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STEVE CAVERNO: I'm Steve Caverno on behalf of Expert Village, here today to talk to you
about building a character. Now we're going to look at supporting characters. Supporting characters in a play are characters
that are somehow related to the protagonist accomplishing their goal. In Hamlet, supporting
characters would be Laertes, who is an extension of Claudius. He is an extension Claudius uses
to do his bidding. There's also the queen who is married to Claudius. This creates conflict
with Hamlet. Hamlet tries to align the queen with him and she is resistant. This is a major
emotional conflict for Hamlet. So, there's also Ophelia who is Hamlet's love interest
at one point and is spurned and her father is killed by Hamlet. Polonius was another
sub-character. He's an adviser to the king and he is accidentally killed by Hamlet. Hamlet
thinks he's stabbing his uncle and he accidentally stabbed Polonius. That character furthers
the plot. This character is doing the king's bidding. So, each of these characters are
related to the antagonist. This is Ophelia, related to Hamlet. So, each of these characters--and
they're all intertwined to these two characters. So, we get to see how the supporting characters
feed the primary plot of the story, and that is what makes compelling drama. You have many
characters gathered together in one plot line and that is basically the function of supporting
characters.