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Making my boring POV MC interesting

satyesu

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My lead, POV character is a modern-day Gnostic and sophomore in college studying physics. He's intelligent and analytic, and sometimes awkward. He's a good guy; if you met him, you'd like him. And he's boring. How do I make him (MC's in general) not boring? Ii still want him to be a good person, and I'm afraid if I give him too severe a flaw, readers won't root for him.
 

lizmonster

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My lead, POV character is a modern-day Gnostic and sophomore in college studying physics. He's intelligent and analytic, and sometimes awkward. He's a good guy; if you met him, you'd like him. And he's boring. How do I make him (MC's in general) not boring? Ii still want him to be a good person, and I'm afraid if I give him too severe a flaw, readers won't root for him.

Lacking a serious flaw isn't what makes a person boring. What makes you feel your MC is boring?

Longer answer: what makes a character compelling is going to be different for every reader. If you like your MC, that'll come through in your prose when you write the book.
 

Bufty

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Ordinary everyday stuff with nothing happening is boring.

Have your character do something out of the norm and/or find himself in an abnormal (to him) situation.
 

katfeete

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Agreeing with others that adding flaws is not the way to make a character less boring.

You may be falling into a frequent fallacy of equating good with nice, and nice can indeed be dull. But nice is not a moral position; nice is a social strategy. People are nice without being good, and good without being nice, but it’s extraordinarily difficult to be both all the time... because a lot of the time the “right” thing to do rocks the boat; it involves opening your mouth when you shouldn’t and acting when you ought, by “nice” rules, to mind your own business. Someone who is both nice and good is a great character, used correctly, because they come with a built-in conflict.

As an example, say someone your character knows and has a good relationship uses an “-ist” term (racist, sexist, ableist, classist, take your pick) around someone the character doesn’t have a relationship with — likely not an intentional insult but a slip of the tongue. The nice path would be to ignore it (preserving his relationship with his friend). The good thing to do would be to correct it (but potentially damage the relationship with no particular payoff). What does he do?

Another example: your character is helping a co-worker with a tedious chore (cleaning the coffeemaker, snaking the drains, mopping the floors, the kind of stuff that has to get done and no one likes being stuck with) when he sees a stranger in what he thinks is genuine difficulty. The co-worker disagrees and says your character is just trying to get out of work. Does your character do the nice thing (help the co-worker he has a relationship with) or follow his moral instinct and see if the stranger is ok?

The mistake I sometimes see people make with these scenarios is they instinctively want to soften it — the friend was totally fine with being called out on their poor choice of words, the co-worker forgives the character immediately afterwards and admits to being wrong. Or they want to hand out payoffs: the stranger is so grateful for the help they become the character’s new best friend, so the character comes out ahead on the social transaction anyway. Good and nice were the same after all!

Don’t do this. Let him bleed a little. Characters who earn their status as a “good guy” (not just a “nice guy”) will be anything but boring to the reader.
 

Woollybear

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My lead, POV character is a modern-day Gnostic and sophomore in college studying physics. He's intelligent and analytic, and sometimes awkward. He's a good guy; if you met him, you'd like him. And he's boring. How do I make him (MC's in general) not boring? Ii still want him to be a good person, and I'm afraid if I give him too severe a flaw, readers won't root for him.

Most often, the excerpts that don't excite others in various writing groups I participate within are those excerpts in which the main character has no concrete, visible, actionable goal.

What is your character working toward when we meet him? His actions will show this more loudly than his situation or traits. In other words, you say he is intelligent. A common goal might be for him to be working toward top honors in his physics class. If so, his actions would show this. But his actions (which illuminate his goal) might have nothing to do with the traits you listed--let's say he has a big exam coming up and instead of studying, he spends his time trying to get Jodie to go out with him. He calls Jo, plans his mealtimes so they'll be in the lunchroom at the same time, and does some snooping around to see what Jo likes and dislikes. Those actions show us what he is working toward. (He can still do well on the exam--he's a bright kid after all.)

Working toward a goal won't automatically make your main character interesting, but not working toward a goal might risk a few yawns.
 

satyesu

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Great advice, Patty and catfeete. Thanks!
 

indianroads

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More than two dimensions. IMO, to be engaging, your character has to be real in your mind before it can transfer onto paper (or google or word doc).

Depending on how close your POV is, you could give your MC a rich inner life, or at a more distant view give him a snarky attitude - neither of these are negative features or flaws, they're just opinions. We all have them... and they seem to propagate as we age.

I just mentally flashed back to the "Ally McBeal" TV show, where she would have fantasies about the people around her. Without that Ally would have been pretty dull, but with it she was rich and engaging.
 

seeleyjames

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As readers, we form opinions about a character based on the decisions they make. We like Luke when he decides to join the rebellion after Storm Troopers kill his aunt and uncle. We dislike the general when he decides to destroy Alderaan despite the princess telling him where the rebel base is.

Flaws are things that help readers root for the character when he makes those decisions. We root for Luke because he showed himself to be young, inexperienced, and impetuous in the Cantina scene yet, he decides to save the princess. If Luke's flaw had been a big nose, it wouldn't be relevant for that decision. But a big nose was relevant for Cyrano de Bergerac.

Hope that helps.
 

Layla Nahar

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I like what lizmonster said - if you like your character, readers will like the character. Have fun with this. Let you Inner Second-Guesser go play chess with some other Inner gate-keeper, & you & your Writer and this character can have a nice time exploring the story.
 

DongerNeedFood

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100 bad days makes 100 good stories. Just being relatable can make a character interesting.
 

The Black Prince

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A lot of good advice here already. The one thing I'd add is something I do automatically when generating a plot. My MC always has some aspect/feature/condition meaningful to the main plot thread. They can certainly have other quirks and features but their key decisions help drive the plot