In a post on Writer Unboxed, Donald Maass continues his examination of creating human moments in fiction. “Here’s something great about great fiction: a made-up story becomes our story. Whatever the main character is going through is what we’ve been through,” Maass says. “When you think about it, that’s weird.”
Even when the story world is far beyond our own mundane earth, readers want to project themselves into the story. Do readers seek an affirmation of their own lives, wish fulfillment, or cautionary tales? Maass says any or all of those might be the case, but the real power is in characters. “Boiled down, what connects us to fiction is what is human,” he says. “However unreal are a novel’s events, what connects us is the amazing discovery that what it is like for heroes is what it is like for us.”
So how do you make that connection between the reader and your characters? “It doesn’t matter how different are the people, happenings or places in your novel, if there are people in it…then there are opportunities to include in a novel the experiences that are common to us all,” Maass writes. “Moments we’ve all had. The ones that let us know that we’re human.”
These moments have to feel big. They alter the course of your story or affect the emotional growth of your character. Truths are revealed and your character is changed. Expectations were exceeded or totally undermined. Your hero may experience a profound gift or loss.
At these moments, your hero faces a choice or learns that a door has been shut forever. Only she can accomplish a task. He realizes there is no easy answer or good choice. Your protagonist has been chosen or rejected. The character realizes that change has occurred. The person you showed at the beginning of your novel no longer exists. “As I think you can see, whether it is a moment of triumph or the dark night of the soul, when a story moment connects with us it’s because it contains—and because you pointedly evoke—a feeling that at one time or another we’ve all had,” Maass says. “These connecting moments are mile markers on our human journey. Heroes have them. So do we. All of us.”
