talking to myself

Instead of starting establishing their wants and needs. I encourage the audience to care by making the character vulnerable by showing a fear. 

Nothing says more about a creature than the way it flinches or doesn't flinch. 

Think about this. If you rescue a dog, and they freak out when you pick up a collar, you learn something about their past or potential future.

So, in my WIP, I was warned that my hero is not the “typical” protagonist, because usually hero wants something. The hero goes into a journey. The hero cause change.

So my hero is not heroic. They don't want to change the world, they want to preserve their life as it has always been. My hero stance is “Nobody moves!”

In a world where everything grows and changes, everything is temporary, they are trying to create some kind of Neverland.

So how to make character that desires stasis not static?

Well, of course they have their own reasons to do what they do, but even if I introduce my hero’s motive as:

“They want to keep their family and friend here forever.”

I allow the audience to disagree with them. Someone could say right at door…

“That’s pathetic. What they are trying to avoid is literally my dream. I wish my awful family would leave me.”

Or

“Even if they're doing for love, that’s not a health relationship, I can’t support them.”

So, instead of desire, I justify their actions with fear.

“They are frightened by their beloved ones leaving them.”

I can’t count on the audience agreeing with this either, but I expect this to be human enough to the audience understand the fear of being left behind. Asking them to be more empathic with my hero.

AND

To make the audience to invest even more into this character, I pin the character between TWO FEAR. 

The classic TO BE OR NOT TO BE.

So, I could elaborate my hero by expanding their want like this:

“They want to keep their family close, so they keep them in the dark, hiding their secrets.”

That doesn’t only sound pathetic, but also manipulative, paints the hero in dark tone.

But if expose them like this:

“They’re frightened by their beloved ones leaving them, and they’re terrified to be the cause of it.”

That's two fears trigged by the hero's conflict.

I'm asking them if it’s better to be truthful to yourself and risk to be abandon, OR it’s better to live in the dark and keep what you already have.

By doing this, I, not only make the audience understand their actions, but also I encourage them to engage with the dilemma. Because when I give the hero two forbidden buttons, suddenly you think:

“Uh! I want to push the button! Which button should I push? Just push the red one!”

Then you put yourself in their place.

And that’s pretty much a way to get people rotting for criminals, cheaters, liars, and authors of their own disgrace. 

Be aware that you don’t always want to the audience to care that much. 

Two fears are not always better than one.

Some characters don’t need fear at all.

You also don’t need different fears for different characters. 

Minor characters usually share the same conflict and fears of the main character, just in a powerless and low degree. 

And talking about minor characters, here comes my other strategy.

If I want a well-developed character, I try to avoid label them. 

If I think of them like a person, I remember that nobody wake up thinking, “Time to fill my narrative purpose.”

Bad people think they are good people. Lunatics think they are sane. Comic reliefs have their own logic. Minor characters are the major in their own story.

I try to avoid archetypes, because, in the past I spend so much time researching about archetypes, trying to cut the edges of my character to fit into the role.

For example. If I say, “Character T is the mentor”.

Then I’d develop them based on questions like what a mentor needs to do? What is the legal moves? What this role would never do? 

And maybe that works, maybe I follow some rules or break others. Whatever helps my story.

But instead of that, I introduce my Character T’s motive like this:

In their first scene when they are expressing frustration against the story world. 

“You can give up, start again, like always.” “I don’t want start again, again. I must go to the end of it, finish one single thing.”

That's humble. T doesn’t stay because they want fame or successes, money or love. They will not leave the problem because they are afraid of falling in old patterns, and get stuck in a loop of incompletion.

And to finish this “one single thing”, this character needs to help the hero, but I don’t need to force them into the mentor role. They will take it because might be a solution for their own conflict.

And because their actions are justified by their fear and not their role, I can write unwise, flawed, and damaging decisions that still be in character.

And that’s nice for me, because, even if mentoring the hero is their function in the story, I’d not describe them as mentor-mentee. If I have to summarize their relationship in a sentence, it would be “ADHD on ADHD violence”. That is more precise.

Also, it doesn't mean that character need to me anxious or afraid all the time or at all. But story lives in the conflict. Fear reminds of the stakes, that they have something to lose or gain.

The story conflict triggers the fear and the fear could trigger moments of paralyzing coward when they ignore the problem or overcompensating courage where they do something reckless.

Anyway, I could go over and over and over about how fear is such a primitive and integrated emotion. How it shapes the way people dress and talk and their interests. How this shows up in different genres.

I pretty much love to trace this to biological and history context. Where, in the ancient stories, the presence of fear, punish or consequence is not just to frame the characters as vulnerable but to remind the audience that they are vulnerable too.

But this already hit 1000 words, so…

Wrapping up.

Want people to care? One fear.

Want people to feel? Two fear.

Want people to ignore? No fear.