Even BIGGER than life

I have to confess: I'm not sure where Maass is going with this.  Page 32 of the Workbook asks me to find TWELVE places the protragonist can break through boundaries and do something s/he wouldn't have done at the beginning of the book.  While this is all great and good for character growth, with too much of itthe character traits you outline at the beginning of the book don't seem so much like traits if the character is just busting through that way of thinking or acting right away. 

For example, if I have a female character who's quiet and shy in her speech, I can't have her shouting too much.  The soft-spoken trait then looks like an affectation rather than a true trait, and the reader is going to see my character differently. 

On Page 35 (still in Chapter 4) Maass says to practice taking a thought, action or piece of dialogue and first make it bigger, then make the same action smaller.  And THEN come up with 24 points in the story (in mine, it would be 24 per character) where you can heighten or diminish something the character does, says or thinks. 

Um. . .. wow.  48 times?  Really?  I'm going to work on this tomorrow, but I'm wondering if this level of intensity might get tiring after a while, or make the characters seem caricatures.

Larger than Life Characters

Now we're on to Chapter 4.  Here, Maass says that one of the things that makes a memorable, larger-than-life protagonist is that they will do what the rest of us would never do.  They say things out loud that we only think.  And of course, they come up with witty repartee in an instant, where we always have the perfect comeback an hour after the discussion. 

Part of the exercises (Page 31 of the Workbook if you're following along) is to outline the things that your character would never, EVER, under any circumstances, say.  What s/he wouldn't do.  And what s/he wouldn't think.  Then, find places in your story for your character to think, say and do those things. 

What type of situations might cause that?   What would be the consequences of the thought or action? 

My thoughts at this point (having not done the exercise yet) are that it would have to be fairly well into the book to write this.  Because a reader isn't going to know it's against the character's traits to think/say/do something until they know the character.  But then I can see the shock value of starting with something big and dramatic, like killing someone, and then revealing how out of character that is.  The repercussions of whatever opened the book would have to be felt throughout it, I'm thinking.

Has anyone done this exercise already?  Thoughts? 

Growing Conflicted

Still working on Maass's chapter on Inner Conflict (Chapter 3), and in looking back at the work I did for Chapter 2 (Multidimensional Characters) I see now that identifying those extra character dimensions is a good chunk of the work toward creating (but not, darn it, solving) internal struggles for the characters.  For example, in the wip, the hero's primary trait is that he's a rescuer.  He sees himself as the person who swoops in and takes care of things for those who can't.  He's a doctor, as well, which plays right into that.  Rescuer types often become EMTs, doctors, etc.

The opposite of that would be to throw someone to the wolves, a very villainous trait and one I don't think that my hero has.  Still, I wrote a scene with him doing something like that just to see what would happen.  Very interesting.

But what would happen if someone came along who he could not save?  Someone with cancer, or (in this instance) a mental illness that was simply beyond the medicine of the times to treat?  How would that challenge him as a person?  As a doctor? 

So let's hear it.  Pick one of your characters and tell me his or her defining quality, as Maass puts it.  What's the one trait someone would use to describe your character, as in "he's honest" or "she's very direct".  Now, what's the opposite of that, and how would you show some growth from one toward the other, even if not all the way there?  Your honest hero might not have to become a pathological liar, but what would test his honesty?  And would there be a time when he could actually tell a lie to achieve some greater goal?

Internal Conflict

So you've created characters who are heroic and likeable.  Maybe still flawed at the opening of the book, but that's okay. They can be flawed but still likeable, so long as their flaw isn't something like being a serial murderer or a pedophile.  The flaw has to be redeemable, something the character can overcome--which brings me to the subject of this week's (I promise to do better about posting regularly) post. 

Internal conflict.  Growth of the character, WITHIN the character.  This chapter of the Maass book deals with the internal conflict, something I love but I always seem to give my characters a Mt. Everest to climb.  But I want them to work for their happiness.  So how do you identify what that internal conflict is, make it large enough to be a rewarding read, but manageable enough that the character has a realistic chance of growing and changing enough to overcome it?  How do you keep everything in balance?