You're going to think I'm kidding, but I promise you I'm not when I say that I love the musical MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS not for Judy Garland chasing her man and singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", although that is all fine, but for Tootie, the little sister character who seems to be obsessed with death.
"Seems to be": She and her sister make it look like the tram runs over a person. She buries dolls for fun. On Halloween she volunteers to kill their neighbor by throwing flour in his face, and when their father announces they're moving she runs outside and basically beats a snowman to death.
She's got issues, does our Tootie. And what's truly wild is, none of the other characters ever say a word about any of it. It's like a subplot written just for us.
Hopefully it goes without saying, but just in case it doesn't: Giving your supporting characters stories of their own is almost always a good idea. They don't have to be big. They don't have to related to the main character's--although Shakespeare certainly makes a good case for the value of secondary character stories echoing and playing off the main character's journey.
Every character arc is another hook, another chance for the audience to fall in love and commit. You can even hate the main character of a show and still adore it, because you are ride or die for someone else on it.
And the Tootie Variation is this: You don't even have to provide a coherent arc. If you give your supporting characters even just one or two unusual characteristics, we will fill in the gaps. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS is clearly the story of a young serial killer. So is THE OFFICE. For that matter so is FRIENDS.
It's in our DNA really to create story, so much so that when a film or story doesn't give us all the information, it's actually kind of exciting for us. Knowing that, we can lean into it.
