Casting Your Central Character
Your novel or story has to have a central person to revolve around. And that person needs to be interesting to you to write about - and some circumstance that character can't stand anymore...
Just a timely note here: My first Kickstarter is rolling out in a couple of weeks. A preview is below.
I’d appreciate your feedback on it. Revisions still remain. Your input is needed.
This excerpt is from one of the books which is included in that campaign (third one from the right):
Casting a Central Character
You are going to need to decide on a central character because a book needs to have in general, one person who's going to be the center of attention, who's going to be the dominant factor. I mean, you may have all kinds of subsidiary things around it, or in the case of a generational novel, there may be a a matter of a family, or some other factor which dominates. But anyhow, you do need a central character.
And the key test that you need to ask is who do we cheer for? Who is the person that we feel that that we can identify with, that we can want to see win, that we can want to see achieve his heart's desire? And why do we cheer for him? What is it about him that makes him so believable, so lovable, so whatever, that we are going to ride with him.
As I said earlier – for ideas you need an angle to turn to. Here what you need is a person who turns you on. Don't try to write about the guy that doesn't appeal to you because you'll be in deep trouble. There's an old song that captures it very nicely. No, you'll remember it. Remember that “...standin' on the corner watching all the girls go by?” There's the heart of the thing right there. And it's the same thing when you're putting a story down on paper. Look for a character who turns you on.
A third factor – situation – which I would define a little differently than just frequently presented, a situation involves time. That is to say when you're not going to take place, the period, is it contemporary? Is it the 15th century? What have you, the place are we dealing with Austin, Texas or El Paso, Texas or Montevideo, Uruguay, or what used to be Peking, China?
Again, you're after the thing, the the place that appeals to you that you can see potentialities in. So you have to have a time for your book, you need a place for your book. And you need to think about these very carefully again, are you hooked enough to want to write a book-length presentation which is, let's say, in Warsaw at the time when the Jews were having their uprising and being practically wiped out there. Are you, are you intrigued enough that you wanna do the same thing?
In terms of a country town in Western Oklahoma, where a storekeeper is the central character, you want something that that attracts you. And then you need circumstance.
Circumstance may be defined as a state of affair of affairs that your central character just can't stand. Whatever it is that he can't stand, there's something or other that he's dealing with.
He has a job, he wants to be the president of the company.
He can't stand his present role, he's an automobile racer and he cannot stand coming in second.
It doesn't need to be a thing which is me and dramatic, maybe he just can't stand Susie. So he goes ahead and eventually wins Susie and then he can't stand having to live with her – and don't think that doesn't happen.
You need a situation, a state of affairs, which to everybody else may be absolutely perfect, but he can't stand it.
And the consequence of not being able to stand it and incidentally, if you ask him, he might not say that he couldn't stand it. All he knows is he's dissatisfied with it and he wants to change it in some manner.
This is getting a little ahead of myself here, but he figures out a way to change the situation. This is the basis for your book.
Please review this Kickstarter…
After the Kickstarter is begun, you’ll see the final version - so you can back it…