Welcome to day 29 of PREPTOBER! This is a series of daily questions and prompts to help you prepare for this year’s upcoming NaNoWriMo!
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Today’s question is:
How has your character grown?
Feel free to share your answer in the comments! I would love to hear your response!
I have a confession. This post was supposed to come before yesterday’s post, “Win or Lose”. So today’s post may seem a little redundant.
See your character will have one more opportunity to make a choice and this time, the choice is one that will define the growth your character has experienced over the course of the story.
They still might not win the day based on this choice, like we discussed yesterday. This is because the value that your character (and reader) gets from the story is from the choice that they make.
Welcome to Choice #4!
This is the character’s defining moment. It’s when Luke trusts the force, Katniss tries to eat poisoned berries, Frodo allows Sam to join him to Mordor, you get the idea.
The most important thing about this moment is that your character initiates the action. This is your character’s choice/action. They are being faced with your villain’s left field action and your character, armed with all the knowledge and experience of the Unknown world, can now react to very intentionally.
Katniss thinks she can win the Games by playing by their rules. But the lesson she learns is that the Games are built so that everyone is a loser (23 people still die, she’s forced to kill others, even if she survives it’s with blood on her hands, then it happens again the next year), so she breaks the rules and changes the game.
How is your character doing things differently than they did in the beginning? How can this choice reflect that change?
Remember, the old Katniss might’ve just killed Peeta. But by refusing to do so, she is displaying her growth.
If you are having trouble thinking of how to write this scene, then look at your character’s motivation, fears, and dreams. How have they changed? Have they been compromised? How is this ending not what they anticipated? When they make this final choice, what does it say about the type of person your MC is?
How has your character grown?
Bonus: What choice do they make to reflect that growth?
Share this post with a friend so that we can all write together!