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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The way you make a reader feel anything about a character is by how he acts. You can try telling the reader stuff about him that is contrary to how he acts, but it won't work. The reader will still judge him, will still feel interested in following him, or not, based on how he acts.
So this makes what you are trying to do very difficult. You want your hero to spend the first two thirds of the book behaving not like a hero, and still have the reader think of him as a hero. That is going to be tough to do.
The toughest part of this, though, is not going to be the character's introversion, or their nerdiness. It is going to be their indifference. Indifference to great events is not an appealing or even interesting characteristic in anybody, least of all a literary hero.
But not every quest has to be the quest. Not every protagonist has to set out to save the world, even if they pivot to saving it in the end. But they do have to have some desire, some goal in mind, some wrong to right, some heart to change, or they are just not interesting.
So, rather than thinking of your hero in such negative terms for the first two thirds, figure out what else it is that they care about, that they are working for, while the dragon is going about fricasseeing the countryside. But, since you are intending to pivot to him being the uber-hero at the end, figure out why the pursuit of his non-dragon related goal in the first two thirds of the book leads him inevitably to the pivot to dragon slaying at the end.
A book, to remain interesting, has to have a trajectory, as sense that it is going somewhere in particular, not just meandering around. The end has to belong to the beginning and the middle to the beginning and the end. So in this case, you need to work back from the pivot point and figure out what was the quest before the pivot, and why can the consummation of that quest come only through the pivot. Because if it doesn't, the end won't belong to the beginning, or the middle to either, and the book will not work.
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