Life Advice; April 24 2023

I’ve been thinking recently about how much of myself I put into my books. Or, more specifically, how every character I’ve ever written into a book with too much me in them has been called unrealistic.

If you know anything about the publishing world, you know that one of the biggest things agents and publishers look for in a book are the stakes. What happens if your protagonist fails is the most important thing to any plot. There are big-picture stakes, like ‘the world will end if X doesn’t happen by Y’, but then there are personal stakes. ‘The protagonist will lose Z if the world ends.’

Because, y’know. The world ending isn’t enough.

That’s where people have taken issue with some of my protagonists. They don’t have enough going on in their ‘personal stakes’ storyline. This was especially prevalent in the notes about Kanae and Lysander, from The Rebirth of Qistedei and Neon Bethel respectively.

Kanae’s country is at war with itself and she’d do anything to stop it, so she jumps at the first opportunity she sees. Beta readers asked me why. ‘Her country’s been in the middle of a civil war since before she was born – why does she care?’

Lysander’s marriage falls apart and he’s drifting, looking for purpose. As he does so, he almost-compulsively helps everyone he happens upon, just because he’s in a position to help. ‘But why? What’s in it for him?’

I really struggled with those notes, because initially, the reason was… Why wouldn’t they?

But it sparked a lot of introspection, had me questioning why I do the things I do too. Altruism for altruism’s sake can be a major flaw when it becomes self-destructive. If I’m going to write a character like that, I have to really lean into how toxic that can be for oneself, or risk writing a completely unrealistic character.

Which is kind of when I realized how much more effort I need to put into taking care of myself.

It’s good to take care of others. Helping is wonderful. But it should never be at your own expense, to your detriment. It’s a lesson I keep having to forcibly relearn.

So if you’re like me and you tried putting some of yourself into a character you write, really ask yourself why readers react to them the way they do. Don’t hold back on flaws. You won’t just become a better writer; you’ll become a better person too.