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What is the merrit of a sidekick and how can the charactor advance the storyline?

Justme

Banned
I've been looking at several versions of the sidekick from The Cisco kid to Spock of Star Trek and I've noticed several ways that the character not only personalizes the primary character, but also brings a warmer, human element into the story. I was wondering just how much this character should play in the story and still remain a socondary personality? If the focus were placed on this individual too much or not enough, could the story become bogged down or become too thin to make the heroes or anti-heroes believable?
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
To me, the side kick is used to complement the protagonist, to exemplify some of the traits the protagonist doesn't have. At their foundation Kirk and Spock are opposites. Kirk is emotion, and obviously Spock is logic. Batman is dark and stern and Robin is light and exuberant.

You can place as much or as little focus on them as the story demands. For example, Sherlock Holms, Sherlock is the protagonist and Watson is the sidekick, and if I remember right, the series of books is told with Watson being the point of view character, so there's huge focus on Watson. To Kill a Mockingbird, the protagonist is Atticus Finch but the story's point of view character is his daughter, Scout.
 
When I write I don't think of them as 'The sidekick'. My story is about the Hero, but my sidekick has a story too. He/she is a character of his/her own. I wrote a short-story once from the POV of the 'sidekick' and it helped me. You can give them contrasting personalities.
The sidekick is a coward, the hero is brave
But the Hero is cold and distant
The sidekick is warm and compassionate, so together they level things out.

As for focus if the 'sidekick' is a well rounded character, who must have a goal of their own, then I don't believe a story could become bogged down no. I mean, we want to know about the MC. It's no good having a book about a hero when all we see is the sidekick, but if you mean part of the book with seperate missions that's fine.
 

Ravana

Istar
The best use for a sidekick is to have someone available to keep your plot moving forward when you become utterly sick of your MC and decide to kill him off.

No, really, I'm serious. Seen it done before. Besides, it also helps overcome the classic problem of readers "knowing" the main character will always survive just because he's the main character. You whack your MC two-thirds of the way through your story, and you'll have people's attentions nailed. All calculation goes out the window: they won't have any idea what you're going to do next. The tricky part here is to be able to maintain the sidekick in his role until it comes time for him to take center stage.

Ask yourself this: the first time you were halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring, did you for one minute imagine that it would come around to a point where you'd be following Frodo (MC) and Sam (prototypical sidekick) in one group, Merry (shin kick) and Pippin (kickstand) in a second, Aragorn (MC#3), Legolas and Gimli (quota hires) in a third, and Boromir (going that way anyway) and Gandalf (MC#2) would be dead–precisely the situation The Two Towers began with? After Moria… nobody was safe. Anything could happen.

Of course, it didn't: Gandalf was resurrected, and the only persons of any importance to die after that were Théoden and Denethor, both of whom were pretty well set up as doomed from the outset, plus some bad guys. (Hope I didn't just spoil things for anybody.…) But you didn't know that for sure the first time through (or the first time through the movies, for those who hadn't read the books by then), unless someone told you in advance. Me, I'm still kinda hoping that some day when I'm re-reading them for the umpteenth-plus-one time, Frodo will die in Mordor and Sam has to complete the quest alone.

Anyway: the second best use for a sidekick is for the MC to have someone to talk to, so that you don't have to have the MC going around all the time explaining things to himself in internal dialogue…. :p

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I'm always a bit wary about pairings that are too complementary; it seems the universe shouldn't produce that many successful "odd couples." They can't be identical, as that would make having two separate characters largely pointless (and which is equally improbable), but in my mind similarities should far outweigh differences, or else you have trouble explaining why the two of them can stand one another's company.
 
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