Crafting Courageous Heroines: Building Becca’s Character in THE MYSTERY OF MYSTIC MOUNTAIN by Author Janet Fox
My favorite part of writing is building characters. Especially my main characters. Main characters, or protagonists, like Becca Soloway in my newest novel THE MYSTERY OF MYSTIC MOUNTAIN, need to be complex and interesting because one of their most important functions in story is to show how they change from start to finish. And one of the greatest changes a character can make is to learn the meaning of courage.
My job is to understand everything about a character like Becca – her flaws, her strengths, her dreams and desires, and so on – so that at the beginning of the story readers feel an attachment to her and by the end they can see that she has grown and has attained both her external goal and a deeper understanding of her own nature.
The External Story Problem
When I come up with a story idea, here’s one place I begin to brainstorm: what is the story problem that this protagonist will face? In MYSTERY, I had the idea of a treasure hunt, so of course that meant that a number of characters might want to find the treasure – i.e., a competition. A race. Solving riddles and puzzles. Matching wits, and a ticking clock. Companions and enemies.
That race to find the treasure became the external goal or story problem. Then I had to define the characters – especially Becca, the protagonist – who would face that problem. And to show how she would change and grow while doing so.
Courage, or a willingness to stand up against big odds and face big challenges, is something that readers want in characters, so it’s one of the traits that I need to show in a protagonist. In Becca’s case, I needed to give her both the external problem of the treasure hunt but also internal issues that may have nothing directly to do with that external problem. This would carve a path to show how she could exhibit the kind of courage that would take her through an internal arc of change.
The Internal Story Problem
I decided that Becca’s internal problem would be, first, that she was at the age where she was trying to figure out what kind of person she wanted to become. She was a nerd, and loved puzzles and figuring out mysteries, but right before the story starts, she was given the opportunity to become a part of the “in crowd” in her school, a member of the gang of cool girls. But that would mean abandoning everything she believed and also meant leaving behind her best friend who was being excluded. Would Becca try to fit in for the sake of popularity? Be cruel to her friend? Redefine herself through disloyalty? This was an internal problem providing great challenges for Becca.
I also decided that Becca’s parents were on the verge of separating, and maybe divorce. Both of these complications in Becca’s life – her fraught self-examination and the loss of family stability – would mean she had to spend time in the story figuring out her place in this new world order. Creating internal questions like these is one way to put a protagonist into a place of requiring courage, and having a protagonist confront obstacles to the external goal is another.
Bringing Everything Together
Weaving internal and external drivers together is the writer’s challenge. The treasure hunt needed to be important enough to Becca that she’d want to get it done, but I also needed to push her into scenes where she would have to make decisions that mirrored her internal problem. This meant making her act in ways that would show betrayal and insecurity, and taking her from there to a place where she could begin to chart a better path as a person. Her interactions with the secondary characters and especially her new friend Jon would set the stage for her development.
I really had fun creating this complicated web of issues. How Becca handled the needs of Jon versus her own needs was central to building the story. Becca was forced to make choices and through those choices to see how she created problems for both herself and for Jon. She was forced to examine her relationship to friends new and old. She was forced to uncover the true needs of her parents and what made the people around her happy, or unhappy. And she was forced to uncover the true value of treasure.
Courageous heroines don’t need to be defined by acts of great valor. They don’t need monumental battles or death-defying stunts to exhibit courage. Courage comes out in actions small and seemingly insignificant – like standing up for a friend even if it means losing status or being honest with yourself even if that introspection hurts.
My Writerly Goal
As a writer I don’t want to teach lessons to my young readers. I want to show them how we can become better people in those small and seemingly insignificant ways. Whether my readers will ever participate in a treasure hunt in Montana is beside the point. They will almost certainly face discrimination or hurtful behavior, and they surely will have to make their own choices as to the kind of people they want to be. They will hopefully absorb the idea that character – by which I mean decency, integrity, honor, and yes, courage – matters.
I hope my books provide entertaining blueprints for living a courageous life like Becca’s.
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