Naomi Dawn Musch

They say that stories are generally plot driven or character driven. If you are writing a series with a reappearing character, then that character had better be a driving force, by personality and destiny.

The biggest mistake I made in writing the first book in my series was in my first draft. I created a passive character, a character that responded to things happening to her, but not a character that made things happen. Fortunately however, I saw the mistake and corrected it. My protagonist Colette became a woman of determination and choices, even though she sometimes chose wrong -- in fact -- her wrong choice encompassed the theme of the book. But it got things going.

Choosing a character for one book or many takes a great deal of consideration, probably more consideration than any other part of writing the story. While this may seem obvious, it's amazing how many writers still produce protagonists who walk through the pages of their books like puppets rather than people. After only one or two volumes, they are flat, predictable, and utterly forgettable.

PERSONALITY

Therefore, your main character has to be interesting. He should also be decisive, at least eventually. He needs to be involved relationally to all the other characters he encounters. His humanness requires that he has flaws -- maybe lots of them -- and yet we need to find in him some redeeming qualities also. He can be reasonably heroic, or pure trouble with a soft spot and some charm.

GROWTH

If you're writing a series with a continuing character or characters, they must grow. They cannot, cannot remain stagnant. Their story arc is just as ongoing in the drama of the series as our own growth patterns are to our real lives. To create character arc, you need to reveal inner turmoil. The inner turmoil must produce growth or at points, regression -- but ultimately growth. This is important even if the character only appears in one book. A protagonist with no personal story arc has nothing worthwhile to say and does not move the story forward in a satisfying way.

INTERNAL CONFLICT

It is equally important that your main character reveal his or her inner turmoil from a very deep point of view. Deep POV is much talked about everywhere these days, yet it's easy to slip out of it into telling. Telling words like "saw" or "felt" and the use of be-verbs "is", "was", "are", "were", etc. prevent readers from attaching strongly to your character, something you don't want to happen, even if he isn't the main character for the entire series. Keeping in deep POV brings the character to life so that he'll go on living in the reader's imagination instead of them leaving him stuck in the pages of a book.

IDENTIFYING INTEREST

Ultimately when choosing a character for one novel or many, you want individuality honed in a way both you and your readers identify with. Your protagonist may be a Russian spy, a native princess, president of the Smithtown Ladies' Pie Society, or an evil enchantress. But no matter who or what they are, like us, they need to have dreams, goals, and ideals.They need to be vulnerable at some times and strong at others. Readers should be able to cry with them or exult with them, and sometimes they should want to shout at them. If you've taken time to create provoking characters who have something, they will.

Write on!

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