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David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Secrets to Creating a Likeable Protagonist: Put Your Character in Pain

The most common way to create a likeable protagonist is by putting the character in pain.
JimWolverton
6/13/2012
David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Secrets to Creating a Likeable Protagonist: Put Your Character in Pain

Recently I heard a writer in Hollywood talk about how to create a likeable protagonist. He said that there were “only two ways to do it,” and that is the conventional wisdom in screenwriting. But there are really several ways that the writer doesn’t seem to know about, and I thought it might be wise to look at some of these techniques in-depth.

The most common way to create a likeable protagonist is by putting the character in pain. In his book CHARACTERS AND VIEWPOINT, Orson Scott Card even goes so far as to say, in effect, “If you’re trying to figure out who your viewpoint character is for a scene, look for the character who is in the most pain.” That was a revolutionary insight for me when I first learned it, and I’ve seen other writers mention it on blogs and whatnot, too. It really does work.

However, there are some caveats that I want to mention. First, it doesn’t work well if you just put your character in physical pain. Remember how you felt last time you had a toothache? Not really. In normal people anyway, the brain won’t allow you to recall physical pain. If I’m reading about a character with a bad toothache, I don’t suddenly get sympathetic pains shooting through my jaw. Instead, the brain has a safety mechanism that blocks remembered pain, so that you can’t recall it very well.

That doesn’t mean that physical pain can’t be used in stories, it’s just that it often doesn’t work as well as emotional pain.

You see, when you’re reading, your mind gets tricked into taking imaginary journeys, often to places it wouldn’t normally go. If you’re reading about a child who is alone in a house with a serial killer, then you most likely will get enough adrenaline and cortisol pumping through your bloodstream so that your heart will race, and your mind will become riveted on the danger. As you read about the child going to her mother’s room, seeking comfort, and she finds her own mother there in bed—her throat cut, and her own tongue clutched in her left palm—you might even be persuaded to feel the horror, shock, and grief that a child would feel on such a discovery. Finding that she is alone in the world, the threat now looms ever larger.

In short, you as a writer must escort your reader through a waking dream, bringing scene after scene to life, so that the reader experiences the novel as it progresses. As each scene arouses genuine emotions, the reader will naturally feel pain in sympathy with your protagonists.

However, you have to seek a balance. If you put the reader into too much discomfort, the reader may close the book, not because the tale doesn’t interest them, but because it becomes emotionally overcharged. As a kid I went to see the movie The Exorcist. It creeped me out way too much, and I left the theater. (As an adult, I’m afraid that I’d laugh at that same movie, but for a young teen, it was too much for me.) Most likely, as an audience member you’ve done the same to a book or movie.

Sometimes scenes are emotionally under-charged. You’ll often will find scenes that don’t hold your interest. There can be a lot of reasons for this. Maybe the scene just doesn’t transport you well enough so that it “puts you into the story.” Maybe the author needs to raise the tension by adding new threats or conflicts. But one great way to strengthen a scene is to put the protagonist in greater pain.

Do you remember the original movie Die Hard? In it, Bruce Willis gets in a gunfight in an office complex, and all of the windows are shot to pieces with automatic weapons. Glass is strewn on the floor everywhere, and Bruce Willis is barefoot. His wife is in danger, and so in order to rescue her, he walks barefoot over the broken glass.

I recall being in the theater when that scene came on the screen. Everyone around me cringed, and many cried out. In short, even though it was a scene where physical pain was used, it worked.

Why did it work? In part I think it worked because it took us by surprise. If we have time to think about the physical pain, our emotional barriers go up. But I also think that it worked because our protagonist was in emotional pain. We understood and sympathized with his emotional pain, and so his willingness to undergo physical torment simply underscored his drive. We cringed because we felt his need so much, we too imagine ourselves walking barefoot over that glass.

Now, back up. Imagine that Bruce Willis had had his shoes on. Would we have “felt his pain” as he walked over the glass then? Of course not. There would have been no pain, no torment.

That one scene virtually “made” that movie. Oh, it was a good movie otherwise, but it defined that movie. For years afterward, everyone in Hollywood, when describing their screenplay, would say, “It’s Die Hard meets . . . whatever.” Die Hard became an iconic picture because of that.

So don’t hesitate to put your characters through pain. If your scene feels weak, ask yourself, “How could I put my character in greater pain? What’s the worst that could happen?”

Maybe the worst that could happen for the reader is the best thing that you can do for your story.

Check out Dave’s Novel Rewriting Seminar here.
T
his is a workshop that will teach you a number of editing techniques to help boost the power and effectiveness of your novel, while at the same time broadening your audience so that you generate more interest and, in the end, sell more books. This will also work great for screenplays!

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