After beta-ing a friend's story...

[agilebrit]

I'm asking myself the same questions I asked him. To wit:

What does this character want?
What is his arc? What's his Point A, and where's his Point Z?
How can I make people care more about him? The fact that he rescued a dog from Iraq tells us what kind of guy he is, but it's not enough, is it?

I think I need to make this more about his issues, and the inner monsters he's fighting, and the outer monster is a metaphor for that. It needs more emotional bang, and the thing he has about people being Trapped needs to come more to the forefront of the story.

So, that's something to hang my hat on for edits, anyway.

Comments

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

If I may make a suggestion: ask also what TWO things this character wants, and ask what the conflict is between the two things, making it impossible (at first) to get both. Ask what the opposition is to both of the two. Then ask what the stakes are: what will he lose if he loses the first thing or the second? The stakes should have a public side and a private side: that is, what will his friends and neighbors and guild and nation and planet and continuum (or whatever) suffer if he loses thing one and thing two, and what will he lose personally, himself? A fireman rescuing a child is gripping, a fireman rescuing his own child is more gripping, a fireman rescuing his own child that he is falsely accused of murdering is even more gripping.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

It just occurred to me, reading your suggestion, that he kind of escalates from "this thing is keeping me from sleeping and scaring my dog" to "KILL THE MONSTER" pretty quickly. In his defense, he's seen the thing murder one person and knows it killed someone else, but on the other hand it's contained now and can't hurt anyone else.

*squint* I wonder if I need to make it more of a threat to someone else he cares about. Escalation is always good...

Oh, God, the word count on this thing is already ridiculous. Market? What is a market?