#projectsunballad

Main characters are the crux of a story and they can carry it well or sink it in seconds. As I began constructing and developing my main character for my fantasy series I realized that there are lot of things a main character can be and how the way we, as writers navigate creating our main characters can be super influential in the outcome of our stories. 

This post is going to delve into a couple points 

1. What are main characters and what’s their purpose? 

2. How the rest of the cast can effect the mc

2. ...and how to make your mc memorable 

Main characters are the vessels that the events of our stories pass through and their opinions, perceptions and interpretations of events can change depending on who they are, their purpose is to tell the story the way you want it told and to experience as many of the inciting incidents or main events as they can. Sometimes our desires for our main character are incompatable with the plans for our stories for example as I began drafting Project Sun Ballad I realized my main character was stupid...frustratingly stupid and a scaredy cat which was not intentional. He lost all the stubbornness and brute anger I initially intended and as a result the events of the opening chapter felt underwhelming and childish less adult fantasy and more scary Dr.Seuss book. This was because of his new personality and all the softer language I used in my first drafts, so I aged him up into his early twenties and made him slightly more cynical. 

Your main characters personalities should help communicate or add to how your story is relayed. Their voice (the thoughts they add in) should help drive the story forward. Their actions should either have consequences or improve/propell them toward their goal. Your main character can care about everybody or nobody and still make decisions that help or hurt people. Figuring out those consequences or how they are going to learn about a secret meeting via non-coincidental means can help spur your creativity and can lead to some really interesting plot points or scenes. When making your main character imagine that they are the blurb of your story and details about them, their name, where they live and their personality should give the reader information and a basic idea of what they are about to read. 

So you have a main character, they could be a lone-wolf ranger in the wild south with a trusty dog by her side or a glamourous prince suddenly trapped in a heavenly domain but whats just as important is their side kicks, the antagonist in the story, the wise mentor etc Your stories cast, whether that be a handful of small secondary characters or a full set of royal families and servants to suit are important and their engagement with the main character helps support your mc’s narrative and story. Compatability within your cast helps add life to dying scenes, banter, encouragement, calculated insults and emotive decisions are so much stronger and memorable than a main character with some sweet monologues. Whenever I read a book and the main characters and side characters, interact and remember each other and think about each other before they act???? It’s great and I live for it. In my book every three of the four main cast come from different cultural backgrounds, with differen’t patrons and goals, their differences helps them connect with each other and help my mc grow and establish his worldview and moral beliefs. 

I like to place my main character in a room with every character even if they could never reasonably come into contact and forcing them to have a conversation, will they talk about similar things, will one apologize to the other it helps me identify whether certain characters are too similar or if my main character is terrible and has nothing to add or nothing to say to anyone. 

There are billions of characters out there with varying physical descriptions and personalities and sometimes it can feel impossible for your main character to feel anything but another carbon copy of the usual main voice in your chosen genre. For my fantasy novel I took the time to step back and reflect on my main character and the tropes associated with the genre, young boy, small town, magical abilities, simple features, mentor figure he leaves behind. So I took him and pretended that he in my minds eye had levelled up like he would in a video game to level 20. I dropped the simple features and gave him violet eyes and made violet eyes as common as blue eyes normalizing it within my world but still giving my character a memorable physical description. I was also inspired by a lot of my favourite main characters, specifically Aang from Avatar and slapped a symbolic geometric shape on my mc’s face, an upside down triangle painted with black liquid chalk. It helped clarify his appearance in my mind and hopefully the readers mind. You can create memorability in an array of things simply by deviating from the carbon copy, cookie cutter mold and in order to do that I encourage you to actively look out media and stories no matter how short that feature unique and rarely seen main characters, voices and setting. By diversifying your reading you reduce the risk of seeing a simple pale unexciting cast as a normal background to prose perfected by watching writing tip youtube videos. One of the best ways is to treat your characters like people, humans have disabilities or simple issues, I’m a writer with inflammatory arthritis, vertigo and stunted fine motor skills from a bad birth, people have these issues today and people had those issues throughout history. Here are some other ways...

- Embrace culture, face paint is prevelenant in many cultures and a character that embraces their culture and/or wears it regularly can make them distinctively unique. Interesting clothing, jewellery, hair etc can make characters more recognizable and provide a good point of departure in a scene to explore some characters culture. 

- Make their body unique in ways that can lightly impact them and show them growing to learn ways around it, an extra finger, deafness in one air, a physiological limp, rosacea, port-wine stains and other cosmetic things (I love giving characters who can shapeshift unique details that can subtly give them away like missing fingers, scars and/or birthmarks.

Overall how you decide to go about the construction of your main character and cast and whether you decide to change their designs or personalities is up to you!

-"As he enters the light, the warm wet embrace of the blank paint dissipates, it grows heavy, pulls on the soft youth of his cheeks and sneaks into the edge of his eyes."

The Uninvited as it stands is a full bookending of Chapter Four, it ends as Chapter Four begins with Yhw unknowledgeable of his fate and the name of the spirit that haunts him, whispers into his ear and plays dangerous games with penknives. It stands at 4,158 words and is the introductory chapter to my novels early antagonist, Hesper that late prince whose soul becomes perpetually tethered to Yhw, connecting the boys and their own deaths and lives together. This chapter also explores the dangers of being a Medivan conservative and zealot to the Aullian Pantheon, the gods choose when you live and subsequently when you die and thus angering them is an inventable early death.

This chapter puts Yhw in a difficult position, does he walk the line of worship and risk dying at the hands of a divine or does he return to the grave-site where his attempted murderer is likely lying in wait, what fate should he wish himself into?

As a dialogue-heavy chapter, I rewrote many scenes multiple times to find the way to best communicate each characters feelings and goals with the added benefit of foresight, I love the way the ghost of Hesper slowly reveals himself, his voice indicated by italics in the novel.

//excerpts

The first scene

Second

Final

In the final scene after Yhw's ghost reveals itself, Yhw comes face to face with the soul he's tethered to, Hesper a boy younger than Yhw but a boy whose mind has outlived his body by months; a soul is so very different from a mind, ruthless, lacking in morals and a cruel imitation of the person it once was. Hesper, a prince whose mysterious death has been lost to the tales of time.

Hesper's soul is intertwined with Yhw's which means he is either wearing Yhw like a wolf wearing a sheep-skin or wandering the empty space between life and death, knowing and forgetting. It's interesting writing a character who is no longer bound by the limitations of a living body and dealing with a character whom I love to pieces being something so in-human and non-living, what have I done to this child!!??

Hesper's language during his conversation with Yhw is selective and often while drafting I'd isolate his lines and rework them to make them carry the kind of weight I was looking for. When writing significant dialogue I've always found I write best when I outline beforehand the intentions of each character and the limits of their knowledge. Hesper thinks Yhw has done something to tether them together, he wants to know why this is happening. Yhw on the other hand misguided to believe Hesper is Vwu, the god of hunting believes Hesper knows and is withholding information from him and thus both boys feel antagonized by the other.

“At least the gods aren’t angry.” The boy took a step back as if to mould into the wall while standing still like life left to hunger. His voice came out in a deathly low whisper that slid up to Yhw, twisted into dread incarnate and stagnated in his head.

“but I am angry.”

Antagonists; the grizzly other side of the coin, they can mirror your protagonists or simply be the core punishment of inaction or mistake. Antagonists can be many things, they can be charming and maniacal or cold and threatening and they can be constantly present like a high school bully or never seen until the final battle like those giant shadowlords that have a billion minions in early fantasy. In this post, we’ll explore how to create a strong threatening antagonist and what kind of antagonist could fit your story. 

What makes your antagonist an antagonist? Do they share differing views from the protagonist, do they attempt to solve the same problem as the protag but implore slightly more extreme methods. Do they simply want what the protag has and will do anything to get it or are they purely interesting in hurting themselves and those around them. Think about why the antagonist opposes the protagonist and why do your other characters support each opposing sides’ cause.

An antagonist’s function is to threaten the protagonist’s ability to achieve their goals or on a deeper level, they are a barrier. Whether you decide to make a charismatic villain or a cold and malicious one they should undermine the protagonist and expose faults and weakness within their plan or group. How they threaten the protagonist is important and totally up to you, villains can be outwardly harmless taking advantage of societal ideas around what ‘weakness’ looks like and can pretend to be less ambitious or even an ally in the beginning before they remove their mask.

How your antagonist is threatening can completely change the course of your story whether they are constantly present and unpredictable or mysterious and unknown. Their stony attitude and unflinching belief in themselves can be scary as it establishes that the protagonist cannot just give a powerful emotional speech to change the antagonists’ mind, forcing them to choose between brute force or attempting to pick apart the antagonists’ beliefs and highlight how it’s flawed.

There are many ways you can highlight the threat your antagonist poses, one of which goes hand in hand with creating realistic and impactful secondary plots or side stories, have a member from the protagonists’ side or even multiple secondary characters support the antagonist. It shows the strength of the antagonists ideas and the impact they have on others. People can be convinced that their religion, worldview, sense of right and wrong or even simple self-preserving concepts like ‘don’t hurt people’  are flawed and incorrect. Your protagonist should be pushed into doubt, doubting themselves, their allies and their beliefs. Another strong way to highlight the antagonist as a strong and believable threat is for them to react to any instance of the protagonist failing or avoiding action. Hence, 

If your protagonist decides to not kill a henchman or destroy a powerful ancient artifact or decides to escape an attacked town rather than defending it there should be consequences for their inaction. If they foolishly choose to place their trust in someone unreliable or decide to adopt a specific school of magic the downsides to that decision should be exploited by the antagonist. These mistakes and lapses in judgment shouldn’t go unnoticed, they are the perfect way to show the impact of your antagonist and how they can affect the story. Every failure to your antagonist is a possible gain and like a game of chess, each side if playing to win. When the opposing side of a character is in a place on the board where they are viulnerable the other should move from a defensive position to an attacking. 

If you struggle finding weaknesses in your protagonists or antagonists decision read their actions aloud to someone you know and let them play the role of the opposing side, ask them to poke holes in the decisions your characters make and explore possible responses. Treat your characters like they are on opposing sides to a debate, both are looking for rebuttal and ways to leverage the discussion in their favour.  

Depending on how you want to pace your novel these episodic short comings and gains can lengthen your story and add more content inbetween larger and more climatic events however the consequences and subsequent outcome of these events should be taken into account whenever either character makes another decision or is faced with the possibility of having to choose inaction.

Nothing should be left unnoticed and both sides are inevitably going to make mistakes. How each side responds will show whether your antagonist is passive or active, whether they take advantage of these moments or let them pass unaware of the protagonists’ existence or of their mistakes. This cause and effect system raises the stakes of the protagonists and antagonists actions as each action will either benefit them or harm them, certain events should also be detrimental or beneficial to both sides. 

Your antagonist and protagonist are on opposing sides but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t interact and come into close contact with each other. The scale of how close your protag and antag are can effectively communicate either sides growth or deterioration. If your antag and protag are constantly around each other it can create a sense of rivalry and competition as they both watch each other gain and lose as they both strive to the same or similar goals. This especially works well if the setting of your novel stays relatively the same. It also allows the audience to see the antagonist grow and develop as well as witness their scheming and antagonistic actions. This level of close contact helps build up the antagonist as a real physical threat that can lash out at any moment.

If your protagonist and antagonist are situated in rival kingdoms so large and great there are millions of acres or great seas between them than interacting is going to be difficult as well as the execution of smaller missions and establishment of the antagonist as a threat. This level of contact works in your favour if your story spans over a long period of time and has multiple storylines or events for both sides to explore before they finally face off in the climactic finale as well as if you want your antagonist to remain mysterious, their actions speaking louder than their presence. However, without their presence antagonists can feel less threatening since it would take days of travel or other means of transport for them to pose a physical threat to the antagonist. 

I adore semi-present antagonists that through a small handful of important interactions establish their motivations and perceptions of the protagonist and his worldview. Seeing them in the flesh once or twice can both establish the importance of that scene as well as show the protagonist and antagonist interacting and their true differences surfacing. 

Contact also leads to communication and whether or not your protagonist and antagonist communicate with each other can impact the development of the antagonists role in your story. The more time your protagonist spends with your antagonist the less threatning the antagonist becomes. We fear what we don’t understand and not knowing how far someone will go and what they will or wont sacrifice to get what they want is terrifying. 

With antagonists finding a balance is key but overall explore the leval of contact, threat and the function of your antagonist in your story.