Give Your Hero Room to Grow

screenwritersguidebook:

No matter what you’re writing, you should always have an imperfect protagonist. They should never be the best at everything they do and never be put in situations where they could possibly not achieve their end goal.

Make your audience care about your protagonist by giving them weaknesses.

Maybe your character is the best fighter ever, but they have a bad knee from an old fighting injury. Maybe your character is completely selfless, but they’re a shark in the work place. Maybe your character is really good at magic, but there’s just one type of magic that they can’t grasp no matter how hard they try.

There should always be something that gives your hero room to grow by the end of your story. I often see people giving their characters negative character traits, thinking it’s the same thing, but it’s not. If your character’s weakness doesn’t cause conflict at some point in the story, then your character needs to be rewritten. And you should always try to relate their weaknesses to your character’s past or even a past trauma.

For the fist hypothetical character I made up, their weakness of ‘a bad knee’ actually tied back to a past injury, so that’s something that, if it came up in the story, it would help your audience connect better with the character.

Try doing this with your character now. If they already have a weakness, maybe see if you can make it more integral to the plot.

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