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May 25 – Character Fit For Purpose

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

 

This is inspired by an idea shared on the Writing Excuses podcast. They did a wonderful series of shows about how to make a character more sympathetic without making them inhumanely good/evil. Check out the first of the shows.  

Conflict can be “Oh no! The world’s about to end! How do we stop it/escape?” or it can be “Oh no, my mother-in-law’s coming for the holidays and she’s insufferable”, or it can be “I need to do something I really don’t want to do because…”

One way to create sympathy for a main character and keep the conflict in the story, is to use the character’s abilities (or lack thereof) to show how they are a good fit, a mediocre fit, or a terrible fit for the challenges they face.

The Prompt

Resolve the Conflict In Your Story Based on Your Main Character’s Abilities

Tips

  • Your character can be a good fit for the challenges but hindered by circumstances (Superman and his need to keep his true identity hidden).
  • Your character can be a poor fit for the challenge he faces, but willing to give it a shot (Bilbo, in The Hobbit. He is certainly not the Burglar Gandalf claims him to be, but he gives his best to the adventure, in spite of being a poor fit for the life).
  • Your character is a reluctant hero. He has the skills and the opportunity, but doesn’t particularly want to be a hero (Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element — in fact, Bruce Willis in a lot of roles!). What inner conflict is stopping him from helping resolve the outer conflict? What will change his/her mind?
  • What if your character is really, really good at one thing and is suddenly thrust into a world/situation where all their skills mean nothing…at first? Can they adapt? Can they find a way to use their skills? Can they partner up with someone whose skills compliment their own? Can you find a way to let them use their existing skills in the end, so they don’t seem like a pathetic character?
  • What if your character is the sweetheart who glues together an otherwise incompatible team of highly skilled, irascible experts?
  • Make us root for or against a character by showing how they employ their talents (or fail to).

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

3 thoughts on “May 25 – Character Fit For Purpose”

  1. OK. I’ done, with my post-apocalyptic isolated social animal looking for friends.

    A stretch because I didn’t wholly understand what i was doing. And I gave it a go!

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