Anna Staniszewski

As I’ve been perusing Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, something he said about choosing your main characters really stood out to me. In his previous chapter, he focused on world-building: how to create a believable setting with its own unique history and characteristics. Then, moving on to developing a character, he brought it back to setting.

In choosing the main character for your story, there are a couple of questions you need to consider:

Who hurts the most? In the world you have invented, who suffers the most? Chances are that it is among the characters who are in pain that you will find your main character, partly because a character in pain is a character who wants things to change…

Who has the power and freedom to act? Your eye should also be drawn toward movement. Characters who are powerless aren’t likely to be doing anything terribly interesting. Your main character usually needs to be somebody active, somebody who can change things in the world, even if it’s a struggle.

I love this quote because it not only underlines the need for the character to be active but it also reminds us that her struggle needs to be rooted in the world. Based on the society you’ve created, who is the underdog? Who is the person we will root for? That doesn’t mean this person can’t be wealthy or have some other kind of power, but she still needs to suffer in a believable way that makes us yearn for change along with her.

And the character must struggle, must act, in order to try to bring about change. The change must not only be important in the context of the world, but it must be of personal importance to the character. Helping the society correct its wrongs just for the sake of it won’t be that exciting to read about unless the character is personally invested in the struggle, unless she has something at stake as well.

• Categories: Craft, Resources, Writing Rants