Us writers love to introduce beautiful characters. It’s poetic and tugs at our heartstrings when a dashing cowboy struts into the scene, and get all melty when the heroine winks while biting her lip. Both are beautiful.

But the secretary is beautiful too, and the side character pumping iron at the gym. The villain is devilishly handsome, and the random guy who shows up for five minutes to betray the secret in act 3 is described as “breathless.”