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  • Sarah Baran replied to the topic My mess–uh, I mean protagonist–needs help! in the forum Characters 8 years, 2 months ago

    @Elizabeth Oh, yay. It’s incredibly droll how similar this sounds to the problems I had with my own MC back a year ago. Who also happens to be an ISTJ. Just in case you’ve finally nailed down Evyn’s type. And let me just say…

    I have no idea.

    *bows* My helpfulness knows no bounds.

    Okay, fine: One thing that did help me nail down several of my rebellious children was finding the core of their character. The single driving force that defined their entire being. And yeah, I know that characters are multi-faceted and generally can’t (and shouldn’t) be boxed into only one category. But you have to start somewhere. And if Evyn is suffering from having so many sides you can’t sort them out, then it might be helpful to pick them apart and find the one thing that she absolutely can’t go without.

    For my character, Liriel, it was the desire to impress the people she idolized.

    Once I had that point in place as a defined, undeniable, unmovable truth, that wouldn’t change no matter what else did, I could finally sort out the rest of the personality and arc, and attach all those tangled webs to that one truth. Liriel’s trying to impress a holy people group? THAT’S why she’s a stickler for rule-following and duty. It’s also the reason she’s generally cranky and overly serious, because she’s failing, BIG TIME. Goals can be attached back to that point, and with goals, character arc. Etc and so forth.

    So if your character is languishing from being too… much, identifying her goal or core might be a nice place to start at sorting the rest of her out. That’s how it worked for me, at least.

    *shoves caramel popcorn at you* Hope you work this out.

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