Hello everyone! I am in the planning stages for a novel and I have a rough outline and a few characters. One of the characters lives in a different place to the MC and as such will hardly appear. This book revolves around this other character, however, and the MC is constantly thinking about him, talking to people about him, etc. I suppose he is a little like Gatsby or Godot in that respect. My problem is that I can write reams on this other character (who may or may not be in one chapter and will probably die 1/3 of the way through), and my main character is pretty flat at the moment. I have noticed in many of the books I really enjoyed, the main characters are totally forgettable; I can't even remember the name of the main character in The Great Gatsby, Frodo is pretty boring compared to, say, Gandalf, Pelagia pales in comparison to Captain Corelli, and don't even get me started on Harry Potter. I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts about the charismatic/mysterious minor character and whether you prefer your MC to be the most interesting character. Thanks!
As a reader, I don't always connect with the main character and have it so that they're my more preferred/favorite character from that book. In terms of Lord of the Rings, Legolas and Aragorn are more of my favorite then Frodo Baggins. As for Harry Potter, well, I connected more to some of the people surrounding him. It's like that even in TV shows I watch, or in most cases with anime and manga. One such example is Lavi and Kanda from D.Gray-Man. They're not the main character, Allen Walker is, but I find that these two characters, though we don't know as much about them, appeal to me more then the main character does. Perhaps it's just the way they're presented? Either way, just because you show us the main character, doesn't mean we're going to connect with them more then the other characters.
I think in general we find supporting characters more interesting than the main ones. And by supporting characters in this case I'm referring to every other character than the main one. Thinking through all the books I enjoyed, the only ones where I liked the main character the most was Catcher in the Rye. That's not to misplace the value and importance of the main character, because they definitely are the most important, but as far as who I was personally rooting and cheering for, it was usually a supporting character. I think this is normal.
