A question about MCs.

This is related to "should I start my novel off without the MC" a bit.

My current WIP starts off with a particular character who is in her 40s. She's the only main character worth mentioning in the first 25k words. But twenty years pass and her daughter takes a role.

This is a very lead role, where she actively interacts with the world, while the mother mostly sits back. However, the mother will be very active with the plot-- she is mostly why everything is happening in the first place. I still believe the mother is still the main character. She has more of an effect on the plot with her guidance, decisions, and with the people she knows than the daughter will until near the end.

The daughter, though, essentially takes the role of her mother in exploring/understanding the world, and exterminating the Grayvyns (the enemy force that had nearly wiped out humankind centuries ago, who were, in fact, created by humankind). There is a lot more drama, involving the daughter far more than the mother, when a man falls in love with the daughter (Roshia). Roshia rejects him and a series of events leads him to create an army of Grayvyn Clones--an experiment centuries ago that allowed a magical mass to duplicate the body of another person, to create strong soldiers-- of Roshia to destroy humankind (or perhaps Roshia rises up to kill him with an army of real people, since he's rather deranged).

There is so much going on with Roshia, that for chapters we might not hear of the mother. Yet the mother was the one who explored the world, talked to the gods, learned the language of the Ancients, discovered a new, powerful magic, raped a guy to produce her daughter by the will of the gods (mostly because she's ugly), and knows enough of the world to assist Roshia in destroying the Grayvyns.

I assume this is a poor marketing tactic. People who think of a middle-aged woman being the main character in a fantasy novel would be a bit weird, but to those who like the concept, would they be annoyed when the daughter comes into play? What are your suggestions to hook the same audience that was drawn into the opening all the way throughout?

Should I, even though she's 60+, keep her as an active adventurer to make her more appealing to the original audience? It wouldn't be unlikely, considering her health and her martial arts mastery, but she isn't needed any longer to take an active role.

Any thoughts or opinions would be great!

That's a well-done idea, but it works.

Heidicvlach said:

Sounds like you have a good reason to start with a character who isn't the MC. I think you'll be alright making the switch as long as the mother doesn't vanish from the story once Roshia takes center stage. Roshia can think of her mother's choices, use what her mother taught her, and/or question their familial relationship. It might not be necessary for the mother to be part of the adventure in a literal physical sense.

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I expect to have Roshia visit her mother (Lady Aduoul) for advice pretty often, and have her and her teaching referenced as well. I want the daughter to learn about how her mother raped a man to bear her, and have some filial fued go on for a bit.

How about if you divide your book into "Parts"? Each Part would be a collection of chapters, driven by a character or theme. The first 25K words would be Part 1, and Part 2 would begin when the daughter is introduced (or begins to dominate the story). In order to make the Parts reasonably the same size, just put more Part divisions where you have strategic plot twists or major developments.

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I think this might be a good idea. I'll leave it up to betas if they think my original flow wasn't good enough and that this might fix it. There are easily enough parts to make parts, and that'd be a reasonable length for the manuscript, too.

It's not unusual for an epic tale to progress from one generation to the next; I don't see an inherent problem, other than some people will prefer one character to the other, which is going to happen regardless.

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This is very true of Norse literature (Njal's Saga, for instance, where Njal dies halfway through and his son and friends go about getting revenge). And in Roma, sort of, where every new chapter is a new era of Roma's development and thus new MCs (connected to each other by a penis-pendant). Just wondering, but what others do you know of?

whistlelock said:

Imagine your book is a movie.

Imagine that you follow one character around for 45 minutes. You come to care for this character. You're invested in her story.

And then it stops being her story. IN fact, she drops right out of the story.

Now you follow her daughter around to the resolution of the story. Do you even care about the daughter?

How unsatisfied are you going to feel being switched like that?

Whack off the mom bits, and use them as back story you can reveal as the daughter goes through her portion of the story. It will make your world seem very developed and rounded with a strong sense of its history.

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Were that the case, I would not like it. But it never stops being her story-- in fact, she is still almost always in the story. She doesn't drop right out of the story at all. Because it's not quite the same as the scenario you described, I asked made the topic to see what was better.

To be honest, though, I thought about combining the first 25k words into the rest of the novel and thought about just using flashbacks, or something. I thought it would be difficult, though, as it would have to be condensed (nobody wants 25k of flashback), especially since Lady Aduoul (the mother) stays integral to the plot from start to almost finish.