Comments on How to write an introverted main character with accidental charisma
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How to write an introverted main character with accidental charisma
I’m planning a medieval-style fantasy epic in which a young protagonist is plucked from his humble life, acquires great powers, and ultimately saves his civilisation from the Big Baddie (a politically manipulative dragon). My MC’s personality is quiet, dreamy, introverted, and a little bit quirky. I imagine him as having some mild autism spectrum attributes but will probably play this subtly, if at all, in the written version of the character.
I’m working pretty hard on defining the MC’s motivations clearly, because his tendency is to be passive. He has no ambitions to heroism or adventure and spends the first third of the story just reacting to unusual events (with one important exception). After some terrible things happen, he spends the middle third trying to find answers, but still doesn’t have a clear goal in mind. Only by the last third does he realise that he needs to be a hero and that nobody else can do the heroic thing.
I want to make sure that my MC is not overshadowed by my secondary characters, some of whom seem to be more proactive or have more “colourful” personalities which the reader might naturally find more interesting. In particular, I want to convey that other characters are drawn to the MC, not because he’s conventionally charismatic but because of a special something that makes people like him and want to help him, perhaps without realising why. Local folks are starting to put their hope in him by the middle third and he's a full-blown national icon and rallying point by the end, despite him just trying to get on with the job of fixing the world with his growing magical powers. He's not interested in fame - he just does what he needs to do in the moment, based on what knowledge and ability he has.
My question might actually be twofold because I don’t know the answers to either of these things: What aspect of his personality gives him this compelling something, exactly? How do I convey that in my third-person narrative? (by which I think I mean, How do I make the reader feel the same way about him?)
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That he has no ambitions to heroism or adventure doesn't mean he has no ambitions at all. It just means that his ambitions are of a different type. Maybe he has the ambition to learn everything he can about the plants in his surrounding. Not because he plans to do something specific with that knowledge, but just because he's interested in plants. That certainly would be a nerdy thing to do.
But the fact that he knows so much about plants means also that he is an authority at their healing properties, not in the sense that he actually provides healing services, but if you ask him about if he knows about a plant that helps with headache, he will happily tell you about the plant that grows in the next valley, which is known for its extraordinary headache healing properties. Not because of a drive to help you, but because it is an opportunity to share his knowledge with someone interested in it. Indeed, he will tell you far more about the plant than you want to know, and you'll have problems to stop him. Note that he won't go out and get you that plant, he'll just tell you everything about it.
So he has knowledge that is helpful to others, and is willing to share that knowledge. Although he doesn't share in order to help, he in fact does help by sharing, and that is an attractive feature.
Of course the plants thing is just an example; it't just that he has a passion, and that passion happens to be useful to others, and that earns him the respect of others, even though he himself doesn't do it to impress or please others.
Note also that he won't ever realise that he must be a hero. He will realise that he has to do that heroic thing, but he doesn't see it as a heroic thing, he just sees it as a thing he has to do. But there's this problem, and that problem simply won't go away unless he does something about it. Maybe he doesn't even see the actual size of the problem; maybe his special knowledge shows him a seemingly simple way to deal with it. It's just a test of his knowledge, a possibility to apply it, and it seems easy to do. When it turns out to not be that easy after all, he's already committed to doing that thing.
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