I'm writing a fantasy story in which my MC needs to learn to rely on his own strength, believe in himself, and find his own power within. In the beginning he is a weak boy, always picked on, and having to be rescued by his best friend. But this changes when his bf's soul is stolen and the MC is the one who has to save him. So now he has to be the one to protect his bf for a change. And in order to do that he needs to learn to believe in himself (thus finding his inner strength.) The problem is I'm not exactly sure how to write this character arc. In the beginning he is bestowed a power by someone that allows him to manipulate energy. This aids him on his journey to accomplish his goal of saving his bf. Though he doesn't realize it, the power truly surfaces in times where he needs it most. In other words when he taps into his inner strength, his motivation. In the beginning he thinks strength is equivalent to power when that's actually not always the case. In other words it's not the sword that makes the samurai kinda thing. I thought that having this power was kind of like having him rely on someone else once again, so I decided somewhere around the crisis moment to strip him of this power. So he needs to somehow rescue his bf's soul on his own (maybe not completely on his own but he has to do the majority of the work). But I'm not sure how he's going to do that when the antagonist can spew fire from his hands.
A muse of mine told me that the strength of the spirit is like a muscle. I think this analogy is the best way to progress your MC. Let's say you want to want to be able to lift a certain weight. You do not start your strength routine with this weight, instead, you warm up the muscles to increase blood flow, and then you take a weight that is doable but challenges your muscles, and when you step it up before that weight becomes too easy. I think you need to establish smaller victories that your MC can overcome if he puts the effort in, and as the journey progresses the challenges grow tougher, but so does he.
Bingo. If his self-confidence is going to develop over the course of the story, then it needs to start small and work its way up and not just come out of nowhere at the very end. @DaveLu anything else you can tell us about how magic works in your world?
Is raising the stakes one of the things that makes the challenges tougher? I always find it tricky to do for some reason.
Raising the stakes is one way, another is that he can tell his opponents are tougher. Another is encountering something he once found difficult and notices the ease he achieves it now.
I would have him fail. I would have him fail, struggle with the failure, find a way to blame himself for it, and then have him confronted with the same thing he's been beating himself up for, but this time with bigger stakes, have him be afraid, but realise he has to try, and then succeed. Hey-Presto!
One thing that I've noticed about people who are habitually abused is that they often don't have a conscious realization that their behavior is often a choice. Not an easy choice, but a choice. If, say, your emotionally abusive father knocks on the door of your first apartment, opening that door is a choice. Refusing to open it may be a choice with consequences--maybe he'll go back and roar at your mother, maybe your mother will call and cry at you about how hurt your father is, maybe he'll stop paying the car insurance that he's kept you on, maybe all kinds of things--but it remains a choice. Once people look at things as a choice, rather than seeing themselves as helpless, then they can make a clearer-eyed choice about that choice. Maybe Mom's just going to have to deal with her own marriage difficulties, and maybe it's time to sell the car and take the bus. Or maybe this time you open the door and accept verbal abuse again, because you want some more time to prepare for the consequences of making a different choice. But whatever you do, recognizing that choices are involved is, IMO, an important step. I think that that recognition comes before gathering the strength to make a different choice, because if you don't even realize that you can make a different choice, there's nothing to gather strength for.
Often times a person is able to find confidence in the mentality of "I've made it this far I can do this too." Perhaps if circumstances were to be that he was faced with a situation with terrible stakes where the alternatives are "overcome this or you've lost everything." This would serve as a story arch to both prolong and progress the story as well as showing character development, and also personality in how he handles tough situations. coming through it and still being faced with the overarching goal of the story (which can be more or less dreadful) he can move forward in the confidence that he can actually triumph.
Somewhere at the end of the story, when the MC gets back home after the journey and has changed, I was definitely going to have him stand up to the bullies, not putting up with it anymore. But this choice to not be a victim, I'm not sure when it would come in. Maybe when he chooses to save his bf? There is a scene in the beginning where the bf and the MC have a fight. The bf feels like his world is getting too dangerous and doesn't want the MC in it anymore. So maybe here the MC could choose to stop seeing himself as helpless and fight back (with the power that was given to him) so that he can be strong enough to be in his bf's "dangerous" world. Gotcha, so kind of like a scene/moment towards the end where he realizes all of his struggles has given him the courage to fight the antagonist? In terms of having him prove his confidence, would using these special abilities be counteractive to the point I'm trying to prove? Say he uses them to defeat the antagonist. Would it be kind of like he didn't really do it on his own, he still had someone else save the day for him? Because the special abilities technically belong to someone else. He's just a vessel for them.
I don't think it would be counterproductive at all. He still has to have the courage to take up those powers and the courage to use them. Also when he finally stands up to the bullies without powers it could be an opportunity for a final conflict of character. He has to face them, and he has to face them without powers. But he's already done so much and come so far he should be able to do this too.
With that same line of thought, consider how he's "failed" in the past. when someone has confronted him, he's probably responded with some kind of weakness. Maybe he ran away or lowered his head intent on taking his lumps because it was easier than fighting back. Now, faced with a similar situation where he usually would have run away or given up, he has something forcing him to take action; he no longer has his crutch of comfort and it forces a turning point in his head. i've always been fascinated by those moments, when the main character doesn't have a choice anymore and has to barrel through his mental red tape. his actions are all funneled to one pivot point that defines his change of heart. and he may get his butt kicked across all of creation. but in that moment when he curls his hand in the dirt and comes to terms with his weaknesses, that's when I, as the reader, really look forward to reading more because i know that the MC is ready to get down to business.
I had that transition for my main female character. She begins as a submissive, somewhat timid or diffident individual under the thumb of her consort, but by the end of the story she is a powerful fighter, able to take on eight to one odds to save her friends and her husband. But there were a LOT of gradual transitions in between. I think first you have to begin with a core of inner strength though it doesn't become apparent at first. She neither feels sorry for herself, nor is she struggling to escape, because the first is useless and the second impossible. She is concerned for her brother, and together they are the rock and the pebble through a difficult situation. We learn much later that he has been carrying a much bigger burden than she. So concern for others is one manifestation of that interior strength. You might have your MC concerned that he can't resist the bullying because of size and strength. Perhaps his best friend teaches him how to run, to lift weights, develop his strength and self-confidence. That will build the bond between the two. He teaches him to fight, and in a low-risk showdown, he gives a bully his comeuppance. Now he is ready and motivated to risk all to save his friend, and has the tools to do so.
I'd have three plot points for the character. At the beggining he gets the power, and through the first quarter of the book learns to use it. Then things get complicated until at the midpoint of the story the power fails him. He then must bring himself together, until the third plot point where he learns that the power must come from within himself. You might actually take that power away from him then. That's when he'll find his true inner strength and the climax will come
This is along the lines of what I have planned out right now. But it's been tricky because if I do decide to strip him of the powers towards the climax, I'm not sure how he will get past the antagonist.
That's very insightful. It's something my main character struggles with. And of course a person needs to live with the choices they make as well. How many times have you seen somebody decide to make a choice, then the choice they make turns out to be a bad one? Strong people learn from the experience and understand that being wrong, on occasion, is part of life. Weak ones decide they'll never choose again and creep back into their old ways.
This gives me a Dante's Inferno vibe, going after a stolen soul part anywho. As for the confidence building part, they need to go through the trials and grow through them. Some they succeed at and others they fail, giving them the courage to push toward their goals.
Yeah, using a non-deux ex machina shit here is tricky. Maybe the antagonist has similar powers to the hero (which may be why the hero lost in the first place.) Now because the hero's powers failed him in the midpoint, by the story end he will relise their flaw and beat the antagonist this way. (Say, his powers are fire. Now in the midpoint he realises that fire is related to his confidence with himself, so that when the villain attacks him, he inflated the villain's ego so that his fire will burn even more powerfully, until the villain can't control it and burns himself.) Another way is for him to realise that the source of the power was within himself, self confidence and shit. So he finds something he has always been good at and beats the villain this way. Or just straight up walks to him and beats the sh*t out of him. Now yeah, this sounds corny as hell, I don't mean for you to go in this direction. My point is that it needs to be connected: the failure in the midpoint, the finding of the secret three quarters in (which doesn't necessarily mean losing his powers, by the way), and beating the villain with what he learned in the story.
Part of this makes me think about the beginning of Tales of Xillia, in it, Milla loses the power of the four elemental spirits, who had been by her side since birth. She was proficient in the theory of magic in this world (exchanging mana to minor elemental spirits to produce magic) but she had no clue to wield her sword on her own. One thing that comes to my mind is perhaps the ability to manipulate energy doesn't come from him, but the theory of using it allows him to learn the techniques to harness his own true power. As for standing up to the bullies, maybe at a midpoint he's forced to return to his hometown, runs into the bullies, and, realising that they feel much less frightening as a result of his journey so far, stands his ground. This gives him the hindsight to realise that even if he hasn't succeeded now, he has grown stronger and could win with perseverance.
You could always do the old Dumbo trick; someone takes away his 'power' only to discover the power was inside you all along! To be more serious; the best way to deal with this is to not just have him given the power. IMHO you should get a bit Obi-Wan on this. Someone tells him that he already has the power, they can see it in him, if only he can learn how to harness it. That's much better. That gives him something to focus on and that focus brings out the power within him. In the end he becomes so confident he doesn't even realize that he's being confident. It goes from an anxious guy handed something that he hasn't earned to someone who's goal is to earn the power. If you hand a nervous guy a gun he might feel more confident and powerful but as a character he hasn't developed. If you tell a guy he doesn't need a gun, if only he can see that, then he has to develop to really see that's true and thus naturally becomes more confident and powerful off his own back. Subtle but important difference.
