Writers Block Article – Defining the Protagonist.
There is one primary question we must ask and answer
throughout every aspect of a story. Why do we care? (we, you. I, they, you get
my drift.) This must be asked in parts. These parts are as follows.
1: Why do we care about these characters?
2: Why do we care about this story?
3: Why do we care about this chapter / paragraph / sentence
/ WORD?
If we don’t care, we don’t need it. If it’s useless
babble that repeats and repeats and repeats the same thing over and over or is
word filler that doesn’t ascertain to your terrain then CUT IT.
Today however we’re just going to discuss character building
and defining.
Building your
character to make people CARE. If they love or hate them they must CARE.
Rule one to rule one, All rules that
apply to your main characters apply to your sub characters.
If you’re unsure on building a specific character be it your
first, millionth, main or sub, Put
yourself in their shoes. Become them. When you become them you learn to think
like them. Who are they and in turn who are you? Are you bad good or walk that
fine middle line? Your actions or your characters actions define who they are
in a story. Remember to be emotional. Be passionate. Feel
everything intensely even if your character is laid back and mellow. If you
know and feel what they do then you will not just understand how they react
then you won’t get stuck near as often. If he’s real mellow and laid back, PROVE IT- FEEL IT – EXPLAIN IT or as we
like to say in the show me state SHOW IT.
Make them special unto themselves. Make sure there is a
reason for every action and reaction your character makes for them. Every
single person is so different. Be
careful not to make your characters all too similar where each would have
the same response in a given situation. If everyone is afraid of spiders (reacts the same to different events, loves
the same, talks the same, eats the same, has the same smirk, the same blazing
intense eyes) your readers won’t care about them as much because they’re all
the same. If everyone is cut like Fabio what makes one guy look better than
another?
Jill may run screaming from the spider, Jack may crush, Jane
may pick up and let it crawl all over her. But if Jane isn’t freaked out by the
spider, why does she freak out so easily over Jack jumping out of the corner
and yelling boo? If your character has a strong personality you must not drastically change the
characters personality unless your character is growing up and redefining their
persona. Jill may start out
horrified of spiders. Then John comes along and sits her down and shows her his
pet tarantula and how sweet the thing is. How it tickles so gently when it
crawls, how affectionate it is and loves to be pet. Maybe the spider saves her
life. Then by the end of the story she may just have a new respect for spiders
and now due to a personal character growth and development, is no longer afraid
of spiders. Not every character will change and develop but you want at the
very least your main protagonist to grow and develop. Think of it as a coming
of age journey. Good and bad happens, we live, we love, we hurt, we learn we
change. If they do not change we risk our readers feeling jipped. They got so
invested with this girl who was afraid of spiders, she was shown how wonderful
they are, that they eat the mosquitos they hate so much, they saved her life
and by the end of the book she still runs screaming from a daddy long legs.
What was the point? Why did they get invested? Why do they care?
Teach our characters
things. Have Jill teach Jack how to cook. Have her teach him how to kiss.
This is a part of growth development. This attaches your readers to your
characters because we all learn every day. Plus if your characters are too
perfect, people will actually care much less than they would a flawed
character, even one who can’t seem to get the hang of tying their shoes no
matter how hard they try.
Now every character
needs two things.
1: GOALS / WANTS If
your character isn’t striving to achieve anything, be it to date the super
model or to tie his shoes on his own one day, readers attention span tends to
drift off. So ask, what do they WANT? Ask
this many times. Ask this as the story whole, ask this as the chapter section,
the paragraph, the sentence. Make your characters want. We all want so your
characters should too. Even if they’re rich and have a perfect love life, they
must want for something. Even if it’s a glass of water, they must want. WHAT IS THE GOAL?
“But Jace, how do I know if what the character wants is what
my readers would want them to want?”
There is such a tricky line in writing for yourself and yet
writing for your audience. I say this. Write
for yourself but live for the readers. There are a billion stories in the
world and that’s a low ball estimate. The shitty thing is all main plots have
already been written. The difference is YOUR
VOICE. (we’ll get to that more later) As long as the story speaks to you
and you feel that character and you understand that character, their needs,
desires, pet peeves and reason for being, so will your reader.
2: Adversaries and
Nemesis. There must always be a challenge be it plot driven or character
driven, meaning they could have an evil villainous enemy or maybe it’s a rival,
someone they’re always competing against even if they’re friends. It could even
be a non-character. Let’s say my character is conspiracy nut, well his enemy is
gonna be the government. Let’s say he’s a rock climber, his adversary is Mount
Everest and every time he tries to climb something goes terribly wrong. Maybe
they just can’t pay the bills. They need
something to challenge them, something to contradict their every move, to make
things hard. They need fate to slap them down every time they get close to
their goal. It’s difficult to actually torture your characters too much. Turn
them into emotional wrecks, beat them down, abuse them, use them, you can even
kill them. The more struggle a character goes through the more people grow
attached. We all struggle and we all have hardships. If your character has no hardships then how can the reader relate to
them?
Now there is a point where you can bore your readers by
this. If you have a character with bad guys after him and he keeps getting the
shit beat out of him every other day, they begin to expect it and get tired of
it. So your character getting jumped every other page by a gang of thugs is
going to get old. Mix it up. They get jumped, then the nurse in the hospital thinks
he lives a bad life so he doesn’t deserve his pain meds, then he gets out and
the cops are on his ass instead of the thugs. Bad things can happen around
every corner but it shouldn’t be the same event rewritten in a hundred
different ways. You can have the same type of incident multiple times but it
must be changed up.
“But Jace, my story is about a boxer and going through
different boxing matches. How do I keep from repeating the same event in
different ways?”
I’m going to add something outside of bad guys enemies and
challenges, let’s add sex to this. “My story is erotic. How do I keep it mixed
up and interesting when I have fifteen sex scenes in one book?”
There are different methods. One way I’m going to discuss to
me is the simplest and one of the most intriguing and effective. Teasers. One scene starts off with the
first half of the match or sex scene where they’re getting really heavy into
it, it’s getting real hot, then bam. CUT
SCENE. Next try starting out your boxing match at the start of a scene
already in the fight or already screwing each other’s brains out. You can do
the last segment of the scene starting on the first line of the chap. “Chapter
three: Jill moaned loudly as the orgasm ripped through her body and Jack
collapsed on top of her.” “Chapter three: Pulling his fist back, John landed
the blow to end it all square on Jack’s jaw, knocking him out cold.” I
recommend always starting or ending, don’t just show the middle with no climax
in any capacity. This tactic when done properly is very intense and instigates
more questions from the reader, asking who what when how where and omfg did
that just happen?! I have to read more so I know! An orgasm is great but done
fifteen times in a row, meh how can each time be the best ever? The best part
of a sex scene is the climax yes but not always an orgasmic climax.
If you liked this and would like to see more, check out the
writer’s block at Ambrosia Arts
No comments:
Post a Comment