[Link] How NOT to Create a Protagonist

by Rob Bignell

You can have the greatest plot in the world, discuss a deep, universal theme, and write crisp, taut sentences, but if the reader can’t connect to your protagonist, the story will fall flat. Simply put, you always must create a protagonist the reader will root for.

Too often aspiring authors trip up on that challenge. Many seem content to simply provide meaningless details – like the protagonist’s height, hairstyle, school grades – believing that makes the character “real.” And real means likable, right? And likeable means a connection, correct?

Not quite.

Uninspiring details aren’t the only way writers can stumble with their protagonist. To avoid creating a poorly written main character – that is, one who isn’t real – watch for these seven pitfalls…

Never solves a problem

A main character who never attempts to solve the story’s central problem usually comes off as dull. Worse, if the character spends the whole book merely ruminating about how the problem is hopeless, he’ll come off as whiny.

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2017/08/19/how-not-to-create-a-protagonist/

[Link] Establish characters’ intentions in every scene

by Rob Bignell

Every time you start a story, you want to quickly establish a problem for the main character to solve and their intention of solving it. Maybe a hacked up dead body is found, and a detective intends to bring the murderer to justice. Possibly a divorced woman who’s been by her herself for the past five years sees a man she’s interested in and decides to meet him. Perhaps a starship captain finds a far-flung colony where his brother lived has been destroyed by some unknown force.

Regardless of the genre, as the story progresses, the main characters’ intentions must be established at the beginning of each scene and then played out. In fact, that’s true of every significant character in your tale.

Characters’ intentions drive your plot. When they are the focus of your writing, your story has action, tension and suspense because some characters will oppose and even temporarily thwart your story’s protagonist. The consequences of that action sets up the next scene. When those intentions aren’t the focus, the story drifts with irrelevant scenes, and character development suffers.

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2017/08/27/establish-characters-intentions-in-every-scene/

[Link] Don’t fully commit protagonist in opening scene

by Rob Bignell

Typically when a story starts, there is an out-of-whack event, an upsetting of the status quo that the main character must deal with. How the main character addresses this event forms the bulk of the story’s plot.

Sometimes, though, the main character is reluctant to act. That is, he is not fully committed to resolving the issue.

For example, what if our protagonist comes to believe that something bad has happened to a neighbor, as she mysteriously hasn’t been seen for days. He files a report with the police and decides he’s washed his hands of it, has fulfilled his civic responsibility.

To ensure we have a story, though, something must occur that convinces the main character to become fully committed.

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2016/11/25/dont-fully-commit-protagonist-in-opening-scene/

[Link] Understand Story Structure to Develop Your Novel Idea

by Rob Bignell

When writers come up with a great story idea but don’t know how to develop it, usually the problem is one of plotting.

Understanding story structure – i.e. plot – would be extremely helpful in developing their story. For example, they might realize that their kernel of an idea really is a great concept for a scene but not for an entire story. Knowing how that scene might fit into a full story would allow them to start writing.

Many fiction writers eschew the idea of following any general structure, believing that the story should grow organically, that following some kind of blueprint would result in tales that are all the same, like so many ticky-tacky houses in a cheap suburban development. But understanding story structure isn’t about following a blueprint. Instead, it’s like knowing the basic rules of structural engineering in construction. If you don’t understand tensile reinforcement, loading conditions, and distribution reinforcement, your building probably will be substandard and collapse. Likewise, if you don’t understand plot’s relationship to the other elements of a story, the parts of a plot, and conflict’s role in storytelling, your story probably will be substandard and quickly fall apart. And just as those engineering rules can lead to an infinite variety of structures, from pole sheds and 2-bedroom homes to airport terminals and skyscrapers, so the general rules of plotting can lead to an infinite variety of stories, from epic poetry and novels to short stories and screenplays.

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2024/01/13/understand-story-structure-to-develop-your-novel-idea/

[Link] Don’t Let Perfectionism Strangle Your Creativity

by Rob Bignell

Ever hit a moment of frustration when you just can’t seem to get a sentence or a passage to sound right? The result is a brain freeze. You keep working at the line, though, only to suffer through the penning of seemingly even worse lines or passages.

The problem likely is that you are overly judgmental of your own work. To a degree, that is a good thing, as it means you hold your writing to a high standard, and the result is you then produce above average pieces.

If you produce at all, of course…

Taken to an extreme, perfectionism can lead you to never finish a task through constant rewriting, procrastination, or not even writing at all.

Fortunately, there are a lot of ways you can overcome perfectionistic tendencies when writing:

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2023/05/04/dont-let-perfectionism-strangle-your-creativity/

[Link] Let Your Characters Write Their Story. They Actually Know What You Want To Say.

by Rob Bignell

Novelist Truman Capote once quipped, “You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.”

Sometimes when writing, you’ll feel as if your characters are directing and controlling their own fate rather than you being the one who shapes them. All of them seem to tell you what they’ll say and do. Sometimes their choices may even startle you!

Read the full article: https://inventingrealityediting.com/2023/05/02/let-your-characters-write-their-story-they-actually-know-what-you-want-to-say/