Main Character Driven

Um, not the best title, but it matches my other two blogs this month that have formed a mini-theme for me as I work through some feedback about my WIP.

To refresh: A few weeks ago I got some unexpected, yet very welcomed feedback and most of it was centered around my main character. My, er, boring main character. Okay, not a direct quote, but that’s the gist.

So I’ve already scoured my writing books for hints on creating empathy, and then spent some time thinking about personality. Now that I’ve been thinking about this one character for days and days, I’m going deeper still.

Drive. Motivation. Compulsion.

Back in June, I participated in a Writer’s Digest University webcast from children’s book editor Cheryl Klein. One of the many, many tidbits I picked up was this nifty equation:

Plotting = Compulsion + Obstacles

And drawing from two of the biggest book series out there, Ms. Klein noted that Harry Potter’s compulsion was to save people and Katniss Everdeen’s (Hunger Games) compulsion was to survive. Take those very strong compulsions and pair them with some very great obstacles, we get a whole lot of very good plotting.

So how hard can it be? Pick a compulsion and run with it already!

Yeah, if it were easy, we’d all have amazing main characters. I’ve toyed with a few ideas, and my character gets stronger (and more compelling!) with each brainstorming session and rewrite.

This week I’ve been focused on the compulsion part of the equation and next thing I’m hitting is the obstacles portion. Does my character care enough to jump, climb, scramble, claw up those obstacles? Can she do it? Have I equipped her? Or worse: does she merely skip over the obstacles because they aren’t nearly troublesome enough?

Oh, the thoughts left to be thunk.