friendship, or a parent and
child, or your hero and her rival, captor,
or tormentor. The possible combinations
are as many and various as the impulses
of your imagination.
Still, the most popular fictional
relationship is between lovers or po-
tential lovers. Readers seek roadmaps
for navigating this problematic realm of
human interaction in their own lives.
They are also drawn by the tension inher-
ent in a story of two people attempting to
love one another in the face of mounting
obstacles and against formidable, oppos-
ing odds.
Whatever the specific reader at-
traction may be, here lies storytelling
paydirt. These two central characters
inevitably conflict. They struggle in-
tensely, dramatically, powerfully. They
make turbulence of their lives, and of the
reader‟s consciousness. They do so most
credibly when this struggle reflects the
turbulence of real human experience, for
example, your experience.
Continued on Page 19
18