Lesson 2 Eureka Moment

[annie4]

Oh wow! I feel like a ton of bricks just smacked me in the head! I began filling out my Main Character Re-focus sheets and realized that my antagonist is not at all who I thought it was. How can I write an entire book and not even know who my true antagonist is???Even worse, my intended antagonist isn't even physically IN this book! I guess in my head I was all caught up in the BIG picture, which is who the antagonist will be by the end of the series. But in this first novel, no. Intended antagonist is just a forboding, semi-subplot and the real antagonist is my mc's mother! At least I got my protagonist right! "whew!"

Anyone else have this kind of problem? Would love to have company in my cluelessness! What an eye opener this course is! Thanks, Holly!

[kittiewan]

You are most definitely not alone, Annie.

At first I thought one of the big problems I had was that there wasn't an antagonist in my story, but it turns out there were at least six.

Then the two characters I thought were the major villains both turn out to be pretty good guys, even though one is dead and they both have done things they're ashamed of. But there are lines they won't cross and they try to atone for the harm they've done. The real villains turn out to be two institutions the faux bad guys were a part of, but then battle against, and these currently only appear offstage. I don't know yet if that will change.

These eye-opening wallops across the head Holly has engineered just keep coming. I'm wrapping up lesson 10 and there are still a lot of things I don't know yet about my story, but it is already light-years ahead of where I started.

[jollygreen23]

Congrats on the breakthrough. Things are going to click into place for you now and you'll find your book becoming something more beautiful than you imagined.

[Asphodele]

Annie,

I'm having the same kind of problem as you do, but with my protagonist! In my head, she's this kick-ass space pirate with personal history of messing with the story main antagonist (also an institution) but on the page, she's just a name, she doesn't do much and she's entirely defined by her relationship with another memeber of the crew and even that wasn't done right!

In all fairness, I'm not surprised and I try to take it in my stride. It was a Nanowrimo novel and my first big writing project and even if most of my main characters (protagonists and antagonists) have turned out to be pretty flat and one-dimensional, at least a couple of pretty amazing characters have come out of it. I've realised one of the sidekicks in particular has potential to be a great character - maybe the new MC. She has depth and her personal storyline could easily be tweaked so that she had a lot more at stake than my current MC.

Onto the 2B worksheets... Hopefully the second re-read will be as useful as the first.