Where's the line between a character facing challenges ... and overly abusing one's character?

I've heard that the main character needs to drive the plot through making choices.

I've heard the main character needs to be flawed, and make mistakes.

So, one of my leads makes decisions and I think each one is clear as an active choice on his part. Some of them are bad choices, and he suffers the consequences. So I thought i had done all of that choices/consequences thing 'right.'

I'm facing the situation now that some professional feedback says I am treating him like a 'whipping boy' (not my words). So - I wonder if there's a pacing issue with his difficulties in the first quarter of the book.

Are there guidelines about the degree of success a character should have up front? Like maybe the first few choices he makes should result in success, to establish his competence. (Some people don't like him as much as I think he deserves, too, and that might be part of the problem, but I'm working on his likability (still.))

Any thoughts about this are so so helpful to me....

I admit, I hadn't thought about it quite like that.

Mmm. I like the word triumph.

Maybe I'll prune out one disaster and accentuate the idea of him achieving a triumph somewhere in that section.

I'm not sure if that applies in this particular case, it's more of a Chris McCandliss situation in the beginning, and he's for sure out of his depth. I'm considering upping his competence though, because he doesn't need to be out of his depth for the plot, certainly not as much as he is. I just thought it made for more drama if he was, you know, facing down a wolf pack and losing his food in the middle of the wilderness. I thought that was definitely conflict (specifically, in Sanderson-ese, character:setting conflict.).

I hadn't heard the rule of three for discoveries, so that is useful to think about.

Hitting the balance is kinda tough and it seems to be a moving target because when you pull on one thing another thing suddenly is out of whack. Here, on the one hand no one cares about him (too flat?), on the other hand, they say he's too beat up (too much adversity?).

But, if I prune out one of the disasters (remove some conflict) and replace it with triumph maybe that serves to make for greater dynamism overall.

One problem this solution will create is that it will remove a cliffhanger from one chapter ending. Another problem is that multiple people have complimented that section in particular for its writing. It's a very tactile scene. So, removing that is iffy on those grounds too.

There's a lot to keep track of.

Otherwise, when bad things keep piling up, the readers sometimes stop caring because they know nothing good is going to happen to the character, which is rather frustrating to read.

Click to expand...

Maybe this is part of why some people don't like him as much as I do. I hadn't connected it like that.

I wonder if this part of it gets into the wilderness aspect.

I love the wilderness, and my heart sings when I am away from civilization - and my hero feels that way too. So this is part of the balance in my mind with the hardship that he is facing, in the wilderness. He is communing with nature, it flows through him, sort of like the force, which to me is ... part of the mysticism of being human.

But some people get back to me with comments "Why does he have to go camping? Does he have to go camping?"

Yeah. He totally has to go camping. It's fantastic. But maybe any reader that hates camping will dislike this character by extension.

Anyway, I figured out a new way to get him across the river, and it's more proactive. So we'll see.

That's a good thought. I gave him what I thought were moments of pleasure and mastery, but perhaps a little more of that.

What's a good story?

(I think I'm back where I started a year ago.)

Thanks both.

Trimble I think you're onto something with making the benefit more clear. I've been working on drawing out his magic more, tying it into nature more to up his 'cool' factor and this may solve another incidental problem. I'll try it, anyway. but it gets at what you are suggesting about how nature sustains him. It fits his character to make that more evident and magical.

Sara, I did read the hunger games against my wishes, because I've buried a child myself and find the entire premise of that series horrific. But it was a book club pic, and all the rage at the time, and so I groaned and read it. My response was that the mother was completely unbelievable, that after losing her husband ... that she wouldn't fight like hell to do better for her kids? The iron grip of Panem on district twelve (I forget if they lived in twelve but I think it was) was also ridiculous, that's no way to build a vibrant economy, fencing your populace in. Throwing loaves of bread into the alley? Even burned loaves? in a district where breaking out past the electrified fence to hunt for game is necessary for survival? (and illegal?) No. All of those problems were act I. Book two and three were little more than retreads.

Kids killing kids? Gah.

BUT, the idea that Katniss fought and overcame, is your point, and i take that to heart with gratitude.

I'm not aiming for commercial success, I really am not, and that's part of the issue here. There's more than one reason to write and I kind of have the book I want, I've kind of created the thing I set out to create, and I kind of want to put it online for free on a website ... and move on to the next. On the other hand, the feedback about readability - I'm stewing back and forth. So now for example (separate issue) I'm thinking about adding scantily-clad dancing men to the opening scene (at city hall) to establish more weirdness... and thinking ... oy ... that's just buying into the things that I personally dislike and harsh on in fiction.

But, a few choices are clear, so I'll work on those. Thanks for the feedback.

I've gotten this advice about taking out the unmarketable stuff from a gal in real life too. But again, I'm not looking for commercial success, never was. I'm a scientist. I'm writing to 'make the science accessible.' That's all. This is actually - - - what we're asked to do in academia. 'Make the science accessible.'

So, I put the science (evolution, atmospheric chemistry, all the things we know and can actually use that knowledge to save our world) into a new frame (this book) and then ... I'm asked to remove the science from it altogether.

I guess no one actually wants the science accessible. At least, very few. No one wants the science.

See the problem? I have zero interest in being an author of the sort that I suspect most people here are aiming for. I'm just trying to make as much of the science of climate change as accessible as possible. i've already cut way more than I wanted to (parts per million of different gases, isotopic signatures, and so on). The oil formed over evolutionary time scales. We are burning carbon that has been locked away for 300 million years. We are burning it all in under 300 years. The math: It takes a million times as long to *form* as it takes for us to burn. That's a problem. We're putting too much carbon into the air way too fast and way faster than the system can absorb. by a factor of a *million.*

If we could see that carbon coming out of tailpipes? we might all understand the gravity of the situation, a little bit better, and that's Myrta.

We needed to stop burning oil in 1990. We have only accelerated.

The fossil fuel industry is content to do anything that will keep the money flowing in. This includes owning politics (along with the NRA). The EPA chief is happy to help. (!!) It makes him rich. Everyone in the administration is happy to help.

^^ None of that is candy, and none of it is fiction, and very few people want to think about it because we all use fossil fuels and in a sense we are all complicit. People want candy, like a nice story about an attractive soul mate and victory and triumph and above all no guilt. I have no plans to sell candy, but am happy to caramelize my carrots as much as possible before serving them, so if making Alphonse magical helps explain the evolutionary scales we're dealing with, then that's good. I don't expect to get rich selling carrots, even carmelized ones.

But this drifts from the point. I think the answer to the original question is that Alphonse can have a little more proactivity. He's driving himself already, but readers don't seem to see it. So I guess making a decision is not the same as fighting a pack of wolves and emerging victorious. I would have thought the first was proactivity but it sounds like people think the second is.

I'm writing to make science accessible. That's all. I was asked to do this. I was told that was why some people weren't on board with the climate science. I was told ad nauseum, by students, by people in the media, by other scientists, by everyone - that the problem is the science is not accessible.

I have come to suspect no one wants the science. At all, in any form.

They want relationships, fights, sex, and fast cars. They want endorphin rushes. They want fiction that pushes happy buttons in the brain. So, alright, I guess I understand, but whatever.

(On the plus side, the professional feedback I received also said my story is better than some of the self-pubbed books out there. So, if i self-pub, I can take solace in that assessment.)