206: Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Main Character

 

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Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Main Character

Welcome to Your Big Creative Life, a podcast for writers and creatives that helps you live your best big creative life, whatever that means for you. I'm Katie Wolf, a writer, book editor, and creator. Join me every week for tips and discussion on writing, mindset, up leveling your life, and anything and everything that will help you achieve your big creative dreams. Hi friend, welcome to Big Creative Life Podcast. Thank you for being here. We're going to talk about characters today. We haven't done an episode talking about characters in a while. Main character or characters, if you have multiple main characters in your book, that's fine. But before we do, I wanted to just share a little writing update. I've been working on a pacing edit for my book. I have an agent and I'm really hoping that this book will be out on submission soon, which I am like a broken record at this point on this podcast. Sorry, y'all. I really keep thinking we're so close, but it just takes a little bit longer. Everything always takes longer than I think it will. And so, I've been working on a pacing edit that involves moving a couple of scenes around and I'm halfway done. I spent some time on it yesterday. Just basically moving a couple of things around in order to make sure that there's enough momentum in the early pages and kind of like setting on setting the characters on this course that they're going to be this journey of investigating things sooner.

And I have a couple of other little tweaks to make. There's one character who has how do I say this? A bit of an inconsistency maybe in how they are responding to another character. And so I need to just go through and check all of their interactions to make sure that it feels consistent. So I'm working on that. Well, I will be, I haven't started that part yet. But I'm about halfway done. It's not going to take me much longer. I really think my plan is, it's Wednesday as I'm recording this, Thursday I'm going to like finish it. And also what was fun yesterday, I did a writing blog. I did like a day in the life and vlogged it for YouTube. I'm putting it on my personal YouTube. So, the YouTube that I have for the podcast and for the writing account is Katie Wolf Writes, which is the same thing as Instagram and TikTok, the same handle. But I also have the Katie Wolf, which is like my personal account and my author account. So, if you want to follow me on Instagram and TikTok at the Katie Wolf, you can see that. And I'm also on YouTube. So, I think I'm going to put the vlog on the Katie Wolf account. It's hard to do a vlog that lasts a full day. I didn't do a very good job. I always think I record so much footage. And then I get it to the end of the day, and I edit it down and it's like 6 minutes. Like, it's just hard because I'm so used to doing short form content that doing a long video for YouTube is... It's just new. But it is fun. And I talked a lot in that video about how I was procrastinating yesterday, but at least I got half of it done. And of course, it wasn't as bad once I got done with it. So, you can check that out if you want.

But, okay, I want to get into some questions in this episode that I think are important for you as the author to be able to answer about your main character. I will say main character. I'll just keep it singular in this book. But like I said earlier, if you have, you know, if you're writing a dual point of view novel and you feel like both of those people are your main character, then main characters, then obviously you could do this exercise for both characters, but just to keep it simple, I'll talk about one main character. Now, an important little disclaimer or reminder here. The way that I suggest you approach the writing process is to focus on getting the rough draft out first before you go back to edit and make changes and like really make the book solid, okay? It's not wrong to do it differently. Of course you can, but that's just the approach that I recommend. So, if you are getting the rough draft out right now, your character might be a bit flat. You might not be fully able to articulate answers to all of these questions. And that's okay. Maybe it's something you can kind of put a pin in the back of your head, like, oh, this is something I need to really make sure that comes through strongly in revision when you are really working on making the book solid. I do think some of these questions are more important to answer though, just like overall for the structure and the story. So I'll touch on that when I get to that, those one or two questions. But okay, let's dive in. Number one, a question that is important for you to be able to answer.

How would you describe your main character if someone asked you to? If you were sitting down with a friend and they were like, oh, you're writing a book? That's so cool. What's the book about? What is your main character like? Tell me about your main character. How would you answer that? I am not saying that you have to have the perfect social media friendly, like 2 sentence pitch of your character down. It doesn't have to be perfectly worded or articulated, but can you at least, do you at least have some way to answer that question? Pretend that I'm asking you right now, hey, author, you're writing this book. Tell me about your main character. Describe them to me. If your instinct is to just tell me about their physical appearance, I want you to go deeper than that. Because yes, physical appearance is a component of a character. That can certainly be important. But remember that that's not the only thing that's important. And also, that's going to vary, even the importance of that will vary depending on your writing style. I mean, I'm sure that you can think about this from books that you've read. Like some authors place a lot of importance on the physical appearance of their character. They describe their main character in detail, what they look like, what they're wearing, their hair, their skin, their eyes, et cetera. And some others don't. So even that alone is not like a super important thing that you really have to dial in and be able to tell to the reader. But just generally speaking, like how would you describe this person?

Okay, question #2. What is their motivation slash goal in the book? What are they working towards? Now, a couple of minutes ago, I mentioned that some of these questions are going to be more important to answer, even if you are on the first draft. And I think this is one of those. Because if you, here's the issue at how this relates to the plot. If you have a character who is very passive, wants nothing, no goal, is not really working towards anything, they're going to feel extremely flat and passive, and they're going to lack agency, and that's usually a problem for the story overall. We want characters who are working towards something, who have something that is motivating them, something, yeah, just a goal. And it can be an internal goal, something that they have internal motivation for. It can be an external thing. You can have multiple motivations or goals for your main character. And they don't have to be anything big. They don't have to be an epic. rescue my sister from the clutches of this evil villain. It doesn't have to be save my kingdom from ruin. It doesn't have to be anything major. It can, that's great, but it can also be something so small. It can be get a promotion at work. It can be overcome some mental health struggle, right? It's not, it doesn't always have to be earth-shattering life or death kind of thing that they want or they're working towards.

And maybe there are multiple things, like I mentioned, maybe there's something to do with a subplot, like a romantic subplot where they are starting to develop feelings for someone and they want to see that relationship through, but then they're also dealing with something with work and they're also dealing with something with their family of origin. And so there can be multiple things, but the point is just being aware of that, especially in the first draft, I think is important. And this next question kind of ties into that as well. Question 3 is what is in the way of them getting what they want? And the reason that these two questions are really important is, again, it deals with the plot, and it also impacts the conflict in the story. Because that's what conflict is. Your main character wants something, and something is preventing them from getting that thing that they want. There's something standing in their way of it. This can be inner conflict, it can be external conflict, whatever. Let's say that you have, just as an example, let's say that you have a character who is It's not, you're not writing a romance book.

So, the romance isn't like the main focus of the story, but maybe you have a romantic subplot and your main character wants to pursue a romantic relationship with someone, with the love interest in your book. But they have a lot of baggage from previous relationships. Maybe they were cheated on, maybe they just went through a horrible breakup, maybe their ex died. I mean, I don't know, it can be massive or it can just be like, oh, they have trouble trusting because of how they grew up or something. I mean, that's still massive as well, but you know what I'm saying. It can be all; it can be all kinds of things. So, they can want to pursue a romantic relationship, but this thing that they haven't really processed yet or dealt with is standing in the way of them getting what they want. So that's something that they're going to have to work on in the book. That's something that they're going to have to overcome to realize, hey, I can get back out there. I can date. I can pursue this love interest and feel safe and trust again. Like that is a big thing that they're going to have to work on in the book. So there's conflict internally and maybe externally with that love interest character that they're working on those things. It's an obstacle that prevents this person from getting what they want. So that's a smaller example. You can see it's not fight of good and evil, earth-shattering kind of conflict. or thing that's standing in their way. But there has to be something because that's where conflict comes from.

And conflict is essential in any genre. Even if you are writing a very small, quiet, low-stakes book, there still has to be something for the characters to overcome. Otherwise, there's no conflict, there's no momentum, there's no growth, it's just flat. Even if you are writing very literary fiction that is more focused on characters and that you still need to have that. Again, can be low stakes conflict, but still we need conflict. It's just essential for fiction. It's essential for plot. It's essential for pacing and character development. So we really need some of that in the book. Okay, question #4. This is circling kind of similar to question one, but a little bit different. What are their strengths and weaknesses? So When you answer question one, like, would you be able to, how would you describe your main character? You might get into their backstory. You might get into their job that they do. You might get into, oh, they have two kids or they have a sister and a brother. They grew up here. Their childhood was like this. Here are their interests and their hobbies. all of that kind of stuff, right? And that's all great. That all is important for character development work. But in this question specifically, I want you to touch on their strengths and their weaknesses, because both of those are essential to have complex, strong characters on the page, no matter the genre. Okay, strengths, because you can't have a character who's just can't handle anything and has no assets and is like a fully, fully, absolutely terrible person in all aspects.

And you also need to have weaknesses because you can't, no one likes to read about perfect characters because there's nowhere for them to go. There's no, if they're perfect, they handle every situation brilliantly. They never make a wrong decision. They're just like the perfect person. There's nowhere for them to grow. They're going to be the same at the beginning as they are at the end. There's no obstacles for them to overcome. Like everything's just hunky dory and wonderful for that person. And that's not, that doesn't make for compelling fiction. And it's also just frustrating, I think, from a reader perspective, if I think about books where I'm like, I just roll my eyes. I'm like, okay, like, we get it. You're the perfect woman. Okay. boring. So, you got to have a weakness, at least one, maybe a couple. And with weaknesses, just like with anything else, it doesn't have to be anything major, like they're, you know, some deep, tragic, like horrible character flaw. But at the same time, on the other side of the spectrum, it also can't be that they just love too much. Like that can't be a weakness. It’s like that advice for interviews when, on how to prepare for a job interview, one of the questions is like, well, what's your weakness? And they, and people will say like, oh, you should say that you're a perfectionist. Like that's not really, that's not really, I know, I understand in a job interview, that's a different setting.

Like you want to present your best self. But it always makes me think of that because often, If I were to ask authors this, I think they, and I get the feeling that their characters are just too perfect, and I ask them like, well, what's this character's weakness? I have a feeling they would say like, yeah, they just, they sacrifice too much for the people that they love. Well, yes, I mean, I said that is a weakness and that could cause problems for them, but also, can you make them a little bit more messy than that? Can you make them a little bit more authentic and human? Because all humans, even the most incredibly noble, self-sacrificing, wonderful humans, still deal with a bit of a character flaw, even if it's one tiny thing that they're working on. All of us have that. It's just real. It's the messiness of being human. And so, you want to infuse that into your main character as well. And the last question that I think is important for you to be able to answer about your main character is how are they different at the end of the book? Meaning, okay, here's your chapter, here's your character in chapter one, page one. This is the messiness, the flaws, here's where they are. How do they grow and change over the course of the book? How do they end up, how are they different on the last page of your book?

Even if you're writing a series, I mean, where the story doesn't wrap up in book one, there's still going to be some character growth in book one, even if you're writing a series, right? They've gone through some ****. Hopefully. They've made some bad decisions. They've learned some lessons along the way. So how is this person different? What lessons have they learned? What different decisions are they making? How do they see the world at the end of the book, that's different from how they saw it and the decisions that they made and everything in like the first opening pages of your book? And if you're having trouble answering that, maybe it's an indication that they haven't really grown or changed, that they haven't had an opportunity to grow and change because nothing has forced them to change. It's sort of like, something I learned in recovery is like pain, okay, change comes, growth comes from discomfort. If I think about my own experience in my own life, I have never made a profound, hard change in my life because everything was going incredibly well and life was like wonderful. I made a change because I was struggling and I was in pain, and I was sick and tired of feeling that way. That's when I was willing to make a change. Like that's when that willingness came in to do something different.

So, it's kind of the same thing with your characters. If everything's just going swimmingly for them, then why would they change? So you want to think about those differences. And it can be very small. It can just be, oh, your character learned to trust a bit and they learned to open up to this found family or to their friends or to their romantic partner. That can be the lesson learned. But that means that you are going to have a different character at the beginning, at the end of the book as opposed to the beginning. So Okay, there probably are more questions we could come up with, but I feel like that's a good base to get you thinking about your main character and to get you thinking about how to make sure that they are compelling and complex and nuanced and not just a flat passive character because we don't want that in fiction. It's a big no-no. Again, if you're on your rough draft, spend some time thinking about the two and three, like the motivation and the goal, and then what's standing in the way of them getting what they want, because those do relate to the overall plot. Not that the others don't, but I think those two things are more, like if I had to pick which ones to focus on in the rough draft, those are the ones that I would pick to focus on. And the others, you can kind of see how your character's reading when you go back and edit your book. That's something that I always have to do.

I feel like my characters are maybe, I'm guessing here, and it depends on the book. It depends on what I'm writing. But I would say like 75% fleshed out in, actually maybe less than that, but maybe like between 50 and 75% fleshed out when I write the rough draft. And then I always have to go back and like add more. I have to check their dialogue. I have to check their mannerisms. I have to check their relationships… just everything in the plot, like in the book, to make sure that they really feel strong. Because on the first draft, I'm just getting the foundation down. And honestly, on the first draft, I'm still really figuring out who these people are. It takes me until the end to really have a strong sense of it. And then sometimes even in revision too, like I can start writing a character with an idea of who I think they are. And then it changes as I get into the story, and I write them and I get to know them more. So then on revision, I can take that understanding even further. So, all right, well, I hope this is helpful for you as you're thinking about your characters. Characters are so important no matter the genre.

So, it's definitely worth spending some time thinking through these things. If you would like a free character profile template to help you work through this, it’s basically just a document that I created. It's like 3 or 4 pages and it asks you a bunch of questions about your main character so you can fill it out. It's a Google Doc and you can create a copy, and you can create copies for multiple characters in your book if you want to do this exercise for them. Basically, you just sign up for my newsletter. I'll send you some emails every once in a while. I probably e-mail my list like once a month at this point. But then you get that free character profile template that you can use. So, you can go to the link in the show notes for that. and get a copy of that if that would be helpful for you to fill out. You don't have to answer all the questions. It's not necessary, but it can be helpful as you're just brainstorming your characters. So, I encourage you to check that out. And then you can also get it on my list. All right, well, thank you for listening or watching.

Katie Wolf