Anna Staniszewski

It’s my birthday! Now that I’m turning the big 3-0, I asked my father if I needed to stop being so goofy all the time. He said he hoped not, because if I stopped, then he’d have to stop too. That was reassuring; it means I have a few more years of silliness ahead of me.

So what are my birthday plans? Revising a manuscript, of course! After giving myself the weekend off from writing to celebrate my old age, I’m antsy to get back to work. I met with one of my writing groups on Friday and they gave me all sorts of wonderful suggestions on how to improve a MG manuscript I’ve been working on for a while. It’s a humorous fantasy adventure with a spunky female protagonist – a bit different from some of my other stories.

A problem that one of my wise writing partners pointed out is that the main character, Jenny, has been picked to go on an adventure by people who feel she is the best one for the job. However, we’re never told why she is the ideal candidate for this adventure, why everyone thinks she’s the one who can succeed. This is one of those questions I thought I’d implied the answer to, but it turned out it hadn’t come across.

Since often characters in fantasy are chosen for an important task or adventure, it’s vital to show readers why the main character is THE person for the job. Why is she the one, above all others, who can fix the problem? It can be a reason that’s rooted in the character: the adventure requires someone with incredibly large feet and, what do you know, the main character was born with enormous feet! Or it can be a larger reason: the character is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, which means she will fulfill a certain prophecy. Or it can be necessity: there is no one else who can take up the task, so the character must, whether she likes it or not.

Either way, you want to make sure it’s clear to your readers why your main character HAS to be the one to go on this adventure. Often it means the character will eventually have to find inner strength, or tap into some knowledge she might not have realized was there. Once you know why your character is in this position, your readers will gladly go along with her, wherever her travels may take her.