 Drama: July 24, 2019 Issue [#9659] |
This week: Dilemmas and Main Characters Edited by: Joy  
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"You cannot have an effective protagonist who simply responds to events happening around him or her. Your protagonist must act, not just react."
Rachelle Gardner
“Great fiction is fueled by bad decisions and human weakness.”
Kristen Lamb
“Does your protagonist care deeply about what is happening in the story? If he or she doesn’t, change it!”
Kathy Steffen
“For every important moment, your character needs to react. First viscerally, then emotionally, then physically and finally, intellectually. Often a writer will show a character reacting with deep thought about a situation, when their first natural reactions are missing.”
CS Lakin
“A character with one or more secrets adds mystery and intrigue to any genre.”
Linda S. Clare
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about inflicting our main characters with awful problems.  
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Please, note that there are no rules in writing, but there are methods that work for most of us most of the time.
The ideas and suggestions in my articles and editorials have to do with those methods. You are always free to find your own way and alter the methods to your liking.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third-person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Oh, those poor protagonists that we all beat on! This lament is correct, don’t you think? In fact, I am thankful that I am not anyone’s protagonist. After all, a generally accepted advice for writers is to make the lives of their protagonists impossible, isn’t it!
Let’s try to summarize this advice, first.
• As soon as the protagonist appears, he needs to want something not immediately available or better yet, very difficult to attain; the more difficult the better. The character may also have dueling desires, too. Yet, this is only the beginning. Later on, depending on the length of the story, this difficult-to-get wish or the need to a solution for a problem will probably morph into another even more impossible wish for something else, related to the original one or not.
• The writer needs to let the protagonist’s problems adapt to the genre if writing within a genre. For a sci-fi story, for example, if the character breaks an electronic device, his mistake can be considered a major crime equal to murder.
• The question to ask for the original want or need is why. Why does this protagonist want what she wants and which circumstances make this need or wish vital? Does the protagonist’s personality (who he is) contribute to this need or wish and can his personality contribute to achieving it?
• Possibly all the way toward the midpoint or three-quarters of the plot, the protagonist will strive hard to achieve his goal. If in a battle with the antagonist, the protagonist should be the underdog. This is because everything up to this point in the story creates the conflict; if there is no conflict, there is no story.
Several types of dilemmas exist, and some of them can be:
* The frustration over the lesser of two evils or the choice the character has to make when he is between a rock and a hard place. (Example: son and wife are drowning and the character can help only one of them,)
* The test of will against two or more characters. (Example: Resisting or accepting a certain duel of actions or words against the antagonist.)
* The necessary evil, which may stain the character in some way. (Example: A peace lover has to come up with a devastating war tool like a specific firearm or a bomb.)
* Crossing the moral lines or not, which may wound personal honor and integrity and may have the character question himself such as who he really is and how far he has fallen. (Example: Assisting a best friend’s euthanasia.)
* A no-win situation. That is, even if the character wins a battle, he loses just as greatly. (Example: A medical doctor invents a vaccination for a disease, just to succumb to the disease himself because of the processes he went through when searching for that disease.)
Let’s then look at the make-up of the tight spots or dilemmas a protagonist pushes himself into. To help us writers in creating tight spots for our main characters, it is a good idea to separate a dilemma into its elements, although each character handles these elements according to his own nature and the details of the situation.
1. Various Choices or Options: In other words, what and in how many ways the main character may be able to handle the situation whether the situation was already developing in the background or if it suddenly popped up. (It works better if the situation was already developing with or without the protagonist’s knowledge. If you suddenly spring something up at him, it may shock the readers.)
2.Deliberation: This is the part where the protagonist will agonize while making a decision whether he has a moment’s time to choose quickly or it takes him years to go through a few possible shows of evasion like denial, protest, self-pity or self-recrimination. This is also the part that needs the full showing of the writer’s talent as it needs to be given enough time but without dragging out the decision unnecessarily.
3. The Decision or the Specific Choice: Once the protagonist makes a decision, the more resistance to the actual carrying out that decision, the better, as this intensifies the tension. If this decision or its resulting actions are rushed, then the writer will need to show their terrible repercussions.
4. Consequences of the Specific Choice: The questions to ask at this point are: How is the character handling his own actions arising from his decision? Is the impact of the consequences internal, interpersonal, or external? Especially within the story, the consequences to the protagonist’s choices need to be devastating. At the end of the story, for the consequences of the last decision, you can then make the protagonist rejoice or be successful or not.
In short, as writers, whether we use what is written here or elsewhere, the one and only magic rule at every point in the plot is to remember to make each dilemma worse for the main character.
Until next time! 
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 This Issue's Tip: While coming up with dilemmas for your protagonist, present options that are equally demanding, dangerous, or frightening, and make the choice inescapable.
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Feedback for "Are Your Characters Genuine?"
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sanfmo 
Thank you for this. I like all the ideas listed. Especially "follow your characters for a day" and "check what's in their pockets." This can stretch an authors imagination and help them differentiate one character from another. When I started writing I felt my characters were simply variations of each other. Understanding what is meaningful to your characters can help them stand out. Habits like checking their watch or twirling their hair can set them apart and help the reader easily identify the character in the paragraph in front of them. I could go on. Thanks again for this.
You're welcome and thank you for the feedback.
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Beholden 
I'm with Faulkner on this one.
Faulkner certainly knows what he writes about.
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Quick-Quill 
When writing my book SILENT RIVER, I found my character to be flat. He moved through the scenes, speaking and doing what detectives do. I needed to make him relatable and connect to the reader. Chapter 3 is a chapter I wrote four or five times. In this chapter we see him as a person. He's attending his partner's daughter's first birthday party. As you read you see a man in deep pain. He's lost his wife and son. He's separated himself from everyone. Here he is in an uncomfortable situation. What transpires in this chapter changes him for the rest of the book and gives the reader sympathy for his actions and refusal to admit he's attracted to another woman. This subplot is woven into the story carefully so it doesn't stand out in the plot.
You did great, I think. Sometimes, a chapter or even a scene can provide the most important turning point in a story. It is also important that it works well with the rest of the plot and doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.
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