Now that you've created your protagonist, you need to create the supporting cast, the characters that help drive your protagonist and help drive the plot.

A few of the supporting cast will be main characters, each one nearly as important to the plot as the protagonist himself. Other characters will have a smaller role to play. Still, others will be walk-ons, put on the page to make the setting feel authentic.

You'll need to think about creating a worthy cast to support your plot and your protagonist.

Creating Main Characters

Of course, you need more than a protagonist to tell your story. There will be other main characters and each has to be able to hold his own against the protagonist.

Here are a few examples from literature of protagonists and other main characters:

• In "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy had the scarecrow, the tin woodman, and the cowardly lion.

• In the "Sherlock Holmes" novels, the brilliant, coolly analytic Sherlock Holmes had the more mercurial, impulsive (and usually wrong) Dr. Watson.

• In "Jane Eyre," plucky young Jane had the moody, broody, and much older Mr. Rochester.

In all of these cases, the protagonist finds a foil by being paired with the other main character or characters and is enhanced by the contrast.

Where do characters come from? Some characters arrive apparently out of nowhere in a dream or offer themselves up, and it is a wonderful gift when that happens. More often, writers create an imitation from real people whom they know. Once you start putting a character on the page, you want that character to grow and change into someone who exists only in your novel.

Using Differences

When creating main characters, pay attention to how they contrast with the protagonist. Make each main character as distinct as possible from your protagonist, yin to the protagonist's yang, and use those differences to drive the plot and stir conflict.

Use the same techniques to create other main characters as you would to create the protagonist—character traits, character sketches, and so on are useful. Attempt the NaNoWriMo character template in part ii of this section. As you develop main characters, pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses, appearance and attitude, and create backstories that explain why they are that way.

Help your readers by making your characters as distinctive as you can from one another. A fast-talking, manic protagonist needs a concise friend with a Southern drawl.

Creating the Villain

In many novels, one of the main characters plays the special role of the villain, or antagonist, obstructing the protagonist in reaching the goal.

In "Jane Eyre," the mysterious Bertha Mason stands between Jane and happiness. In "Dracula," Count Dracula wants Jonathan Harker's beloved Mina for his own. In "The Wizard of Oz," the Wicked Witch of the West tries her best to keep Dorothy from finding her way home.

The villain in your novel may be pure evil, but more likely not. Even Sherlock Holmes's arch-antagonist Professor James Moriarty is described as having redeeming features.

Must a villain be loathsome—hateful, detestable, repulsive? Not at all. He can be chilling but charming, like Hannibal Lecter. Thoroughly evil? It's better when the reader can muster a little sympathy for a complex, realistic character who feels he's right to obstruct the protagonist.

So, in planning, try to understand why your villain does what he does. Consider the standard motivations like greed, jealousy, or hatred. Then go a step further. Get inside your antagonist's head and see the protagonist's goal from his perspective.

Here's how a villain might rationalize his actions, according to Hallie Ephron:

• Righting a prior wrong.
• Wreaking revenge.
• Reaching a competing goal (like protecting a loved one).
• Doing God's work.
• Restoring order to the world—a personal favorite of mine, because that 'order' doesn't have to agree with society's perception of order, which makes for such a more interesting character.

Finally, think about what happened to make that villain the way he is—his backstory. Was he born bad, or did he sour as a result of some traumatic event? If your villain has a grudge against society, why? If he can't tolerate being jilted, why?

You may never share your villain's life story with your reader, but to make a complex, interesting villain, you need to know what drives him to do what he does.

Just as you drew a character sketch of your protagonist, take the time to sketch out the villain, the antagonist. Think about what the pivotal moments have been in your antagonist's life.

Was his brother unfairly convicted of a crime he didn't commit? Did his family go bankrupt? Did his wife leave him for his best friend? Did his mother disappear? Was he abused as a child?

To develop a credible villain, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What does the villain want?
• How does the villain see the protagonist obstructing him in reaching his goal?
• How does the villain explain his own motivations to himself?

Villains are much more interesting when they are believable. Just as it's important for you to understand what motivates your protagonist to strive to reach his goal, you need to understand what motivates your villain to keep getting in the way. Creating a backstory for the villain will help you to understand that characters as a three-dimensional human being (or creature for you fantasy/sci-fi writers) with as many complexities as any of your other main characters.

Characters who are simply monstrously evil can come off as old-fashioned clichés.

Creating Supporting Characters

Novels have a range of supporting characters, and every one of them should be there because they are necessary to tell the story. If a supporting character has no role in the story, then you should consider dropping that character from your novel.

Supporting characters are less important than the main characters, and they require much less planning. Often it's their relationship to the protagonist that defines them.

Here is a list of some of the typical roles that supporting characters play in novels, and some will sound familiar if you've already read part i of character archetypes in this section.

• Mentor
• Caretaker
• Love interest
• Chum
• Assistant
• Colleague
• Expert
• Family member

You will be able to plan for some of these characters in advance. Others will just show up, initially intended to be a minor character or a walk-on. Then they'll act up, or do pirouettes on the page, and you'll find yourself promoting them to supporting status.

Creating Minor Characters and Walk-ons

You don't need to have planned in advance for the minor characters and walk-ons who will inevitably show up in your novel.

The waitress who serves scrambled eggs to your protagonist at a restaurant where he meets his lover can be conjured on the spot.

The mail carrier who brings a long-awaited letter to your protagonist's sister can be invented when the time comes to write him.

Discussing minor characters reminds me of a great quote by the award-winning novelist Sarah Waters: "Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's."

Some minor characters will have names and all will have at least some sense of physical presence. How much attention you pay to bringing them to the page will depend on how important the character is to the story and the protagonist.

Naming Characters

Just as with naming your protagonist, you need to provide each supporting character a name that in some way fits that character's persona. As you consider names, think about how you can help your readers keep them all straight. Pick names that make it as easy as possible for readers to remember who's who.

Nicknames are easy for readers to remember, especially when they provide a snapshot reminder of the character's personality. You might name a tough guy Spike or a character with red hair Red. Opposites work, too—a character who is bald might be named Curly. Throwing in some ethnicity (Zito, Sasha, Kwan) makes a name easier to remember.

Avoid the dull, boring, generic names (Bob Miller) since these names are easily forgotten. Avoid the weirdly exotic name (Dacron) that draws attention to itself and doesn't feel credible.

Finding Names

Names are hard to come up with when you need them. An obvious source of inspiration is a telephone directory. Census lists from the present and past yield a trove of names to match time periods. There are also books of baby names.

All of these you can find online, as well as tons of websites with lists of surnames and first names in every ethnicity and culture. You can even search for names based on their meanings.

Create a list of names you consider "keepers," and add to it whenever you find a new one you like.

Character Name Pitfalls to Avoid

It's not easy for readers to keep all of the characters in a novel straight, so help them out by giving them distinctive names. Here are some tips:

• Avoid giving characters names that start with the same letter, like Jack and Josh and Janet.

• Don't give a character two first names like William Thomas, Stanley Raymond, or Susan Frances.

• Pick a name appropriate to the historical time frame or setting—Neville Longbottom is a perfect name for a student at Hogwarts, but it wouldn't feel so much at home for a crusty character in a novel set in the old West.

• Vary the number of syllables in character names—it's harder to confuse a Jane with a Stephanie than it is to confuse a Jane with a Meg.

• Don't pick names that sound similar, like Leanna and Deanna.

• Don't pick names that have similar spelling, like Katherine and Catherine.

A helpful tip: It's a good idea to keep an inventory of your characters and their names along with any features you give them. This is especially important for characters that make only sporadic appearances in the book.

Please vote if you've learned a few helpful tips!