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whether your intent is to portray someone real or someone heroic. To make either type matter to your readers, you need only find in your real human being what is strong, and in your strong human being what is real. Even greatness can be signaled from the outset.
    How do you find the strong or human qualities in your protagonist? What will be most effective to portray? The answer to those questions lies in you, the author. What is forgivably human to you? What stirs your respect? That is where to start.
    Next, when will you show the readers those qualities in your hero? Later on? That is too late. Too many manuscripts begin at a distance from their protagonists, as if opening with a long shot like in a movie. That's a shame. Why keep readers at arm's length?
    Novels are unique among art forms in their intimacy. They can take us inside a character's heart and mind right away. And that is where your readers want to be. Go there immediately. And when you do, show us what your hero is made of. If you accomplish that, then the job of winning us over is done.
    Now comes the fun part: spinning a story that won't let us go.
    The heroes of popular series are memorable, but quick: Who's the most unforgettable sidekick in contemporary fiction? Takes some thought, doesn't it? Dr. Watson comes easily to mind; perhaps also Sancho Panza or Paul Drake? After that it's easier to think of sidekicks from movies or comic books.
    Same question for femmes fatales. Not so easy, is it? Conjuring up the names of Brigid O'Shaughnessy in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930) or Carmen Sternwood in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) tests the depth of your trivia knowledge. Maybe you thought of Justine in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (19571960)? Points to you—but what about contemporary fiction? Do you recall the name of Lyra Belacqua's mother in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (1995)? (It's Mrs. Coulter.) Other femmes fatales?
    We could issue the same challenge with respect to the great villains of contemporary literature. After Hannibal Lecter, who is there?
    Come to that, how many secondary characters of any type stick in your mind from the fiction you've read in the last year? Do you read chic lit? Have you ever felt that the gaggle of sassy girlfriends in one is pretty much the same as in the rest? How about killers and assassins? Do many of them seem to you stamped from the same mold? How about children? Do precocious kids in novels make you want to gag?
    If so, you see my point. Secondary characters in published fiction often are weak.
    Supporting players in manuscripts submitted to my agency are too often forgettable, as well. They walk on and walk off, making no particular impression. What wasted opportunities, in my opinion, especially when you consider that secondary characters aren't born, they're built. So, how can you construct a secondary character whom readers will never forget?
    SPECIAL
    Suppose you want a character to be special. You want this character to have stature, allure, or a significant history with your protagonist. How is that effect achieved? A look at examples of some contemporary femmes fatales may help us out.
    James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia (1987) probably is the finest noir novel of our time. It's the rich, dark, complex, and highly layered story of a 1940s Los Angeles police detective, Bucky Bleichert, who becomes obsessed with a murder victim, Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia by the press. Her murder was grisly, the torture beforehand gruesome, and the cast of suspects a roster of corruption. Central to the story, however, is Bucky's fixation on the Black Dahlia. She was beautiful in life, and highly promiscuous, but why is Bucky haunted by this victim over any other?
    That, in a way, is the eternal problem of making a character singular. Is there any description of beauty so effective that it would make anyone swoon? Is there a sexual allure that can seduce everyone who opens a