7 6. Other characters

In most stories, there should be more than 1 character, this could consist of the Mc's rivals, friends, spouses or just supporting characters. As usual, all these categories can be split into short term or long term, whether they would stay in the story up to its end or will only be a small part of the journey.

Short term characters will usually not have a big impact on the story unless they are sacrifices that would have to die so that the story can progress. Whereas long term characters would usually have parts of their history hidden so that they could either have a massive power up and just blame it on their past, or it could influence the story on the future.

A common debate would be on harem or not harem. Some say harem would add diversity and would be able to include more world building through the members. Whereas focusing on one spouse would develop both the mc and the spouse character and relationship more. This would be completely up to the author and their readers.

The rival is also another common character people like to have, the rival is someone that grows with the MC and periodically appears to challenge the MC. If this character is a short term one than he would most likely get defeated and recruited into the Mc's party or get killed by the MC. A long term rival could appear as a surprise end boss at the end for the MC and party to defeat.

Friends and supporting casts would be people that MC meet on the journey or through the Mc's life and would enhance the story. These people won't all be friendly to the MC as to develop the Mc's character. There would be an equal mix of people that would appear throughout the story to either support the MC or to antagonise them.

Development of characters, world building is important as to add flavour to the story and people would know to not overdevelop characters so as to not lose focus on the main characters actual story. It's like making pizza where the dough needs to be developed but not overworked.

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