In my section of the universe, good characters are the foundation of a good book. Compelling plot lines mean absolutely nothing to me if they aren’t backed with engaging and interesting characters.
So, today’s assignment is all about the main character. Who is this story REALLY about? Why is the story about this specific character?
In the case of a romance novel, you’re going to have two main characters, so you would identify both of them now.
In Rise of the Rift King (which will be the new Requiem for the Rift King #1), I have two main characters. The entirety of the series focuses on these two men and their exploits.
Kalen, the titular character, starts off as a teenager in one hell of a mess.
Breton is an older man already hardened by experience and ends up having to navigate through the murky waters of handling a teenager who gets far more than he can chew at no fault of his own.
Both of these characters will permanently and irrevocably change the world they live in, and the series could not work without both of them in it.
I could swap out pretty much every other character for some other character and figure out a way to make it work, but these two cannot be removed from the story whatsoever.
(Let’s just say I’ve gotten a great deal of experience figuring out which characters are actually critical for a novel.)
And no, that isn’t a suggestion to remove the fun side characters, but it IS a suggestion to consider the importance of each character’s role in a book. Expendable characters are an important part of bringing a book to life.
Not every character SHOULD be treated with the same care as a main character, but when you’re done writing the book, the readers should think they were (mostly) treated with the same care.
Spoiler alert: some of your favorite characters were just tossed into the book on a whim as an expendable before I decided I liked them and wanted to keep them around.
So, what do you need to write a good character?
It’s surprisingly simple:
You need to know their behavioral type, their general physical appearance and abilities, their emotional maturity level, and their motivations.
Character growth and development is literally just “how does a character change to the introduction of new information”; so, let’s take Kalen for example. He’s going to start off as a startlingly practical teenager (early teenager) forced into being a young man very early; his family is trying to kill him with the help of his fiancée’s father, and he is forced to flee for his life and find out if he can save himself or if he’s going to end up a corpse along the side of the road.
Not a great position for a kid to be in. As such, this character is going to be more stubborn than anyone cares to think about; you HAVE to be stubborn to pull off that sort of thing. He’s going to be disturbingly aware of the world around him and jaded.
He is not going to be spoiled because he has had that luxury taken from him.
A little whiny at times? Absolutely. He’s been dealt a shit card, and the rare times he feels safe, he’s absolutely going to be bitching about it and showing emotions. He’s a kid. Kids are not exactly fountains of emotional stability.
As he progresses through the series, these traits will be honed and refined. His stubbornness will become legendary, his temper will be stable, but if he’s pushed, he’s absolutely going to open a can of whoop ass because he didn’t survive his family poisoning him just to have some uppity Rifter try to end his life.
He is going to go from a traumatized boy to a king, but that trauma will be buried because nobody just mystically heals from that.
How characters handle the situations they live through is what defines their growth.
It’s the characters that never change that feel like cardboard cutouts. They start out whining… and three books later, they’re still fucking whining. Stuff like that.
Whiny characters are not fun writes or reads to me; they have limited mileage before they enter “please just die” territory.
And that’s why I’m completely revamping Tala from the original series. She was definitely in the “please just die” territory, when in reality, I want this woman to be Kalen’s equal in terms of kicking ass and taking names. So, her entire character is going to be given a major overhaul.
So, I’m using BYOK.IO to track character basics on little note cards. I will be using other cards/tools to track plot, character development, and so on. But for now, this is everything I need to be able to start writing the character.
I will refine his behaviors and set his personality traits (on a different card) after I write the first few scenes. (There is a process to writing a good opening, and that’s something we’ll be going through when we DO hit the writing portion of the adventure. (For the record, that will happen during Assignment #6, so please bear with the preparation process a little longer.)
So, for today’s assignment, please identify your main character(s); create little note cards with their most basic information. You want to focus strictly on the primary characters (and villains!) your readers will be focusing on throughout the book. There will be an assignment specific for villains, but if you feel more comfortable building them at the same time as your main protagonists, please go ahead and do so. But leave it to the lead character(s) and the lead villain(s); there will be a time and a place for creating secondary characters.
For now, have yourself a think about who is leading your story and why… and then write that down so you don’t forget.
Now, for the Bonus Assignment for those who are doing new world building:
Create your Magic or Science System. Give yourself rules that your characters play by. If you want the rules to change, include catalysts of how these changes can happen.
Example: A hot spot creates a shifter-lycanthrope hybrid in the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series, and following this point, these character types will begin showing up naturally.
Another example: airborne infectious lycanthropy / lycanthropy that can infect animals; humans meddled, now the consequences of their meddling will ripple throughout the magic system.
Any time you change the rules, you need to be able to justify the rule change with the readers. (And changing the rules is fine *IF* you can present evidence, within the book, that the magic system can and does evolve.)
Just remember that every act of magic should have a consequence of some sort. Half the fun is making those consequences hinder the main characters! So, have fun with the magic.
In today’s assignment, you will be identifying the primary magic/science sources the characters rely on through the book and making your very basic list of rules for its usage.
Don’t overthink it. You do not need to write a novel on the magic system before you write the novel. Just give yourself enough detail you can start writing later.
Happy writing preparation, folks!
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