What’s At Stake?
(published January 2005)

How can you make your main character so interesting and believable that readers will want to spend time with her? The students in my novel-writing courses often think that all they need are some quirky details (“a woman of a certain age who always wears polka-dots and raises Basenjis”) or a few changes in an autobiographical character (“like the author, Johnny went to Vietnam at a young age”). Quirky can be good (though usually not too quirky), and it is probably impossible to avoid some autobiographical elements, but for characters to be believable and sympathetic, they must possess more than a collection of character traits. Above all, the protagonist of a novel must have a central problem that is solved during the course of the plot. It is this problem that motivates the character, that explains why and how she does what she does—and that enables the reader, who also acts based on her own problems in life, to identify with the character.

To focus on the problem, it’s helpful to ask yourself: What does the character want? Put another way: What is at stake? Like you and me, our characters want many things, but to keep readers turning the pages, your protagonist must have one overriding want that is so important that there will be serious consequences if she does not get it. This want must not only be important, it must require great effort to achieve. And there must be forces that try to prevent its achievement. No matter how endearing, interesting, or unique a character may be on paper, unless he has something compelling at stake, there is no reason for readers to care about him.

For example, what does Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz most want? To get home to Kansas. How much would you care about her if she simply showed up in Oz with a pre-paid ticket home in her basket that she could use any time she was in peril? Probably not very much.

Of course there is much more to character than the central problem. Sandra Gurvis, author of the novel The Pipe Dreamers (Olmstead, 2001) and a work-in-progress, Country Club Wives, emphasizes the need to recognize that all of us have good and bad qualities. “An effective fiction writer,” she says, “can create a villain with compassion and a protagonist with flaws.”

One way to help make your character multidimensional is to be sure that in addition to a central problem, the character also possesses clear inner and outer conflicts, usually connected with achieving what she wants. Over the course of the story, these conflicts help drive the action; they must be resolved by the end.

The resolution of inner conflict leads to change in attitude; the resolution of outer conflict leads to change in circumstance. In Oz, again, Dorothy’s inner conflict is her attitude toward Kansas, which by the end of the book has become “there’s no place like home.” Her outer conflict is the difficulty of escaping Oz. Resolution of the inner conflict—realization that she really does want to go home—leads to resolution of the outer conflict, and a change in her circumstances.

Other time-tested ways to get readers on your protagonist’s side:

Pile on the difficulties. Readers will feel fear and sympathy for your character as things get worse, then cheer for her as she overcomes all the obstacles you place in her path.

Make your character the agent. Your character may have one or more sidekicks, but he is the one who must solve the most pressing problems, especially the one that leads to the resolution of the book. Remember that it was Dorothy who melted the Wicked Witch, not the Scarecrow or Tin Man.

Be willing to change your own ideas. Maxine Rock, the author of nine non-fiction books, recently followed her agent’s suggestion to make the heroine of her first novel “more sympathetic." To do that, Rock says, “I had to change what she wanted out of life: instead of being single-minded about her success, I gave her the more sympathetic trait of wanting happiness but being unsure how to get it. The story became much more believable. I'd been blocked by my own dislike for my character. Now that I saw her as a good but confused kid, I was able to write more happily.”

Seems simple, doesn’t it? By changing her character’s inner conflict, Rock made the character both more sympathetic and believable—even to the author.

In the next column we’ll take a quick look at some other aspects of character—and see how to put all the plot elements together into a coherent and satisfying whole.