Nature abhors perfection– and so does the story.Fiction, like nature, is all about change. So in a story, heroism requires more than being perfectly heroic, and even more than committing heroic acts. It also requires the ability to change under pressure, to grow into someone better even if it hurts.In the same way, creating a heroic character requires more of the author than merely creating a perfectly brave protagonist and inventing exciting events to showcase those powers and skills. It requires providing the protagonist the need to change, the courage to change, the opportunity to change, and the motivation to change.The imperfect protagonist makes the three-dimensional story possible. The character moving through the external plot is a story of only two dimensions. The internal journey, the process towards psychological or emotional or life change, provides the depth that takes this story into three dimensions.In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore how you can determine your own character’s heroic flaw, and use it to develop a meaningful opening, a powerful journey, and a dramatic and satisfying ending.
Alicia Rasley is a RITA-award winning novelist and nationally known writing teacher. Her women’s fiction novel The Year She Fell has twice been an international Kindle bestseller, and her novel Poetic Justice has recently been a bestseller in the Kindle Regency category. Her publishing career is varied and illuminating: Big press, small press, writing, editing, publishing. She teaches writing at a state university and in workshops online and around the country. Her writing book The Power of Point of View was released in hard-cover and trade paperback by Writer’s Digest, and her plotting course The Plot Blueprint is currently open for enrollment. Her blog about editing is at www.edittorrent.blogspot.com, and her writing website, with hundreds of pages of archived writing articles, is www.aliciarasley.com.