Welcome to day 6 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:
What is your main character’s worst nightmare?
Feel free to share your answer in the comments! I would love to hear your response!
Today’s question is inspired by FEAR. One of the biggest motivators in life and in stories.
Everyone is afraid of something, even your main character. Even if you aren’t writing a horror story, fear is essential.
Frodo fears the death and enslavement of his people. Harry fears the death of his friends. Katniss fears for her sister’s life.
We can quickly see that a character’s fear is closely tied to what they love (good thing we’ve already established those things), more specifically losing what they love.
But fear isn’t a given just because your character loves something. In The Fault in Our Stars, it is expressly said that there is a real risk that Hazel may die. This introduces stakes, consequences, and tension. This fear kicks off the rest of the story and *motivates* Hazel to live life to the fullest while she still has time. We can assume that because she has cancer that death is a reality. But in your story, you want to lay it all out on the table. What is actually at stake here? Show us.
In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf tells Frodo that there is a real chance that darkness will spread over the free world. We aren’t afraid just because the Ring is in play, we are afraid when the Shire is threatened by the return of Sauron.
The fear has to be expressly stated AND your character has to react to that fear viscerally so that the reader understands what’s at stake.
Fear doesn’t always have to revolve around life and death stakes, or major plot points in your story. It also builds character.
We like Indiana Jones because he is afraid of snakes. It makes the archeological adventurer, who would otherwise be outside of our scope of empathy, much more relatable.
Or think about Ron Weasley and his fear of spiders. First, this creates tension in The Chamber of Secrets and then it works as a storytelling/world-building element in The Prisoner of Azkaban hiking up the tension before Harry reveals his fear. And THEN it works as foreshadowing in the Goblet of Fire, cloaking Mad-eye Moody/Barty Crouch Jr.’s cruel nature in a comedic way that we don’t even notice until just now when I am writing this post.
Identifying what your character fears can create a slew of inspiration for scenes in your story. Play with their fear. Be a little cruel, make them suffer. What happens when they are face to face with their greatest nightmare?
So, What is your main character’s worst nightmare?
Bonus: what do all of your characters fear?
Share this post with a friend so that we can all write together!