Pay Attention to Your Supporting Characters!

Supporting characters are hard to write. So much of the time they’re in your script because you need them to do something related to your main people. Throw in some exposition or backstory, force a decision from your ‘hero’, or take their order at a restaurant because for some reason you think that’s an important conversation to have.

But if you stop for a moment, and consider the wonderful opportunities your supporting characters provide, you can turn your script from average to thoroughly entertaining remarkably quickly!

Far too often, I read scripts that make it very clear the writer has poured a lot of effort into the lead people and almost no effort into anyone else. Supporting characters may as well be sock puppets wandering through the shot, devoid of any character development, delivering boring dialogue, existing purely to prop up the story and the central characters.

I totally understand why. You’re writing a story about someone doing something with or to someone, and it’s annoying to waste good brain time thinking about the people who don’t say or do as much. It’s not like it’s their movie or TV pilot. They exist for a specific reason, so who cares what they may be like as a person? Well…the audience, and the Academy Awards do.

They hand out Best Supporting Actor/Actress for a reason. And hopefully, it’s not just to make the broadcast longer. Supporting characters are regularly the difference maker between a movie being average, and great.

Look at the sadly departed Gene Hackman in Unforgiven. His pleasant psychopathic menace made him a powerful force. Look at all the actors not named Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. Hugh’s quirky friend family grounded his character, and contributed mightily to his sense of community, and his world, which was being turned upside down by love. Look at Donkey in Shrek for goodness sake – possibly the greatest scene-stealing supporting character ever!

Supporting characters matter, and present opportunities in two different ways.

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First – every actor likes to be noticed. They want to make the most of every line they get. Why muzzle them by not bothering to give their character any sort of spark? You’re not only wasting their time, but you’re missing out on the chance to create memorable characters who say memorable things. Even one or two lines – if given enough thought by the writer, can change a scene from dull to truly satisfying. And the way your lead people interact with the supporting cast gives you an opportunity to reveal to the audience more about who they are. The way your hero tosses his keys to the valet. The way someone orders food from a particular waitress – everything is an opportunity if you take the time to think about it.

The richer your characters, the richer and more interesting your script. And when you invest time in figuring out who these supporting folks are – then you can play with how they communicate, and how they deliver whatever vitally important piece of information they need to deliver to keep your story afloat. Which means you get to explore language, speaking style, vocabulary, and world view. If you can make all of this exciting for you, or at least interesting, and you can appreciate the benefits, then you’re already on your way to a stronger script.

The second benefit of this kind of thinking – figuring out if the scene and the character needs to be in your script at all.

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I’ve been organizing a lot of live reads recently – writers get to hear their script being read by working Hollywood actors. We’ve had some feature scripts with between 40 – 60 speaking parts - in 100 pages. That’s too many. It just is. I challenge you now to go to your latest script, and count the number of speaking parts. I’ll wait. And I’m going to guess there are way more than you realize. Because you casually have a waiter asking ‘Are you ready to order?’ Or a receptionist saying ‘Mary is in a meeting.’ Or three friends who are basically the same, when you only need two. Or one.

I know because we’ve all done it. We’ve all tossed in random speaking parts, overloaded the script, and then wondered why didn’t we think this through? I will say hearing it out loud really makes the overuse of anonymous speaking parts really obvious.

If you can’t find an interesting, entertaining way for your supporting character to contribute to a scene, chances are that character can be cut. Or what they are saying isn’t crucial to the survival of the scene/script. So you should cut it.

Your hero doesn’t need to interact with the valet guy unless it’s really important he/she interacts with the valet guy. Oh sure, in real life you might make small talk to the valet…but this is a movie. Not real life.

Every character in every scene earns their place. And when that place is earned, as a reward for them they get to be an actual character. Someone who contributes their own little slice of entertainment. If you practice this often enough, you will end up with a script full of vibrant, interesting people – and who knows – when the movie comes out, you might launch an actor’s career. Like Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise, or Dave Bautista in Guardians of the Galaxy, or Walton Goggins in the pilot of Justified who was supposed to die at the end but proved so interesting he survived the entire series.

Your supporting characters matter. The more time you spend with them, the more they will reward you in unexpected ways.