Minor characters
During a discussion starting at lunch and ending much later, my friends and I noticed a strange thing. We had been discussing the Harry Potter series and many of our favorite characters were the minor or side characters (Minerva McGonagall for me.) The problem, we realized, was that the main character Harry was likeable but fell flat when compared to the whimsical Luna, acerbic Snape or the hilarious Fred and George Weasley. Herein lays the problem with main characters: while trying to create a protagonist to whom everyone can relate to, the author sometimes turns them into an “average Joe/Jane” that becomes more of a plot device than a character.
