A Beginner's Error in Writing

An error I've made and also seen in the work of other's is to have a tag-along character. This is a character, often the protagonist's husband or wife, who is there strictly to watch the action and comment on the protagonist's doings.

Because they don't actually do anything they are hard for the reader to sympathize with or even remember. There are two solutions to this. One is to have other character stay home and simply have the main character think about them. The other, obviously, is to give the tag-along something of his or her own to do. This doesn't mean the tag-along has to go fight the bad guys but he or or she should be portrayed as acting somewhat on their own.

A good example of a well done secondary character is Abigail Adams in the musical 1776. She does not play a part in writing the US Declaration of Independence, something that would be historically and culturally inaccurate, but neither does she passively admire her husband or hesitate to bother him for more detail on what do when he casually suggests that she and her friends manufacture salt peter without explaining how they should do so.