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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27398
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27398
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In story, character is desire. Character is the things you want and the things you are willing to do, or not willing to do, to get the thing you want. Some stories hang a lot of rich detail on these bones, and some pretty much rely on archetypes to do it all for them, but in essence it is always about desire and what you are willing to do, the price you are willing to pay, to attain that desire.

Often the key moment of revelation in a story is when a character reaches the limit of what they are willing to do. (Will the soldier of fortune abandon the orphanage he has stumbled into to save his own skin, or has he found the limit on his callousness and must stay and try to rescue them.) That is when you know who this person is.

Nothing in what you have described of your story tells us what your protagonist wants, or the limits of what she is willing to do to get it. If those things are not made clear in your story, then your readers will have no sense of who the character is.

As far as what the story line provides, the shoe is really on the other foot, it is the character's desire, and the limits on what they are willing to do to achieve their desire, that create the story line.

Original score: 1