How to Make Readers Care About Your Protagonist—and Your Plot

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If you’re struggling with a lagging story, a lack of character agency might be the reason why.

A helpful-yet-brutal piece of critique feedback is “Why should I care?” Why should readers care about the character, the conflict, or the story in general? Why should they read this novel you’ve worked so hard to create?

“Because it’s my novel and I love it” might be true, but sadly, no one outside our friends and family accept that as a reason. And sometimes, not even then if we have honest critique partners. Potential readers are lost every day to novels that might be good in every other aspect, but they just “didn’t care” what happened to the characters.

Often, this is due to a lack of agency.

Why Rescuing Your Protagonist Might Be a Terrible Idea

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It’s fun to get your protagonist into trouble, but before you do, consider how they might get out of it.

I enjoy putting my protagonists in terrible danger, and throwing them into situations they can’t easily get out of. Which is both a lot of fun, and a whole pile of frustration, because sometimes I don’t know how to get them out of that trouble. I’m one of those writers who likes to write into a corner and force myself to come up with more unpredictable solutions, which make for better scenes.

Except when it makes for a worse scene.

Back when I was working on my Healing Wars trilogy, I faced this situation multiple times. My protagonist, Nya, gets captures a lot. So I had to get her out of that jam a lot.

The first idea that always popped into my head was to have another character come to her rescue, but I discarded it almost immediately every time.