In a new post, Mary Carroll Moore examines the narrator’s false belief – the ignorance, superstition, or unconscious failing that makes life difficult for your protagonist. “False belief makes a great structural model for story, both in memoir and fiction, and it’s even applicable to nonfiction (the reader comes to your book with a limited view and uses your material to expand that view),” Moore says.
Characters generally start out happy with their status quo, even their limitations. They’ve learned to ignore their weaknesses or work with or around them. That changes when your inciting incident pushes them out of their comfort zone. False beliefs often arise from a serious event in your hero’s past, something that wounded or traumatized them.
So, how do you leverage that concept in your novel? Moore suggests five steps:
- Triggering event. “The event that opens your story must hint at the character’s false belief about life,” Moore says.
- First turning point. Also called “I can’t take it anymore”, at this point your character deciedes that something must change. The false belief is challenged but not yet abandoned.
- Second triggering event. After the protagonist conquers their early challenges and learns some new skills, a second major upheaval causes problems. “False belief is renegotiated, similar to the bargaining stage of grief,” Moore says. “Not released or even looked at fully yet, just reworked into a new form.”
- Second turning point. Also called the “All is lost” moment, at this point your protagonist experiences a deep betrayal. Nothing she’s tried before has worked and now she must change. The false belief is acknowledged and abandoned.
- Ending. A new person emerges as your character reinvents himself.
