Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart.

Writing Excuses 9.32: Adjusting Character Proactivity

Let’s adjust sliders again! This episode references our sliding scales for characters, and this time around we’ll be talking about how proactive a character is. We also talk about the verb “protag.” Because protagging is what protagonists should do, especially later in our stories.

Our goal is to be able to consciously adjust a character’s level of proactivity in order to similarly adjust how engaging that character is for our audience. We talk about the techniques we rely on, and some of our favorite stories in which we’ve seen these techniques employed.

Homework: Tie your protagonist up, and then have them protag their way forward in the story with nothing but dialog.

Thing of the week: The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley, narrated by Diane Warren.

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