Tag: major character

  • Of Agape, Climax, and Transubstantiation…

    Of Agape, Climax, and Transubstantiation…

    With the passing of crisis come celebration, perhaps a love scene. Survival or resurrection from death provides the central character a wider scope of consciousness. Personal concerns no longer drive the protagonist. Those of the community dominate her or his thoughts and actions instead. Agape love now influences their choices and behavior. Personal suffering has…

  • Of Crises, Experience and Goals…

    Of Crises, Experience and Goals…

    Surviving a crisis bestows special knowledge garnered and held by few. It also grants admittance into various orders of wisdom yielded by experience. Every novel or story a writer crafts tells the life of a certain crisis, and chronicles a central character’s survival of that crisis. The process of writing that novel flows out of…

  • Setting the Stage

    Setting the Stage

    What is your protagonist doing, and or saying when the curtain lifts on the set of that first page of your story, or novel? Their actions and dialogue relay not only much about who they are while interacting in the world with others, but also their identity within the universe of their own personalities. They…

  • Plot: Stages of Evolution and Revelation

    Plot: Stages of Evolution and Revelation

    “A hero ventures forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder.” –Joseph Campbell, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” Every story is about the extraordinary, the uncommon experience or event that occurs in the constancy of ordinary time. Nearly, if not always, this occurrence upsets the routine of the…

  • Who Am I: What Do I Really Want?

    Who Am I: What Do I Really Want?

    According to Jungian theory, the shadow aspect of one’s personality contains any, and everything that falls out of alignment, stands apart, from the ego ideal. The writer must examine the central character’s values, those held by her or his family, mother, father and culture, to gain a sense of how the Shadow archetype might manifest…

  • Transformation: Making the Ordinary into the Extraordinary

    Transformation: Making the Ordinary into the Extraordinary

    Just as all good stories contain aspects of redemption, and death, so too transformation forms the engine propelling the narrative. A major character or protagonist is like the Prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament. God used Ezekiel to teach the Children of Israel how to suffer. Protagonists of our stories show readers, in much the…

  • The Heroine/Hero and Their Function in Story

    The Heroine/Hero and Their Function in Story

    The heroine or hero provides the reader with perspective and focus on the story, point of view. She or he also serves as the point of identification allowing the reader to invest her or his feelings towards care and concern for not simply the major character but also remaining with the story to see its…