It's Character That Matters

[Peg Herring]

I've been having a terrible time with my WIP. The plot I'd envisioned didn't seem to want to happen. The history was a mess (but then, history always is). I've set it aside a dozen times to let it percolate, but nothing worked.

Then I got the character. I knew I didn't have her quite right, but I couldn't make her come into focus. She has to be different enough from my former protag to be her own person, but everything I tried made her lifeless or overburdered the plot with extraneous stuff or sounded downright silly.

And then I got it. Don't know how, don't care. She came to life, and her personality formed in an instant, like when I put on my glasses in the morning and can actually see what time it is. A protag has to be a balance of traits, but there has to be something about her/him that can grow and/or change over the course of the book, sort of an "X factor" that must resolve in order for the desired ending to occur. Once the "growth" factor hit me, I knew her much, much better. I like the trait she's acquired, and it works well with the story I'd outlined in my head.

So "Hi-Ho, y'all." It's off to work I go. And it will work, now that I've found out what matters.