Holy podcasting, Batman! It’s time for an episode about stories that have two main characters instead of one. A story so nice they main charactered it twice. Whether it’s a hero and their sidekick or two siblings equally sharing the spotlight, this week we’re talking about how to balance the needs of both characters. We cover how to keep them both in the plot, how to keep their interactions compelling, and why they shouldn’t steal development from each other.

• The Winchester Brothers 

Generously transcribed by Maddie. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris:  You’re listening to the Mythcreant podcast, with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle. [Intro Music]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren… 

Chris: And I’m Chris. 

Oren: So there’s two of us. So we are gonna need to divide the spotlight evenly, but I know you’re gonna try to steal it because you’re clearly the author’s favorite. 

Chris: What, me? 

Oren: Look, I’ll divide the spotlight in two and you can pick which one to take. Does that seem fair? 

Chris: I’ve got an idea. How about if I say things and then you doubt me each and every time so I feel very put upon. And then at the end of the podcast, I can be proven right about everything? 

Oren: Wait, how is that different from normal? 

Chris, Oren: [Laugh]

Chris: No, careful, too much self-deprecating humor will make you Sokka.

Oren: Oh, no! Now everyone is Sokka. 

Chris: Everyone is Sokka. 

Oren: Okay. So. Today we’re talking about designing dynamic duos, which is not just an alliteration, which I’m very proud of. 

Chris: Here’s your Hugo. 

Oren: Yeah, one Hugo, please. [Chuckles] But is something that I work with clients and I see them try to do, and they don’t want just one main character. They want two main characters. And I could be wrong, but as usual, I blame TV. 

Chris: [Chuckles]

Oren: There are a lot of famous spec fic shows that focus on two characters instead of having a single main character. You’ve got Supernatural, Lost Girl, Loki, Harley Quinn, The X-Files, the list goes on. 

Chris: I also think though, that we shouldn’t underestimate a writer’s tendency to get attached to their characters. Maybe they just want multiple characters to be important ’cause they like their characters a lot. 

Oren: There is that too, for sure. And I think TV has a tendency to do this because it’s valuable in TV to have a character for your first character to talk to. Because they don’t have narration, so they have to explain a lot more through dialogue.

Chris: Basically visual media without much narration wants to have more than one character in pretty much every scene. And when they don’t have a character, sometimes they’ll have a pet. I’ve listened to the Buffy audio drama recently and they have a very convenient pet dog and a pet monkey so that whenever a character was alone, they always had a person to talk to.

Oren: Man, that is so much harder in audio dramas. You can’t use visuals even to communicate what’s happening. You can try to use sound effects, but that is dodgy. That is unreliable. But the reason why you then have perhaps just two main characters instead of a larger group of characters, like with a Star Trek show, is that having two regular actors you have to pay is a lot cheaper than a whole cast of regulars. So just from what I’ve seen, I think that is why this thing is popular on TV shows. I could be wrong. I don’t work in the TV industry. That’s just what it looks like from the outside. 

Chris: And we’re talking about, again, if you’re writing a story that is primarily about a relationship, like a romance, although romances don’t have an exclusive right to relationship-related stories, it could be platonic too. There’s a lot more reason I think to have two main characters, but I think a lot of visual media chooses that even when the story’s not necessarily as focused as much on the relationship. 

Oren: I do think that if you are going to have two main characters, deciding what kind of relationship they’re going to have is important. There’s obviously romance, but it does not have to be a romantic arc. There can also be a friendship arc or a mentor-student arc. 

If you don’t want them to have a major relationship arc, if you want them to start with the same relationship, that they more or less continue throughout the story, I would recommend thinking: How do they fit into each other’s emotional arcs? ‘Cause you don’t wanna have one character going through a really intense emotional arc and the other one is just there. ‘Cause at that point you’ll start to wonder why this story is about two people at all. 

Chris: Generally you want them to be equally central. ‘Cause I do think if one of them is having a lot of strong emotions, that sort of signals that maybe the problems are more about them than the other person. And usually you want the character that is at the center of your problems to be your main character. So that would put one character in the position of feeling more central, even if they’re getting 50% of the screen time, for instance.

Oren: That actually is another thing that you should decide at the beginning, is what spotlight dynamic do you want for these characters? Do you want it to be a co-protagonist situation where there is a 50-50 split, or do you want a hero and a major sidekick? Second one tends to be a little easier, but I know that a lot of people are really devoted to the two co-protagonists. 

I just think that it is important to choose that from the beginning because you can increase a character’s importance, but decreasing it is very hard. ‘Cause if that character was well written, then people will like that character. Some of your readers will get attached to that character, and if you then try to decrease their importance, those readers will be mad.

Chris: And they can also start resenting the character that becomes more important. Setting clear expectations so that people don’t find their favorite character has been downgraded, is important. The advantage of having a single main character is then you can focus your attention on one person and focus on making the plot about that one person, and it’s all very complimentary. You get everybody attached to that person and then make the plot about them. It’s all very synergistic. 

So if you divide that up more by having two, basically co-protagonists, then you have to be a lot more careful in maintaining that or else people can get upset. This is what I feel like when I watch the BBC Sherlock and I just desperately want Watson to get more candy, but everything is about how cool Sherlock is, and I just start to hate Sherlock.

Oren: Yep. “And Watson was there”.  In general, you can promote a character from sidekick to co-protagonist. So you could start with protagonist and sidekick and then evolve that into co-protagonists a lot more easily than you can have co-protagonists and then try to change that into co-protagonist and major sidekick. Honestly, at that point, you would be better off giving the character you want to leave some kind of grand farewell. And then just having them leave the story instead of demoting them and then sticking around. 

Chris: You might get some people who are like, “Okay, that character is why I was reading so I’m gonna leave now”. But they won’t stick around and be resentful. I guess whatever your goals are. I would personally prefer, just set correct expectations and say goodbye rather than have a bunch of fans that hate me. 

Oren: You might lose a few readers, but you’ll have fewer one star reviews.

Chris, Oren: [Chuckle]

Oren: So the next thing that I would recommend once you’ve figured that out, is make sure that they are part of the same story. [Chuckles]

Chris: Yep. What we just talked about, consolidating your story, making it cohesive.

Oren: And that generally means making sure that they can both participate in whatever the activity of that story is. If it’s a demon hunting story, they should both be demon hunters. It’s possible to have secondary characters who are not demon hunters, but a co-protagonist or a major sidekick, probably not.

Chris: I was thinking of doing some Lord of the Rings fanfic, where it’s about Sam and Frodo, but Sam just stays at home.  

Oren: [Laughs] Yeah, and that’s the other thing is you typically want them to be in physical proximity to each other. It is much harder to have two main characters who are separated by distance. In a advanced technology or maybe an advanced enough magic setting, I’m not saying it’s impossible, if you have enough instant communication and the ability to interact over long distances, but man, is it hard and it is much harder if you don’t have that technology. Probably impossible to be perfectly honest. 

Chris: Going back to our demon hunters example, they both need a reason for collaborating in this demon hunting related plot. But for instance, if you didn’t want them to both be demon hunters, maybe one person is the person that the demons are going after. And the other person is a demon hunter. So they wanna protect that other person and use them as bait, maybe. 

But in those situations, you still need to make sure that other person who’s not the demon hunter has something to contribute. Maybe the demons are going after that person because that person is a scholar who has studied the history of how demons came into the world and knows the key to defeating them, for instance. So as long as they both have a reason to be engaged in these conflicts together and solve problems together, for the most part, then you should be good.

Oren: And this applies even if you aren’t talking about a action packed spec fic premise. If it’s a political story, you need both of your characters to be involved in politics in some way. It doesn’t really work to have one main character who is a politician and another main character who doesn’t pay attention to politics and never votes. That’s just not gonna work. 

Chris: Need to get some politics in this relationship. 

Oren: Speaking of politics in the relationship, one thing that you should also consider at the beginning is, what makes these characters interesting together? Some of this is just chemistry, which is the fact that their interactions are fun to read about, is typically what people mean when they say chemistry. 

It can mean romantic chemistry, it can mean a touching friendship, or it can mean a rivalry. They don’t like each other that much, or they have some beef that they have to work out. Those things are all fun to read, as opposed to two characters who exist in the same place and are polite to each other. That’s not really much. 

Chris: And I think they can have a lot of personal reasons to dislike each other as long as they have a compelling enough reason to work together. If they have something that makes it so they don’t want to be in the same room together, they just have to have a compelling enough motivation to overcome that. 

The other thing that I see, of course, is that people want there to be more antagonistic chemistry, but they just can’t come up with a reason. They have a hard time thinking of a reason why their characters would fight and so then they just randomly hate each other. 

Oren: Yeah… [Chuckles]

Chris: Or they just rub each other the wrong way. But you gotta think about that ahead a little bit. What exactly is it about their personalities that makes them rub each other the wrong way? Is one person very like, “I hate planning ahead ’cause I don’t wanna commit to anything. I just wanna do what I feel like in the moment and make sure to keep all of my options open” and the other person is like, “No, we need to have a schedule and we need to get on time everywhere”? That would be specific, different approaches that would clash with each other and create some of that rubbing each other the wrong way. Sometimes if you just try to wing it as you’re writing your draft, the characters seem to act out for no reason. 

Oren: Yeah, and if you’re looking for reasons why they might rub each other the wrong way, I would recommend the post: Nine Personality Clashes for Character Conflicts by Chris Winkle. 

Chris: [Chuckles]

Oren: It’s got a very lovely picture of two birds yelling at each other. [Chuckles]

Chris: Yeah, that was very cute. I think you found that picture. 

Oren: Yeah, I might have. It’s been a while, but it’s a good article and it’ll give you a lot of ideas. Ideas that are very helpful without going into the area where it just feels like these characters hate each other and have no reason to be together or are just mistreating each other so badly that it becomes unpleasant to read about.

Chris: Normally our recommendation for that is to basically give them conflicting goals, but if this is like a dynamic duo, so that you want them to be together solving problems together during the story, it is a little harder to give them conflicting goals. Now what you can have is a temporary alliance, like they both need to travel from Point A through dangerous territory to Point B. And they know they can survive better together, but they actually have different ideas for what they will do, that are in conflict, which they reach Point B. 

And then that way, their different goals can still create some conflict because they know that other person is gonna do something they don’t like and they’re trying to convince each other, or something. So you could have a situation like that, but, again, if they’re supposed to work together that much, it can be harder to give them conflicting goals in that situation. So you might rely more on personality clashes in order to create that antagonism. 

Oren: Okay, so those are like the best practices for creating your dynamic duo. There are also some common mistakes I’ve encountered that I would like to talk about. The one that I was not expecting, but that I have encountered several times now and is really irritating is when the characters interfere with each other. This is like a scene in a roleplaying game where the GM has put out a plot hook that’s clearly for one character and another character is like, “No, that’s my plot hook now”.

Chris: Is this because that character is the writer’s favorite? Is that why it happens? 

Oren: It can happen for that reason. Other times it makes less sense. The time that I saw most recently was in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, which has this really interesting social conflict story where Carlotta is working on this social manipulation that she’s doing, and it’s really important and cool. And then because another character, this guy named Montgomery, has this jealousy arc. Where he has to learn not to be a controlling asshole, he just calls in an NPC who unceremoniously ends the social manipulation arc, and we never got to see any conclusion. It just stopped. 

In that case, it’s hard for me to say that the writer liked this other guy more than they liked Carlotta. But in this case, for whatever reason, Carlotta’s material was sacrificed for Montgomery’s jealousy arc. And man, did it make me hate that character. I just wanted him out of the story so badly. 

Chris: Yeah, no, that would be very frustrating because, sounds like he took her agency away. 

Oren: And that’s not the only way it can happen. You can also have, in theory, you could have something like a wish-busting moment where one character takes away a cool item from another character and stuff like that. In arcs and other story material is the most common. That’s where it happens the most. 

Chris: That seems similar to spotlight stealing. Spotlight stealing on a very specific plot point, level. 

Oren: It’s a very specific kind of spotlight stealing, because with spotlight stealing, that can be anything that makes one character just seem a lot more important than the other one. Stuff like what we saw in Lirael, where it seemed like Sameth was gonna be important, but then once they finally meet up with each other, Sameth barely does anything. Lirael does everything. 

Chris: Well, actually, the dog does everything. [Laughs]

Oren: Yeah, that’s true. The dog does everything. 

Chris: I mean, Lirael gets two important roles and eventually we find some sort of title for Sameth, don’t we? But initially, he doesn’t get any of the magical roles we expect him to get. Lirael gets all of them and later he gets some kind of consolation prize.

Oren: Yeah, he makes a sword for her at some point. I had honestly forgotten that happened. I found out about it rereading the plot synopsis for this podcast. 

Chris: Lirael is just altogether a mess because neither of them have agency because there’s this “God dog” escorting them, on an escort quest, to get them to the end of the plot, because the writer clearly thought that was clever. But I do feel like, again, he’s given some consolation prize later, but it’s last minute at the end, he’s certainly not given the same level of development, or definitely not the same level of candy that Lirael gets. 

Oren: Yeah, so that’s a very broad form of stealing the spotlight, whereas interfering with each other, that one’s very specific. 

Chris: I will say that with Frodo and Sam, for instance. Frodo is just set as the more important character, and Sam is the sidekick. And so again, because those expectations are set, it’s okay for Frodo to have more of the spotlight than Sam does because we set that expectation in the beginning and we continue the expectation. So spotlight stealing happens when you deviate from the expectations that you set and what is rewarding to the audience.

Oren: Now in terms of dynamic duos that I think are worth imitating and I’ve tried to come up with a list that are from books just ’cause again, I feel like this is a slightly different situation in TV. So my favorite that I’ve read recently are two characters whose names I have trouble with. They are the main characters from The Mimicking of Known Successes, and I believe their names are Mossa and Pleiti. This is a Sherlock retelling, although you might not know it immediately. And I think Pleiti is the Watson character, and Mossa is the Sherlock character. One of them is one and one of them’s the other.  

Chris, Oren: [Chuckle]

Oren: And it’s basically what you were talking about earlier, where it’s watching the story and you’re begging, “Please give Watson some candy”. This is what would happen if you did that. It’s what if Sherlock and Watson were partners instead of Sherlock being a genius and Watson watching him be a genius.

Chris: [Chuckles] Definitely sounds like an improvement.

Oren: Yeah, I like it. 

Chris: How was that split up? What did Watson get that Watson doesn’t normally get? 

Oren: Okay, so the way that it works is that the Sherlock character is the eccentric weirdo who has big ideas and is their information compiler, more or less. Whereas the Watson character is the more action-oriented character. She is the one who gets things done and actually does a lot of the investigation legwork. So they have a fairly equal share of the spotlight.

 And of course she’s the one who remembers that they need to do non-investigative stuff. ‘Cause Sherlock is still the investigation-obsessed weirdo, that hasn’t changed. Maybe we need to go get medical attention before we run off after the weird space cat, stuff like that. And of course, they’re also lesbians on a gas giant, which is fun, but not actually the main important thing about them, in my opinion. 

Chris: How about ART and Murderbot? 

Oren: Yeah, that one was tough. ‘Cause I don’t like ART.

Chris: Yeah, I don’t like ART either.  

Chris, Oren: [Laugh]

Chris: But in the last work, Wells did finally nerf ART quite a bit by having ART load its consciousness into a smaller drone. And then they went off with the drone. So instead of having a huge ship that could just bully anybody, they had a drone that was not as powerful. So it wasn’t as grating.

Oren: Yeah, and again, similar to Frodo and Sam, ART and Murderbot have a very clear hero-sidekick relationship where ART is the sidekick. It’s an important sidekick, but it’s still a sidekick. Murderbot is the main character. It has a pretty good split. Again, Murderbot is the one doing all of the action stuff for the most part. ART’s drone does a little bit of action, but it’s fairly minimal, whereas ART is running a lot of the support stuff and compiling data. 

Honestly, it’s not that dissimilar from what I was just talking about with the Sherlock and Watson split. You see that a lot in these kinds of stories. I’m also a big fan of the Temeraire books and the two main characters there. Laurence and the dragon, Temeraire. 

Chris: Yeah. You got to have your animal companion, except for Temeraire talks.

Oren: Temeraire does talk. 

Chris: So not really an animal companion in the way that we talk about it being the pseudo-character. Temeraire is a full-on character. 

Oren: Yeah. Although Temeraire does still have some traits that you would associate with being an animal companion in that he’s very powerful and strong, but he’s also just, extremely earnest and trusting, which is a trait because every animal on a long enough timescale becomes a dog.  

Chris: [Laughs]

Oren: Temeraire is just not at all duplicitous or capable of really thinking in those terms, so Laurence has to protect Temeraire from his own trusting nature, that sort of thing. Those two, they go for the touching friendship angle of chemistry where they are just really good buddies for the whole story. Except for briefly when Laurence gets amnesia. ‘Cause that happened. 

Chris: Yeah, that happened.  

Oren: [Laughs] Hey guys, we’ve been doing this for a while. We’re kind of out of story. 

Chris: We ran out of ideas. How about if Laurence gets amnesia? 

Oren: [Laughs] But beyond that there, the relationship doesn’t change a whole lot. They have their initial bonding period, which honestly, we cheat because dragons magically bond to whoever feeds them first. So that was easy. But beyond that, their friendship is pretty set. It doesn’t really change a whole lot, but it is like a rock that the two characters can hold onto when they’re having their turbulent emotional issues, which happens to both of them as they go through different phases of the story.

Chris: So how important do you think banter is? 

Oren: I like banter a lot. For characters who are a little bit antagonistic, banter can be great fun.

Chris: I think the main thing is to make sure it’s banter and not one character being an asshole. 

Oren: If it’s just one character being rude to the other one and constantly making jokes at their expense or getting to pull one over on them ’cause they’re so clever, that’ll get grating real fast. 

Chris: I’ve seen a couple TV shows like this. So for instance, in The 4400, there’s a cop duo and it’s noticeable, one of them is a woman and one of them is a man. And man is just really mean constantly. And I’m trying to remember if he’s actually explicitly sexist or it just came off to me like he was sexist because he was giving her such a hard time.

Oren: I think it’s a little bit of both. I don’t think he makes any super overt, sexist remarks, but there is definitely a vein of, “Ha ha. Why are you taking this so seriously, lady? Do you not have a sense of humor, lady? Come on, lady”. 

Chris: And it felt very similar in Being Human, where we have a cop and a character that is an android, but also black. And so this white dude cop is supposed to be really skeptical and mean to this other character because he’s an android but it’s impossible for the viewer to ignore that he’s black and it really just looks like racism. Also just being an android, you could consider another form or something very similar, very akin to racism. 

Again, those types of stories assume that we will be on board with a character who is being mean because we identify with them. And so it reveals what audience they care about and expect to have, or that they just expect everybody to identify with that character because of their demographics. 

Oren: And to be clear, that absolutely works. It’s just narrowing your audience in a way that you very much don’t have to do. 

Chris: I have no doubt that there were people who either, just identified with the white guy in this scenario and liked him and was ready, like, “Oh, I know he’ll learn better”. And it’s like, okay. He probably would. I just have to not want him to die, first, to get through the show. So that makes some certain assumptions. 

I also think personally with the sexism example, that there are a lot of people who just have low expectations of the way that men behave socially and might just look at that and think that it’s normal. And that has changed over time, but especially when we get to generations that are older, their expectations for how men are supposed to behave towards other people can be lower.

Oren: I mean, it’s the issue of, the difference between an arc where the character eventually learns better, and one where that’s just the accepted way that they act, is hard to spot at the beginning. And you just have to ask the question: Is this worth that? Is it worth alienating a bunch of your potential audience so that you can have an arc where one of your characters learns to not be a jerk?

Chris: Now, there were not those exact same bigotry dynamics in Gideon the Ninth, but there were still power dynamics. So we’ve got Harrow and Gideon. And Gideon is an indentured servant who is not free, and Harrow has control over Gideon. Obviously everybody’s excited about space lesbians, and it’s natural that people were shipping them. But on the page, what’s happening is that Harrow has tons of power over Gideon and is also very mean to Gideon. So, why I was not a fan. 

Oren: Yeah, but it’s okay because Harrow eventually had an arc where she briefly questioned her magic powers and then decided actually her magic powers were awesome, and she was awesome for having them. 

Chris, Oren: [Laugh]

Chris: She was supposed to feel guilty about her magic powers, but it never felt that way.  

Oren: All right. With that, I think we will bring this episode of the “Mythcreants Dynamic Duo Podcast” to a close. 

Chris: If you enjoyed this podcast, please support us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants. 

Oren: And before we go, I want to thank a few of our existing patrons. First, there’s Callie MacLeod. Then there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week. [Outro Music]

Chris: This has been the Mythcreant Podcast. Opening and closing theme, The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Coulton.