A Digression on the Subject of Colorful Minor Characters
The fifth reason is the very worst to contemplate.
The terrible truth is that protagonists are written to be how we would like to imagine ourselves, and the colorful side characters are how we fear we look to other people.
Here we are, striding around accomplishing all of our very important tasks, thinking complicated and nuanced thoughts about politics and mortality and our relationships with our mothers.
There we go, driving with skill and precision, making love in a way that nearly brings our partners to tears of ecstasy, and parrying any insults with exquisitely witty ripostes.
How cruel, how monstrous it would be if we were forced to see ourselves as we’re afraid other people do: as that sloppy woman in a wrinkled dress who broke a lull at a party with a tasteless, too-loud joke; as that pompous man with thinning hair who cut someone off in traffic the other day and ruins first kisses with the erratic thrusting of his tongue; as that preposterous personage who persists in wearing unflattering hats and drawing mediocre pictures in coffee shops, all the while hoping that someone will notice and think, Ooh, how interesting!
We are all, as horrible as it is to contemplate, colorful minor characters, walking around with a pimple on our chin that we hope no one notices, with one patch that we forgot to shave, with a strange-sounding sneeze, with coffee breath.
We’re all stuck here, exposed like turtles on high rocks, forced to live out every day without even the smallest quests or prophecies to wrap around our deficiencies and make them into something meaningful.
What a mercy it is to open a book and briefly become the hero, our flaws adding depth and complexity to our character, our mistakes only serving to heighten the narrative tension, our quiet terror that we’re too insignificant to matter at all submerged, if only for a moment, in the rushing river of a story.