Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.
Every writer has hopes – hopes of being published, being read, receiving good reviews, being published again and again, winning the Booker or any other respected writing prizes (I refuse to believe that is just me!), and many more thoughts besides.
But our characters should have hopes too. It will be hopes which will be the driving force behind them wanting to achieve their overall goal and this applies equally to villains as well as the goodies.
Hopes come from basic needs – we all want security, to be able to provide for ourselves and our loved ones and so on. Our characters will have those same drives, no matter how strange a species they are or how alien their setting would be when compared with our own dear planet.
Hoping for a better future is a powerful motivator. It can make us and our characters attempt things which, in other circumstances, we might think twice about doing. This, of course, makes for great drama and tension in our stories. Will our characters succeed? There is only one way to find out – the reader must read on.
Believable Hopes for Characters
It helps us to have hopes which are reasonably achievable. Your characters need the same. If you’re giving them impossible hopes, then you’re setting them up to fail and the readers will spot that early on. That could put some readers off from reading on to see if they were right or not (as they will assume they will be and almost certainly correctly).
Believable hopes do indicate the character has a chance of having these hopes fulfilled. You read on to find out if that happens or not. As well as giving a sad or tragic ending by thwarting hopes, there is an even better reason (and a more positive one) for a character not having their hopes happen. What if they discover better ones? The road to discovering better hopes could trigger some wonderful story ideas.
Hopes do tie in closely with motivation and can include the following, though I’m sure you’ll think of many others.
A Hopeful List
Characters wouldn’t be unreasonable if they hoped for:-
Safety
Having what they need (food, drink, adequate rest and so on)
Success in their quest (often their safety will depend on this)
Love
Not being alone
Having the right kind of help on their quest as it’s not unreasonable for a character to want to avoid doing this all on their own
Having knowledge about who to trust
Just as importantly, having knowledge about who not to trust
Rewards for carrying out a task well (not unreasonable though most characters I’ve read see these as a side benefit to doing the right thing – they just want to get through their journey in one piece and that has to be their main wish)
The Best Kind of Hopes for Characters
I don’t know about you but I know when someone encourages me, that increases my hope levels a lot. It is a kind of reassurance I’m on the right lines on something. Your characters may well feel similarly. This is where secondary characters can often play a major role.
Think of Sam Gamgee in this kind of role for Frodo Baggins in The Lord of The Rings. Think of Mr and Mrs Gardiner who are instrumental in getting Elizabeth Bennet to meet Mr Darcy again at Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. Without that meeting, nothing else could’ve developed for the couple.
I’ve always loved Darcy’s line to Elizabeth about having hope again after Lady Catherine de Bourgh, his aunt, reveals Elizabeth has not exactly been welcoming to her. Indeed Elizabeth has dared to defy her, something the Lady isn’t used to at all. That in turn tells Darcy it is possible Elizabeth’s feelings towards him have changed. It it then a question of him finding out whether he is right to think that way but he needed that spark of hope here. Darcy knew if Elizabeth still loathed him, she’d have told his aunt so.
The funny thing here is Lady Catherine did not intend to give hope, far from it. Nor would she intend to be funny but her kind of snobbish character, when I come across them, well I always hope for something to happen to burst their bubble! And it usually happens…
So there is always the option here to create characters who give hope to others, whether they mean to or not. This is where I find an outline for a character useful. I look at what it is about my proposed creation which would trigger that hope in others.
Are they a positive individual who would encourage this deliberately or are they like Lady Catherine and do so unintentionally? In the latter case, I would work out what kind of situation that character would be in for this to be able to happen.
Hopes for Writers
For obvious reasons I’ve welcomed the development of print on demand and the smaller independent presses. I’m published by the latter and they use the former. The former has made more things possible.
Knowing I’ve edited my story as well as I can and it fits in with requirements and what the competition/publication is likely to like is the best way to give yourself hope of something coming from your efforts. It is why researching requirements and ensuring you stick to submission requirements is so vital. You need to be seen to be willing to fit in here.
Writers need a certain amount of hope to keep going. The best way to “generate” hope is to ensure your story is as good as you can make it. When submitting for competitions and/or publications, you also need to know your tale would fit in with the competition requirements and things they’ve run before and/or with the publication you’ve got in mind.
It also helps to have more than one thing on the go at any one time. Ideally you have something you’re working on, something you’re resting, and something out there. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course, but it’s not a bad thing to aim for.
I’ve been trying to enter more competitions. Okay, no listings or anything like that, but I have stories I can look at again and see if I can polish them up and send them somewhere else. Biggest problem? Finding the time to do that! But this is something I hope to look at in the next month or so and see if I can get at least some of these pieces out there.
Conclusion
Hope can be something which keeps you going as a writer. It can also do the same for your characters. Another interesting story idea would be to look at would be when characters have their hopes dashed or their hopes turn out to be false ones. How would your characters handle that? Who would be bringing their hopes crashing down and what are they aiming to achieve?
Being part of a writing group, online or otherwise, as long as it is a good fit for you can also be a great way of helping writer hopes. I’ve found out so much from going to events and groups, some of which I still use now. But it is good to know all writers face writing dilemmas, other writers can often help you or point you in the right direction, and a great deal of writing hope can come from that!
Happy, hopeful writing!
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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