Did I mention I gave up on trying to finish the book before fixing the main character? No? Well, that’s because I haven’t been on here much lately. I should be, it’s good for me, forces me to write more.
Anyhow, I have been working on my book, but haven’t managed to finish those last pesky few chapters. I got stuck. In part, I’m tired from my day job – this is our busy season, and also because I wasn’t able to make chapter 17 work. The reason I couldn’t make it work has to do with the fact that it’s the point in the story where the main character has to make some decisions. Since the character started out so weak, it had no punch and basically fell flat for me as both a reader and writer.
How am I supposed to make the reader care about the character and decisions he’s having to make if they didn’t care about him in the first place? Well, that’s a good question. So, stuck as I am, I went back to chapter one, and stared at it for a day or two. No help there. So, I went back further to a page or three of back-story that won’t ever see the light of day (at least not in the book). I wrote my character with a new perspective. Gave him a reason to fall into the circumstances that come later. In a few sentences, I laid out his world view in something like a monologue. This seemed to work. Of course, it means re-writing the entire book as it is so far. Not awesome, not awesome at all, but necessary. That said, I’m not really changing the plot or the events, more the reaction to those events, and perhaps a little be of how those elements of plot are arrived at.
What was good about this approach though is that if I get stuck or the story starts to seem flimsy, I can refer back to that bit of writing to remind me how the character is supposed to react. So far, I’m back up to chapter 12. One interesting side effect of revising the main character in this manner is that it gives the main supporting character more to work with thus making him stronger as well.
At this point if you’re not asking, why didn’t I just do this to begin with? you probably should be. Truth is, I thought I had. I wrote a whole long chapter of back story, but it didn’t really get at his motivations and perspective. Most of the other character’s I’ve tried to write usually start out fairly strong in my mind, but this character never has. It’s one of the reasons this project took so long to get off the ground.
I’ve still got lots of polishing to do, but now I feel like I’m once again making progress – even if I still haven’t actually finished the first draft.
On Writing Dragons 
Oh, man, your writing method is so different from mine. I tend to slop out a very ugly first draft in less time than it takes some people to cook breakfast, then I take a year or so to edit, and that’s when I see stuff like that. Not sure that your method isn’t better. It’s at least very much easier on the fingers. 😛 Glad you’re making some progress!
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I think my method is different than everyone else’s. I’m always hearing folks say or tell me – just get that draft knocked out. You’ll never finish if you don’t. You can always go back and revise. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be wired that way. I think it comes from years of being a computer programmer where it’s pounded into your head to fix problems as you see them. In that environment problems have a way of snowballing and can’t easily be remedied. Of course, in that environment, you could be looking at a million lines of code. All that said, I dream of being able to zip through a first draft and spend the rest of my time polishing. It is obviously a better way to do it. On the bright side, I took today and tomorrow off specifically to write. So, Onward!
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Glad you broke through it, and good luck!
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