Save the Supportive Best Friends

I once read a hilariously meta book (one I can’t recommend unfortunately) where the main characters were inside a partially written book and decided to rebel against their given, cliche roles.

It ended up getting pretty wild, and I laughed aloud at some of the jokes against us evil authors.

One thing that really stuck with me, though, was an actually quite sad scene where the supportive best friend found out she was only there as an “emotional support pony”. She listens to the heroine’s problems, says something wise, sets aside her own needs to help her, and disappears from the story until she’s needed to do it all again.

The character’s reaction was meant to be humorous, but I’ve been thinking about it more lately as I refine a novella in its second draft.

I wrote two lovely side characters as best friends for my heroine.

While the “vain social climber” is getting more dimension (and strengths because none of us are just weaknesses), it’s the supportive-best-friend-who-is-little-more-than-sympathetic-furniture I’m seriously rewriting.

She needs a dream. She needs an entire personality of her own. She needs a schedule not built around supporting the heroine. She needs relatives with personality and quirks. She needs her own support system.

Why, though? She’s still only getting a small fraction of “screen time”. Why build out all that?

Because that’s how beautifully complicated people really are, and we’re only going to have empathy when we realize that each person and their story is precious. 

(And it’s not going to be a chore because this Kate looooves character development. 😜)