Supporting Character Interview Worksheet

Give your side characters the attention they deserve with the Supporting Character Interview Worksheet – a targeted set of development questions to help you flesh out your story’s secondary characters.

Supporting characters (friends, partners, mentors, villains, etc.) might not occupy center stage, but they play crucial roles in shaping your story and protagonist. This worksheet, created by K.M. Weiland (author of Creating Character Arcs), zeroes in on the most important aspects of supporting characters, ensuring they are distinct, motivated, and memorable without requiring as exhaustive a profile as your main character.

• Streamlined Questionnaire: Unlike a full-blown 100+-question interview (such as our main Character Interview Worksheet), this supporting character version is focuses on 30 key questions that cover the essentials. It’s designed to save you time while still extracting the information that will inform your writing of supporting characters. You’ll find sections on personality, history, goals, and motivations.

• Personal Motivation: Even side characters need their own wants and needs. This worksheet provides space to consider the supporting character’s internal life. Even if you won’t explore all of it on the page, knowing it as the author lends depth to how you write their actions and dialogue.

• Rapid-Fire Personality Questions: To avoid all your minor characters blurring together, the worksheet includes rapid-fire questions to pinpoint what makes each one unique. For example: "Positive or negative?" - "Moral, immoral, or amoral?" - "Vulnerable or guarded" This way, you can differentiate your cast.

• Bonus Resources: Included is a bonus resource guide packed with dozens of links to free resources for more information on developing the strongest supporting characters possible.

• Flexible Format: The Supporting Character Interview Worksheet comes as a fillable PDF (with optional Word document). The questions are arranged by category, making it easy to fill out. You can complete only the parts you find relevant – the worksheet is intentionally flexible, acknowledging that not every side character needs the same level of detail. Use it for your more prominent secondary characters or for any minor character you’re struggling to understand. Because it’s reusable, you can print it or duplicate the file for as many characters as you need in your project.

• Quick and Accessible: This is a digital download available immediately upon purchase, so you can start developing your supporting cast right away. No physical product will be shipped. Keep the file handy on your computer or in a writer’s binder. Whenever a new character pops up in your story, take a few minutes with this worksheet to nail down the basics. It’s much easier to write lively scenes when even the side characters have a spark of life, and that’s exactly what this guide helps you achieve.

By investing just a bit of time with the Supporting Character Interview Worksheet, you’ll avoid flat caricatures and instead craft secondary characters who shine. They will have clear reasons for being in your story, distinct personalities, and maybe even a small arc of their own. Readers notice when every character, no matter how minor, feels like a real person. It makes your fictional world more immersive and convincing. This worksheet ensures you cover that ground efficiently, leaving you more time and confidence to actually write the story.

Give your side characters the development they deserve, and watch how much richer your overall narrative becomes. Your protagonist’s journey will be bolstered by meaningful interactions with well-realized supporting cast members, creating a story readers will find fully fleshed out and satisfying.

Also available: For your main protagonists and villains, check out our full Character Interview Questions Worksheet (100+ questions) in the shop. It’s the perfect companion to this guide, helping you develop every member of your cast, big or small!