Feo Takahari
Auror
This is something I've struggled with in the majority of stories I've written, and the more stories I've written, the worse I've gotten at it. Protagonist A is happily going along, experiencing her normal life, and then massive life-changing event B comes thudding in and changes everything. At some point, the protagonist will adopt course of action C to productively respond to B. But the protagonist had no idea that B was coming, and that means their first response will likely be confusion and bafflement.
My problem is that I don't know how to advance the story or reveal character with someone who's shocked or baffled.
I know this sounds like a stupid problem, but it often feels like I'm copy-pasting. Here's this scene in one story where a character has an event that leaves her shocked and baffled. Here's this scene in another story where a different character is shocked and baffled, and she's responding in exactly the same way. The more times I write this, the more bored I get of it and the less effort I put into it, and I've reached the point where the second most frequent complaint I get about my stories is that my characters take way too much in stride.
(To give some examples of different variants of B: you just discovered you're not human, having had absolutely no suspicion of this beforehand. Your sister who died five years ago is alive and well and doesn't recognize you. You just watched a little girl blast energy out of her hands and disintegrate a monster.)
I hardly ever see this complaint about other people's stories, so I guess most writers have ways around this. What do you do with a baffled protagonist?
My problem is that I don't know how to advance the story or reveal character with someone who's shocked or baffled.
I know this sounds like a stupid problem, but it often feels like I'm copy-pasting. Here's this scene in one story where a character has an event that leaves her shocked and baffled. Here's this scene in another story where a different character is shocked and baffled, and she's responding in exactly the same way. The more times I write this, the more bored I get of it and the less effort I put into it, and I've reached the point where the second most frequent complaint I get about my stories is that my characters take way too much in stride.
(To give some examples of different variants of B: you just discovered you're not human, having had absolutely no suspicion of this beforehand. Your sister who died five years ago is alive and well and doesn't recognize you. You just watched a little girl blast energy out of her hands and disintegrate a monster.)
I hardly ever see this complaint about other people's stories, so I guess most writers have ways around this. What do you do with a baffled protagonist?