10 Main Character Mistakes New Fantasy Writers Make

I'm about to show you the 10 most common main character mistakes that new fantasy writers make and this comes from having edited fantasy stories for 19 different writers so far this year along with getting on over 70 coaching calls with those authors to help them improve their books and for me personally I've been writing fantasy novels for over a decade and I've had to learn about many of these mistakes the hard way and the reason these mistakes are so important to know is because if you can avoid them you'll have a much better chance of writing a main character who feels realistic and compelling and three-dimensional and who is somebody that readers can deeply connect to and deeply care about and the first mistake to avoid is lacking emotional truth I think right what you know is horrible advice instead you should write what you felt what gives a fantasy book meaning is not just the events in your story themselves but the emotional significance of those events in other words how do those events make your readers feel and I think a lot of new fantasy Writers Do start off by copying their favorite characters from books and movies and TV shows and just plugging them into their stories and the problem with this approach is it creates very shallow characters where there's no sense of that realism to them it's only when you can really Infuse them with a piece of your own soul the characters come to life so for example if I was going to write about a nomad cursed with immortality and forc to wander this post-apocalyptic fantasy world that is completely deserted knowing that he's going to forever be alone I've obviously never been in that kind of Fantastical situation but I could draw from my own experience of when I was living in Vietnam for 3 months working as an architect over there and just feeling an incredible sense of of bitter loneness there because I was struggling to connect with the people I was working with obviously they all spoke Vietnamese and I only knew a couple of words of Vietnamese and I didn't really have any friends over there I was living in this concrete jungle of a city in hoian city and it was a very lonely and miserable time for me but there's a lot of emotional truths and a lot of specific Sensations I could draw from that experience into this nomadic character and by infusing this character with some truth from my own life from my own experience that character is going to feel so much more realistic and relatable and compelling for readers to follow as Anton checkov said everything I learned about human nature I learned from me so right now I want you to think about a scene in your story and the first thing I want you to do is just note down the actual events the actual plot that is happening in this scene on the surface then I want you to think about some experience from your life where you could reflect on that experience deeply reflect on the emotions you felt in that moment and ask yourself how can I extract those emotions and Infuse them within this scene so basically try to find a similar emotional experience that you can use to add extra depth and realism to this moment in your story and for bonus points try to get as specific as possible here so ask yourself when I was experiencing this emotion what particular bodily Sensations was I feeling what did this emotional experience make me think about what did it make me pay attention to what did it make me ignore as Donald Mass says in the emotional craft of fiction to be effective writing about emotions has to be Artful which is another way of saying surprising and the absolute best way to tap into that sense of surprisingness and uniqueness is to be drawing from your own lived experience something that no other writer can draw from doing so will give readers a much greater emotional connection to your main character as we're fixing our second common mistake weak challenges to quote from Robert mcke in story true character is revealed in the choices a person makes Under Pressure the greater the pressure the greater the the depth of true character that is revealed now if you give your characters not very difficult choices if you don't put them under a lot of pressure we never really get to see who they are it it's kind of probably like the friends that you have in your own life right there are people who you've probably never seen them go through a great period of stress or you've never seen them confronted with an immensely difficult moment and because of that you maybe struggle to know who they are at their core and maybe you don't feel like you're that close with them on the other hand you probably have people who you've shared incredibly traumatic or incredibly difficult moments in your life with them and because you've seen how they react to the absolute worst situation possible you have a much greater sense of trust or at least knowledge of who that person really is at that core adversity reveals character so the more adversity you can give to your characters the greater the sense of understanding that readers will have for them and the reason why adversity is so important is because it's the choices a character makes in these situations of immense pressure immense Stakes that reveal who they are and there's two ways to make your choices even more impactful and to have an even lightened effect on your characters and your readers in a story the first is to make sure that you're presenting characters with difficult choices where both outcomes are kind of equally weighted so if you just give your characters a difficult choice but there's a very clear good option and there's a very clear bad option it's going to be boring to read we don't want to read about that stuff we want to read about characters being forced to choose between two equally bad choices it's in those situations that we really get a sense of what's important to them by seeing what they are willing to sacrifice and what they are never willing to sacrifice and then on a similar note the Freer a character's choice becomes the more we feel like that choice is true to the character if someone else is kind of putting them in a position where they're forcing them to make one particular choice that can work but it's less interesting than a character freely choosing to go down a particular path freely choosing to pursue a certain object of their desire a really useful exercise to do for your main character and this is an exercise I actually gave to the students in my fantasy outlining boot camp the other week is to write down the 10 worst things that could happen to your main character it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to make all of those things happen to your main character but quite often when I'm reading first drafts by new writers they're not challenging characters to the fullest extent possible they're not asking the question of what's the worst thing that could happen to this person they're not pushing those characters into these incredibly dark corners and that's a real shame because if you never really push your characters into those moments then readers never really get to see who they are at their core to quote from Robert mcke again when a story is weak the inevitable cause is that the forces of antagonism are weak an antagonist doesn't just have to be another character that's resisting your protagonist or your main character it's any force that prevents them from achieving their goals and the stronger you can make that Force the more struggle you're going to put the main character through the more entertaining your book will be to read and a big thing that can give your main character more of a meaningful challenge to chew on is is to increase the antagonist's moral power which leads to our next mistake no attempt to see your main character from the antagonist's perspective so obviously there's a reason why You' picked the main character to be the main character of your story you probably align the most with their struggles you relate maybe the most to the thing that they're trying to achieve and possibly you want readers to maybe like them or at the very least root for them and and care about them getting the thing they want however I think that you're doing yourself and your characters a disservice if you don't make a genuine attempt attempt to view your main character through the lens of your antagonist in other words flip things around put yourself in the antagonist shoes look at the main character and really try to see all their flaws try to see why they're a bad person try to see why they are not deserving of getting the thing that they want try to see why the antagonist is right to oppose them from reaching their object of Desire because the more that you're able to see your main character from the perspective of other people in your narrative the more more nuance and realism you'll be able to infuse into that main character and getting that sense of realism and and sort of complexity into a main character is just a really big mistake I see with a lot of first drafts they tend to make their characters very flat very much a cardboard cutout which leads to our next mistake which is making your main character to onedimensional so you've probably heard people throw around this term before that oh I want to read about threedimensional characters but chances are there's not been too much definition about what a dimension actually is the way I think about it a dimension is a consistent contradiction between two aspects of a character's nature which generates internal conflict and tension if we look at quot in the name of the wi by Patrick rothus he's presented in two contrasting forms initially we see him as this mundane down on his luck quite shy inkeeper he's pretty unremarkable at the start of the story but then we flash back to his Youth and we see this young talented student with all these magical skills this academic prowess and he's an Entertainer he's a musician he's the life of the party and that contradictory nature between these two aspects of quoth fascinates us we want to understand how can a character go from being this to this how can this Duality exist within one person unfortunately most fantasy books written by new Authors don't even have one fascinating dimension of contradiction like this instead a lot of new fantasy writers fall into the Trap of just writing these very flat onedimensional cardbo cutout characters with no meaningful internal tension or internal struggle and here's the thing the more diens iions you can add to your main character the more interesting they're going to be to read in fact a really key part of my outlining process when I'm developing a new fantasy novel is doing a contradiction study looking at the aspects of contradiction that exist within my main character so let's look at an example of how you might do a contradiction study for quo from the Name of the Wind reserved versus expressive as an in keeper quo appears reserved and withdrawn which is in Star contrast to the expressive and vividly alive young qu who experiences and narrates his past Adventures idealistic versus pragmatic p as a young and talented student at the University often shows a really strong sense of idealism pursuing knowledge and music with this almost romantic seal however this pragmatism is also very evident in the survival skills he hones during his time living on the streets where he had to be cutting and resourceful to survive humble versus arrogant despite his very humble beginnings and the time he has to spend just foraging in the wilderness and that kind of thing K often displays a very strong sense of arrogance particularly in his interactions at the University and his reputation as a magical and musical prodigy often contributes to this arrogance as well compassionate versus ruthless qu is shown to have a very deep sense of compassion especially towards his friends and those who are suffering or disadvantaged stemming very much from his own experience as a child of loss and hardship yet he can also be quite ruthless and there's times where he makes very cold calculated decisions truthful versus deceptive quo values truth and wisdom as seen in his quest for knowledge and understanding at the University however he's also very capable of deception and trickery and we don't always know how reliable he is as a narrator brilliant versus impulsive qu shows so much Brilliance in his academic Pursuits and his problem solving skills however there's times when he also lacks on impulse and this leads to unforeseen consequences and predicaments protective versus self- endangering he often shows a very protective nature towards his friends and those he cares about but conversely his own curiosity and drive for adventure usually leads him into very dangerous situations faithful versus tempted he's largely driven by I would say a sense of loyalty and faithfulness to his personal goals and to the people he cares about however there's a lot of temptations that come up throughout his adventures and throughout his story that he doesn't always do a good job of resisting and I could probably go on and on with these and you can probably pull out a bunch more Dimensions within quo here but the point here is that qu is at least an eight-dimensional character there are eight contradictory Dimensions within him and that's why he feels so psychologically fascinating to read once you've mapped out your main character's contradictions you're well prepared to avoid the next mistake which is not thinking about description through the main character's unique lens in every scene I always like to ask myself what does my main character see and feel and smell and just observe that other characters wouldn't and especially when you're writing fantasy this is such a critical way to World build the way your main character describes something should give us such a clear sense of their backstory what's important to them what's not important to them their goals their hurts their wants the way they view their world and just their personality in general as Joie said when I interviewed him last year try and put yourself in the shoes of that character and you think what are their concerns what are their feelings you don't worry about describing the world you worry about how they experien the world what are they thinking about what makes them individual this was a huge Focus for me when I was writing my latest novel Kingdom of Dragons my two main characters Roven and Zora both become Dragon writers over the course of the story but while zor is native to elaia which is the country where the Dragon Riders live Roven on the other hand is a spy from another nation and he bonds with a dragon so that he can infiltrate alium the floating city of the Dragon Riders to destroy it from within meanwhile Zora is motivated to train to become a dragon rider so that she can get Justice against the country where Roven is from because their Emperor murdered her father so when Zora and Roven both see alium the floating city of the dragon riders for the first time they describe it in radically different ways here's how Roven views it the floating city hovered in the sky an immense Shard of rock that drowned half of alwick in Shadow ever since he left the manner everyone had passed had been gawking up at aium with AED Expressions as if they were witnessing the arrival of a God and not the home of the ruthless monsters who wrecked Havoc across Sahara still roben had forced himself to smile as well he was supposed to be aian after all and if aians rejoiced at the side of aium then he would too on the other hand here's Zora's description Zora stood up in her saddle grinning the sight of alium never failed to impress alium looked like someone had sliced off the top of a mountain and turned it upside down so that the narrow Peak pointed towards the ground it floated several hundred ft in the air casting a shadow on the city of onck below dragon swirled around alium from this distance they looked like flies which went on to show how big the place was zor watched as a dragon saw it out through an opening in the Rock before diving down towards a lake blow the dragon skimmed across the water her Talons dragging over the surface and spraying a cloud of mist into the air Zora nudged dapple who sat on the saddle's pommel that'll be us soon the little dragon yipped in response his OD gaze was fixed upon alium it's the exact same setting but we get a vastly different sense of Roven and Zora and what's important to them and what they hate and what they like just through their setting descriptions of alium it's all about what a character focuses on how they interpret what they're seeing and what they choose to ignore and like I said Kingdom of Dragons has just released if you would like to get a deluxe signed copy that has some gorgeous interior artwork on it you can get that exclusively on Kickstarter using in the link in the description down below by backing the kickstarter you'll be supporting the work I do on this channel and you'll be getting a chance to see the storytelling principles that I'm always talking about in action in a novel that I think is my best work yet plus backing the project on Kickstarter will get you the book before it is available in any other store check it out using the link in the description down below and if you've already backed the campaign as so many of you already have then thank you so much for helping to support my dream of bringing these stories to life and I absolutely can't wait to share this book with you now the next mistake is a particularly big one to avoid because it's it's one of the major reasons why new fantasy writers fail with their books and it is seeing plot as separate from character there's this huge misconception in writing which really really annoys me that you either have a plot driven story or a character driven story and I just don't think that's true and I don't think that's a useful way to think about writing it's absolutely stupid distinction because plot equals the things that characters do and we only understand characters through the actions they take over the course of a story in other words the plot I mean if you just think about it it's so difficult to extract a character from a story and to try to describe them without just recounting the events that they do in the story and even if you don't recount the events they do in the story you're probably going to describe them by explaining their backstory which is the plot that happened before the story so ultimately plot equals character and character equals plot and so when writers tell me that they have this amazing character but they're struggling to fit it into the plot of the story or they're struggling to make the character character go along with the plot decisions they have made then I'm sorry but unfortunately you don't have a great character or at least you don't have a great character for this particular plot you probably either need to change the plot so that it is more suited to that character or you need to modify that character to make it more suited for the plot it shouldn't feel like you're forcing the characters to do something instead there should be a sense of unity and cohesion and it's not just that cohesion between plot and character but also between plot and character and your world building and theme as well the more cohesive you can get and the more interwoven you can get all these different aspects of your story the better the book is going to be just ask yourself what is the best world to match my characters and my plot how can I use this world to challenge this character to the maximum extent possible again going back to my earlier point in this video about giving them strong challenges how can your main character's progression through this world and the changing landscape of the story reflect their own growth and transformation and when it comes to synthesizing your plot and your character it's very important to avoid the next mistake which is a weak introduction you only get one shot at a first impression in life and when you're introducing your main character and a lot of new writers butcher this they just introduce the main character in a way that isn't engaging and isn't compelling instead the way you want to think about this is introduce your main character with a characteristic moment a scene that immediately establishes what's importantance to this character what they're trying to get from this life how they view the world the flaws that they might have to overcome throughout course to the story and most importantly establish some sort of rooting interest why should we care about this character why are they making and this is a really really useful question to ask yourself here how is my main character making a decision that 95% of other characters would not make in the same situation to show a great example of this let's look at Ned Stark's introduction in a Game of Thrones the first time we meet Ned Stark he is executing a deserter I Ard the house Stark Lord of winter fell and Warden of the north sentence you to die and he is asked a question about why did you choose to behead this man yourself why didn't you have someone else do it for you you're the Lord of Winterfell surely this actual execution is beneath you and he explains that if a man is to pass judgment on somebody else they should be the one that has to swing the blade and immediately we get a sense of ah this is a character who cares deeply about honor even when it is inconvenient for them and of of course it foreshadows events that happen later in that story and Ned Stark's own unfortunate ending so don't be lazy with your character introductions ask yourself you know what is the perfect scene I can be using to encapsulate what's awesome about this character why we want to read about them and again you don't have to have readers liking your main character necessarily but you definitely need readers to care about your main character there needs to be a reason why in this first scene you have to tell readers very clearly hey this is my character this is why they're interesting this is is why you should care about them and you're going to love the fact that we spend the next 500 pages with this character so first impressions matter a lot and this idea of trying to have readers really care about your main character leads to our next mistake which is hyping up the main character without justifying it through action this is a very very common mistake I would say that in most manuscripts I read by new fantasy writers this is something that probably comes up like maybe 70 or 80% of the time and what I mean by this mistake is basically how moments throughout your story where you have the description of your story say oh this character is so courageous or you have dialogue from other characters saying oh this character is so courageous and brave but you never actually have an action that justifies this you never actually show them epitomizing bravery or epitomizing courage and of course this goes for any key trait of your main character basically what I'm saying here is show them actually displaying this key character trait in action don't just have us be told that this is something that they do now of course there is a way to do this quote unquote mistake effectively as there are ways to do all of these mistakes throughout this video in a good way it all comes down to the nuances of your execution for example you know you might have a character who you build up to be quite a competent fighter then have a lot of fear when they are describing another character who we haven't met and because we've built this one character up to be you know a really competent badass or whatever then a lot of that respect we have for them instantly transfers over to another character once they start building up their threat and building up their skills just through their dialogue but even in this instance that first character has to earn that status and earn that reputation with us through the actions they take so for the most part you just really want to be asking yourself the following question does my main character actually demonstrate these values these traits these attitudes that I keep telling my readers they have or am I simply just telling my readers that this character is X Y and Z without without ever demonstrating it through the actions they take and our next main character mistake is giving your character weak goals let's say my main character wants to steal this magical artifact from a religious order so that she can get revenge against them is that a good goal I would say no I would say that's a garbage goal it sucks it lacks a sense of specificity and emotional depth it's just all surface level and there's no real specific reason there's no real yearning why this is important to this character and that's a real issue because perhaps the primary thing that connects us really emotionally to a main character is that real deep Soul shaking sense of Yearning as Donald Mass says there are no Universal characters but there are Universal human desires and when a character deeply yearns for and Longs and craves for something we can't help but become invested in their struggle especially if we know that they will have to overcome massive flaws and forces of opposition and limitations Within themselves in order to get that thing so coming back to the earlier example I used of this woman who's trying to steal this artifact from this religious organization let's try to give her a better sense of Yearning here perhaps she was like a colonial missionary that went out and tried to convert people to this particular faith and then she came to realize the horrors of this religion sort of colonial conquest of these other nations and developed a tremendous amount of guilt this deep sense that this religion that she had given so much of her life to had perverted the teachings it was supposed to exemplify and rather than expressing the the true nature of this religion's Gods it was actually showing the opposite instead instead of showing let's say love and compassion it was spreading fear and distrust instead for example so now she has a much deeper sense of Yearning a much deeper purpose to her mission of pulling off this Heist who steal this magical artifact her goal is no longer this shallow thing her goal is now operating at this deep spiritual level it's this chance for Redemption almost and that's something that I'm sure within our lives as readers we can find some kernel of that to relate to even if our circumstances or the things we've gone through in our life are different from that because we've made this goal so deeply personal and intimate and important for This Woman's life always be asking yourself how do I make this deeper more personal more emotionally gripping and then to C this off make sure you avoid the next main character mistake which is that the main character does not solve the climax so I was actually discussing this with one of my students in the outlining boot camp program the other day and we were looking at the ending of his story and I pointed out that the main character wasn't actually the one that was solving the story there was just sort of this lucky event that came in and cleaned up all the events of the narrative and resolved the central conflict and there is of course a way to make that kind of work particularly if you're telling a story that is a bit nistic or a bit bit postmed but I think for the most part most new fantasy writers are better off telling stories where the main character is the principal solver behind the climax because we are here for the main character's growth and their journey and their struggle to achieve their object of desire and if you don't make them the principal agents that kind of Sol the story then why were we even following them in the first place you want the climax of your story to be solved by the main character as a result of the things they have learned learn the new character traits they've had to adopt the personal transformation they've experienced over the course of their journey to get to this climactic moment you want the climax of your story to be something that can only be solved by your main character at this particular moment in their Arc it couldn't have been solved by the main character at the start that's why they had to go on the journey to get to this point here and when you can do that aligning the character's sort of internal transformation over the course of the story with the external Arc of the plot and resolve both those things at the same time in a climactic moment that can only uniquely be fixed or resolved by your main character that's when you get a ending to your story that leaves readers astounded and makes them close the final pages with a huge grin on their [Music] faces

Channel: Jed Herne

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Keywords: writing, writing advice, writing craft, story, fantasy, author, jed herne, authortube, booktube, wizards warriors words, self-publish, indie, publishing

Id: l5lLurCzeRU

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023