I recently read a novel that bugged me. It took me about a hundred pages to realize why.
Many of the scenes were no longer than a few paragraphs. They felt rushed and not fully imagined by the author. Worse, most of the shortest scenes were flashbacks which added to the jumpy, disconnected feel to the story.
How long should scenes be in a novel or memoir?
The scene’s clear in your head. The characters are running around creating drama, making their own lives difficult but yours easier with every passing word. Until you realize you don’t know the name of that brown-eyed beauty and her Prince Charming lacks an identity of his own.
The sign of a great character is when you can’t believe the character isn’t real. Your protagonist should most certainly be just this realistic, especially since she’s the star of the show!
The surprising truth is that if you make a character realistic, she’ll also be more lovable. People relate to characters with depth and humanity more than an alien robot with no emotion.
Here are three ways to make your protagonist more realistic…
Dialogue is one of those tricky things that can make or break your book.
Author John Irving is notorious for writing the last line of every novel first. What we can glean from this daunting factoid is that Irving has a clear picture of where he wants the story to end up. The work is “simply” writing the book.
Would that we all be so lucky!
We’re used to rooting for our protagonists. The easiest way to get an audience behind your character is to give them a moral compass that consistently points toward good. But what happens if your main character’s moral compass points in the opposite direction? Or if they have no moral compass at all?
Welcome to the world of the villain protagonist.
