Reviewing Your Review: Third Base

There’s a batter on the corner looking to come home…

Third Base: Character Development: Character development is the growth of a character from the beginning to the conclusion of a novel. As we continue to outline Fantasy Book 101, we see that the plot is incoherent, but the setting is believable. What about its characters?

Was Captain Josef Shmoe, the main character, a well-rounded person, or was he as flat as the paper he was printed on? Did he help progress the story, or did the story change him? Perhaps he happened to play second fiddle to one of the more interesting minor characters. Did his character grow and learn anything? Was he dynamic? Was he believable, and did you empathize with him? Did he have to make any sort of personal sacrifice for the “greater good”?

Characters are everything in a work of fiction! Yes that’s an exclamation point at the end of the sentence. It’s there because characters are the most important part of a story. Sure, we as readers love to be whisked into an imaginative, fantasy world filled with dragons and magical creatures, but what we love most is relating to the people in that story. A book can fulfill every fantastical desire we have, but if the characters in it have as much depth as a rain puddle, then we will struggle to relate to them, to care about them.
Captain Josef Shmoe is a war-torn man, tortured by his past. He was a child who had been abused by his crone mother, and he grows to be a hardened warmonger with a definite lack of compassion for the magical community. He has devoted his life to smiting any and all creatures of magic. However, he carries a dark secret. Deep down, he knows that he, too, is a being of magic like his crone mother, and he despises himself because of it. For every witch and wizard he slays, he feels he is suppressing his dark secret. Or is he?

(Tense and ominous music playing in the background)

To be continued...

-Matt