Hello.

I've been reading the 'where to start' thread in this forum with interest and something struck me, but I thought it best to start a new thread.

Say there was a character who started the novel as very passive. There are good reasons for this - there are one or two occasions in her past where she's been a bystander to someone else's wrong doing. She's guilty about it, and has responded by withdrawing from life. So she lives alone in a tower block, is estranged from her mother and works nights on her own so she can sleep during the day, on her own.

The basic action of the novel is that her mother insists on a visit. While she's at the flat something unusual and disastrous happens (don't want to go into too much plot detail on a public forum). My main character decides she wants to help, goes out with her mother, and fails in her objective. She goes home, intending to watch the thing she tried so hard to prevent happening on television. But her mother says something off-hand related to her past, and this makes her realise perhaps her choices in the past weren't that bad after all. So she does something else, something out of character that doesn't solve the disaster but is a symbolic and actual protest about the event and what her life has become. It's quite an explosive ending, unusual and quirky and I am convinced it it right for her character and the novel.

My question is, would the first couple of chapters, where we see the character alone, being put-upon by her boss and her mother, remembering events where she's also been passive, be off-putting to the reader?

She doesn't actually choose to do anything herself until about a third of the way into the novel. The other stuff is interesting, but it doesn't show her character wanting something and struggling to get it.

I think this is a plot question as much as a motivation question.

When I ask myself what she wants - the answer is, she wants to be invisible and be left alone. There is progression, because then she goes on to do some very visible, exciting things. She starts off being obsessed with the correct way to behave, and then realises that sometimes there is no logical response to some things, and it is okay and necessary to do inexplicably spontaneous things now and again.

I know this is garbled. I will give more detail if it helps, but it is more about the structure than the actual events so I hope this will be enough.

would the first couple of chapters, where we see the character alone, being put-upon by her boss and her mother, remembering events where she's also been passive, be off-putting to the reader?

I think it absolutely depends on how you write it. I certainly wouldn't be put off by this scenario if it was written well. I suppose the question is, will the reader empathise with the character and be curious about what happens to her? If you engage the reader's interest in her character, then there's no reason this shouldn't work perfectly well. As to HOW you do that - you know that as well as I do! But I think that if you are interested in your character, and write the things that make you interested in her, then that's what will draw the reader in too.

Yes - the character is quite bad tempered and misanthropic towards the beginning, and I wondered about how to keep a reader with her. I've done this so far by ensuring there is a bit of humour in it, both in her character and at her expense, to lighten the tone, and to with-hold the reason as to why she doesn't want her mother to come and why they are estranged from each other until a little bit later in the book.

I think of the second as a hook - I won't give this information until the character is formed and the reader is very curious about it.

I suppose an easy way would be to start with a bang and the disaster that brings her out of the flat, then track back to the rest if it was needed. But I think this would totally undermine the effect I want to give of someone doing something out of character and developing in response to internal and external shifts. That won't be clear until the current facts of her character are established a little bit.

Thanks.

Interesting thread. I agree with Leila - it's in the 'how' rather than the 'what'. I'd also say that, for me, it would be in the character's voice. If the MC has a really strong voice, that alone will draw me in and keep me reading. The humour would help, too. And - again, for me - if the internal thoughts of the MC were interesting enough, if they made me think and question, then that would help, too. I suppose one other thing is texture: I would find reams of inner thought could (perhaps) get tedious - some flashbacks or short scenes from real life, using dialogue, would help keep the texture varied and interesting.
I'm sure you're doing all these, by the way!
I have a similar problem, in that both my female MCs begin in the novel in a low place. One is introverted and bullied by her husband, while the other is an extravert and being inveigled into doing something which goes against her principles. I'm hoping their situations will engage readers, but who knows?
Susiex

I agree with Susie, the voice, and especially if it is mixed with humour would keep me reading. There is nothing worse than being stuck with an MC who is wallowing. If, however, they are treating it all with, eg, sarcastic wit, black humour, etc, it helps the reader swallow the bitter pill of the situation the character finds themselves in.

- NaomiM



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Maybe I mean wry wit.

Isn't ther a reacnt Marian Keyes's novel out where one of her characters is an abused wife, who makes up loads of (amusing, outlandish?) excuses for her cuts and bruises. I remember reading a review where she said she took a lot of trouble to make her sympathetic to the reader, rather than just a victim.

Thanks for that. I was planning to have one sentence right at the beginning alluding to what is to come - but I discarded that as impossible, as the current story is written in present tense, and the flash backs in past, and also, it seemed ham-fisted and a cheap trick to me.

The character wasn't always passive - in fact, her main bad secret was something that she did, rather than something that she omitted to prevent, so I think I could allude to that close to the beginning too - just to balance her character and keep the reader wondering what changed her.

I might also bring the disaster that is the catalyst for her major actions and character change a little bit closer to the beginning - there is a lot of 'throat clearing' in the first three chapters that could be usefully cut, I think.

I'm in the middle of a second draft, and it will be a while, I think, before I get everything slotted into place where it needs to be and content myself with the pace and structure. It is only now I am a fair way into it that I am deciding what her motivations are and what her character and the main themes of the book really consist of. So as usual, a work in progress.

I will work on the beginning chapters more and get some opinions, but at least I know my rough plan so far it isn't a definite no-no.

Thank you
J

I don't know if it's relevant but I'm just reading Smilla's Feeling For Snow, where the main character is a complex and not at all lovable woman who spends lots of time on her own being angry and depressed. But she's a fantastic character and there's a lot of sarcastic humour in her voice which is one of the main pleasures of the book. She's not exactly passive though.

I agree with Leila, I think this could work really well (especially knowing your writing).

There is nothing worse than being stuck with an MC who is wallowing.

Disagree. If there's a point to it and it's written well then it can be really great, with or without humour.

That said it's hard to give an absolute answer because a) our tastes are all different and b) we've not read it. I don't think LBB has anything to worry about.


Nik

Again, I am the most inexperienced here, and most of my views are cinematic. There's not a lot to go on but....

Hollywood would no doubt have a scene with her last visit to her therapist. Just hang a few questions out there to be answered at a later date.

Cannes? (and what I would do) is try to give your character behaviour bordering on illness. Before she goes shopping, she must replace what's missing, there must always be four cans of soup, two tins of beans etc. Food must be stored in cupboards a certain way. Mail must be sorted into size before it can be opened. She has adopted a routine, anything outside of that sets off mild panic.

Habit, has been overtaken by obsessive routine. I know this to be possible. At work I freaked out a client by reversing her car onto her drive. (Normally it is driven on, reversed off.) She had to be sedated.

If in your 'choreography' you constantly reference some sort of mild OCD, I, the reader, will stick about to find out why. Crazy stuff, always checking the location of the spare key, (nobody would ever use) before opening unlocking her front door. The ash-tray that can never be used etc...

There is nothing worse than being stuck with an MC who is wallowing. Disagree. If there's a point to it and it's written well then it can be really great, with or without humour.

Can you imagine Cinderella wallowing Nik?


- NaomiM

Acrually, I can! I think that'd be fab (well, could be fab). Just think of the layers to her personality that could add.

Nik

Personally, I have to invest in my MC early. They don't have to be perfect but they do have to be interesting.
There's a massive deifference between a protagonist who is tortured and one you want to slap.
In your case I'd have to be intrigued as to why she is what she is so there would need to be enough clues to keep me on the edge of my seat.
HB x

There's a massive deifference between a protagonist who is tortured and one you want to slap.

Good line, Helen. I now have visions of slapping Cinderella

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As I remember it, it was the role of the Ugly Sisters to wallow, to show how horrible they were, despite having everything that money could buy. Whereas poor, passive, putapon Cinders was the one who always saw the silverlining in everything.

Sorry, Ladyblackbird, a little 'child-fic' digression there.

You know, Cinderella doesn't wallow, but she doesn't exactly do anything to get herself out of her situation either, does she?

She floats along, getting helped out by the fairy godmother, relies on a co-incidence to find the prince, and then gets rescued by him too.

Okay - she doesn't whinge and whine, but she is certainly resigned to being unhappy and taken advantage of - just doing it with a smile on her face and a song in her heart, which, to this reader, is even more repellent than a character who turns into a misanthrope and passive aggressively sabotages the ugly sister's morning tea with Senocot.

By modern standards, it isn't much of a plot. Once the fairy godmother comes into it there isn't any plot at all - she doesn't go out of her way to force herself into the ball, and when she goes home, she doesn't even text the prince and tell him where she is - he turns up like a miracle...

Totally off topic, I know, but it got me thinking. Where would the motivation and conflict be there? She doesn't want to be the skivvy anymore, sure - but she hardly struggles against opposition to do anything about it either. Without a fairy godmother, she'd probably be sweeping cinders still.

Yes, she's about as (annoyingly) passive as it gets, Helen. Possibly your classic victim. All she's got going for herself is her good looks - of course in the 21st Century she wouldn't need a fairy godmother, a little bit of get up and go would have her striding through the doors of the nearest model agency.

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I suppose the conflict is between her and the classically wicked stepmother.