The winning ingredients: hero

Number of entries received for the 2007 InnermoonLit Award for Best Short-Short Story to date: 62 – We seem to have hit some kind of midsummer standstill here…

Moving on to another element from the contest scorecard…the hero. Every story has one, whether you call her your main character, protagonist, chief sufferer, antihero, etc.

Sometimes we get contest entries in which the hero is sort of a hazy, undefined figure. I get the feeling the writer is just barely acquainted with his character and is using the actual writing as a means of learning more about his protagonist. But that should really take place during the brainstorming and note-taking phase of writing.

By the time you have a final draft ready to send out into the world, you should know your hero intimately. The better you know your character, the more she will come to life. Just one of what must be plenty of good books on this subject is Robert Peck’s Fiction is Folks: How to Create Unforgettable Characters.

A good exercise he recommends is one actors often use. They delve into their characters by asking and answering extensive lists of questions about the character. What motivates her? What is her biggest dream and most crippling fear? Where did she grow up? What was she like in high school? And so on.

The answers to these questions need not appear in the text, but if you as creator have a handle on the answers, your character will come across as a fully fleshed out, three-dimensional being to your reader, and her words and actions will be easier for you to imagine.