Writing meme created by Erin Penn
The Good Guys
Way back in 2014 Liana Brooks created a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWritMo) boot camp. When she migrated over to her new blog in 2016, the boot camp disappeared including Day 3: The Antagonist, which is perhaps the best ever explanation on how to create several levels of bad guys in a book. I contacted her, and she immediately dropped the material in her new blog, because she is awesome like that.
From her boot camp I have previously made posts about the Antagonist and Establishing a Baseline. As NaNoWritMo rears its head again, I thought to dip once more into the well of goodness and touch on Day 4: The Protagonist.
She has five exercises to help a writer define a hero. Not every manuscript needs every exercise, but someone thinking about writing a novel next month might want to try out one or two to level up their hero.
Exercise 1: Weaknesses; Exercise 2: Strengths; Exercise 3: Backstory (specific to strengths and weaknesses); Exercise 4: Personality; Exercise 5: One Thing
Of the suggested exercises, I found exercise 4 and 5 the most useful over the years. Knowing the characters Meyers-Briggs personality helps me come up with a decision-making process different from my own. Sometimes I post to my list asking for someone with the appropriate personality to contact me so I can run choices by them.
And “The One Thing” part is just pure gold. If you would like to see it, go here: http://www.lianabrooks.com/nanowrimo-boot-camp-day-4-the-protagonist/
WRITING EXERCISE: Choose one of the five Protagonist exercises suggested by Ms. Brooks, and implement it for your present Work-in-progress (WIP). If you are participating in NaNo next month, consider that your WIP.