2 Tips to Write More Realistic Supporting Characters

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Yes your story should revolve around main characters but your supporting characters be round too. 

Your readers should remember your secondary characters. Give readers someone to love, loathe, laugh with, etc. Friends, relatives, mentors, bosses, girlfriends, housemates, classmates, you name it.

Supporting characters should affect your primary characters and the story arc.

How do you build supporting characters that help your primary characters?

Here are some things that I've noticed from the authors that I've worked with

Give Your Supporting Character Their Own Goals

The plot follows the main character, but not the world.

Supporting characters often impact society or the main character's inner world.

Give secondary characters depth. What's their goal? What's stopping them?

What's their relationship to the main character?

Continue digging. What frightens your characters?

What delights them? Avoiding work? Do they love adventures?

What do they do on Friday nights: party or chill?

These sound like questions you'd ask your primary character, and you would.

First, treat them as the main character, but tone it down.

You don't need to show us their entire lives, only the parts that illustrate their characters,

affect the story, and influence the main character.

Make Your Characters Unique with Their Dialogue

What do they say? Do they talk a mile a minute?  Or do they speak when spoken to?

Dialogue is the best form of character development.

Use idiosyncrasies, stutters, slurs, shouts, whispers, and catchphrases. Dialogue conveys emotions.

Characters' dialogue tells much about them.

Let each character talk in a certain manner when talking to create

unique speech patterns. Your readers will always know who's speaking.

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Supporting characters let you incorporate different themes and lessons into your novel. Another character can indicate compassion, for example.

Fully utilize characters. Don't just include them so your main character has company. First, give them an objective. You can send characters on their own individual journeys 

Readers will recognize their strengths, shortcomings, and choices of the supporting characters and this will add more layers and nuance to your story. Readers will get more invested in the main character and his or her story by default.