I read a short article in last month's Writer's Digest about how to make write more engaging and intriguing protagonists. The article was titled Craft Your Character's Transformations and it was written by Jeff Gerke. Not a bad article, far better than the preceding article which I stopped reading after just the second sentence, 4 Rules for Sci-Fi & Fantasy Protagonists (seriously, how many werewolf stories can there be?), but one line caught my eye and stuck with me.
Included in the final few passages, after describing how protagonists should go through an inner journey that takes them from an Initial Condition (or knot) through Inciting Event, Escalation, Moment of Truth to Final State, he writes how a writer should think about their characters.
"When you're concepting your character, you might be tempted to think only about who a character is. But to keep your characters interesting you must also think about what your character can become. Given this starting point, this temperament, and these layers, how will this character respond when shown she's wrong or dysfunctional in some way and offered a better alternative. People don't like to change. It's so much easier to stay as we are, even if it's hurting us. In fiction, as in life, people resist change."
Notwithstanding the fact that he used a word like "concepting" to describe creating a character, the author writes something quite poignant in those first two sentences. There is a change similar to the "Inner Journey" I outlined above for my character in the novel I'm currently completing, On the Edge. How much more exciting might that inner journey have been had I started with the idea of who my character can become rather than who he is. Something to remember for my editing.
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