Compared to my supporting characters, my female protagonist is a bore (sorry to her, but true!)

Millyme, I didn't take this into consideration. Thanks for your opinion. I really appreciate it.

 

The annoyed one! Haha. Actually, it could work. Rolling her eyes while the others act as if there is no tomorrow.

 

She is just a few years older than her sister. She isn't a real mother but tries to be. Maybe I am wrong and she is ok the way she is: protective and compared to the others, rather conservative.

 

Hi Simpson, yes, I guess I just should give it more time. Maybe I should try to throw this girl into some random scenes and discovery write how she reacts. Maybe it was easy for me to come up with the other quirky characters because they are not the POV.

Wishing you luck with your Sherlock Holmses. Sounds awesome.

 

Maybe it would help to add more details, even if the details never enter into the book. What's her favorite TV show? What does she do when she gets an evening alone at home? What are her hobbies? Guilty pleasures? Friends? What does she read? What makes her angry? What is she selfish about? (Everybody is selfish about something.) What is she irrational about? (Everyone is irrational about something.)

 

Hi Elven, thanks for your opinion. I really appreciate it. Yes, I might have the problem that you mentioned.

I guess, I could give her more faults without making her evil. She could become a faulty wannabe mother. This alone is funny. Do as I say but not as I do? Or she could try to being the perfect mother and annoy her sister greatly? There is lots of space for interesting and funny situation if a slightly older sister tries to be the mother of the younger one.

Absolutely, I'll enjoy writing her. Your advice is really great.

 

Yeah, what I have not done yet is "interviewing" her.

 

It is 3rd limited, Malisky.

 

That sounds like it can add a lot to her character. Good luck!

 

Thanks for this! With smaller aspects of her personality, Malaupp, I could make her really special!

 

1) If all else fails, just pick a quirk at random, then write her as having that trait until you decide whether you like it for her or not (I thought for about a month or two that Amy was going to be the gearhead of the group before I realized she was more interested in military history than in cars.)

2) That actually happened by accident

Spoiler

My initial cast of 4 protagonists was Alec (narrator), Charlie (leader), Amy (Alec's best friend), and Jason (Amy's brother and the only non-sociopath), that my antagonist was a bomber targeting the same banks that Charlie and her friends were trying to rob, and that Charlie was an "ideas" person (like me) who got the group together because she loved the intellectual thrill of getting away with crime (not like me). After researching bank robberies, I found out that one person could walk in without a gun, give the teller a note pretending to have a gun, and have a 2/3 chance of getting away with an average of $4000 dollars (especially since many banks don't use dye packs anymore for fear of the robber coming back for revenge).

Realizing that my group would do three small robberies at the same time (Alec and Amy on their own, Charlie with Jason as her getaway driver) made me realize that they weren't doing this because they thought it was a good idea, they were doing it because they were desperate (which grew into them owing a ton of money to a loan shark). The first change that this led to was me realizing that Charlie was more interesting as a down to earth pragmatist.

More importantly, this changed everything about the conflict with the antagonist. Previously, my plan had been that Charlie's gang planned on robbing a bank, it got destroyed by the bomber before they had a chance, and that eventual direct interaction was based on figuring out who gets "dibs" on what banks and on whether they eventually stop fighting and work together.

Now, with my protagonists planning three simultaneous robberies, I opened the door for one of them (Amy) to be caught in the explosion, and this made the conflict with the bomber far more personal (and the eventual alliance more painful for any of them to accept) because Amy had been unconscious in a hospital bed for most of the book with her friends and brother worried sick that she wasn't going to make it.

This also made Alec and Charlie's narrative dynamic more interesting: with Amy in the hospital and Jason at her bedside, Alec and Charlie are the only protagonists we see for most of the book. Factoring in that Alec is very authoritarian and that basically his entire contribution is to follow Charlie's lead, suddenly she's the main character (instead of the first among four equals), and Alec has been demoted to First-Person Peripheral Narrator (with a dash of Decoy Protagonist because we don't see Charlie until the end of Chapter 2).

That's pretty much my writing style in a nutshell, trial and error: constantly taking apart every big idea, figuring which little ideas the big one is made of, and seeing what happens if I change just one of the little ideas and how that impacts everything else. Do you do this a lot?

 

I've discovered character traits/secrets by my lovely little character building trick: the chat room. I give all the characters a username and put them in a fake chatroom in a Word document and write it out like I'm talking to them (cuz naturally I'm a part of it). That's how I discovered why the antagonist was dating the girl that kept cheating on him. xD

 

I think that may be the core of your problem with this character. You don't yet understand her yourself.

Try to figure out why she's so conservative. (Maybe forget about the tomboy/girly issue altogether, which can be superficial.)

Why is she conservative? What makes her tick?

Do you think it's her basic personality that she was born with, or did something happen that makes her develop that way? Is there somebody she looks up to who has a similar outlook on life? Or is there somebody she doesn't like who is the opposite?

Does her conservatism bother her, or is she proud of it? Does it help her or hinder her? Do others appreciate her as she is? Or are they constantly trying to change her? Dig into WHY.

I'm not actually 100% sure what you mean by 'conservative' either. Is it a political/social outlook, or do you simply mean that she's cautious and doesn't jump into things without considering them? That she feels responsibility for the welfare of others? That she's the rock they depend on? If so, is she happy in that role, or does she secretly resent being put in that position? (She might feel each way at different points.)

Dig into that issue you've identified—why is my main character so conservative—and how does she feel about it?—and you'll probably free her from being 'boring,' if that's how you see her now.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that you do a written infodump of all her past history, etc. I just mean YOU need to know what makes her the way she is. Then you can write her present circumstances more convincingly. If you don't identify with your protagonist, it's unlikely that your readers will either. Make her come alive for YOU. Don't be thinking: 'She's nothing like me.' Instead, think: 'If I was her, how would I be feeling?' Put yourself in her shoes. As a writer, that's the way to transcend your own personality and bring out the personality of your characters.

The good news is, you can surprise yourself in the process. Suddenly ...you DO like this character. A lot!

 

I approached my MC as if I was writing a secondary character. I really looked at her role and purpose. I make her a part of the story instead of making the story about her. Another thing, I decided to embrace stereotypes and tropes. Is she a princess character? Yes. Mary Sue? Check. But, those are the open doors the reader enters into the character by. Once inside, she ain't Alice and the rabbit holes do not lead to Wonderland. I go through those same doors. Once inside, its fun to follow my characters down the rabbit holes and see where they take me.
Godspeed!

 

I so much agree with this! Getting to know your characters is like making a new friend. And it makes writing them so much easier. Instead of having to repeatedly wonder "how would she react to this?" you get to have an evil smile on your face, muttering "ooooh, she's gonna be pissed" while you write. xD

 

I'm just throwing in some thoughts.

One of the best female characters ever written is Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde.
She is a special operations police officer (LiteraTec - they pursue crimes against Literature) and a war hero. Her heroic deed was driving her vehicle back onto the battlefield under fire to save wounded soldiers after a charge went sideways. She becomes a mother in her second book, which doesn't stop her from fighting crime and saving the world. I find her really well balanced - intelligent, proactive, compassionate and having interesting relationships to her friends and family (and her pet dodo).
I can only advise everyone who wants to write good female characters to look at this example.

I have a character in one unfinished story that is similar. He is only 19 and extremely responsible, to an extend that it makes him seem arrogant because he always takes the lead. The reason: He is the prince of a nation with an elderly king who will probably die soon. The prince feels overwhelmed by the task he has to shoulder, but he sees it as his duty. He wants to do everything right and is secretly afraid to fail.
Maybe your character also feels side-effects of taking a parental role at such a young age? There is probably a reason why she does that. In Hunger Games, for example, Katniss knew, if SHE didn't take the motherly role, NOBODY will. They will starve. And that made her angry about her mother.

I suggest a passion for astronomy.
"I need to re-frame my picture of Henrietta Swan Leavitt to match my new desk."
"I have a 700mm telescope at home. Do you want to come and look at Jupiter with me?"
"Today you may stay up a bit longer, because we're gonna have a partial lunar eclipse tonight."

 

What is you MC main flaw? Not something like "clumsy", that's not a flaw if everyone finds it cute. A big flaw can flesh out a character. What is her life goal outside the story? What does she really like to do? What would she die for? What's her biggest fear?

These questions helped me a lot. My MC was suffering from the same problem for a long long time x)

 

They put Bonnie and Clyde to shame, Simpson. Trial and error, I see. Some characters simply jump on my page on their own sotospeak while others apparently take longer to create. In any case, thanks.

 

Lol! That is funny. Or you could have your characters post in this forum and watch how they grow.

 

I drove many hours with the nuts case you described in real life, Homer. And no, I don't want to do it ever again. I get your point. Maybe my POV is okay as she is... Or I discover more if I just go ahead and let her live a little bit. Thanks,

 

She has a big secret and is not always honest. No, she not clumsy. Thanks for the inspiration, Teresa, I will think about it.

 

Hi Queen,

I never heard of Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde. Sounds interesting. Thanks. My character is no Katniss. Katniss tried to save her sister but she does not move around pulling her little sister behind her all the time as my character does. Yes, I would say that my character feels the side-effects of the motherly responsibilities. She doesn't admit it but she is overwhelmed.

 

Thanks for your ideas, Stormburn. I get what you mean. I think you mean that you start with a cliche and then you add so much character that you don't have a cliche anymore? I have the feeling to be just one characteristic away from that this girl is a character that make me as enthusiastic as the other characters.

 

Guess you are right, Jannert. Compared to my other characters who could be cast members of Northern Exposure, she is conservative. She is more "normal" than the others. The others are not lunatics but unpredictable. I would say that my POV is a lot more predictable than the rest. On the other side, even a conservative character can be interesting if written well. Maybe I looked at it the wrong way. Maybe her character is a good contrast in comparison to the others.

Thanks for those questions, which I will ask my POV. And thanks for the inspiration.