It has been five days since I voiced my concerns about Michelle as a protagonist. I deduced something wasn’t quite working with her. She was too angry and secluded for much of the early part of my novel. There were narrative reasons behind her estrangement from society, yet her behaviour risked alienating her from my core audience. I needed to make her more nuanced. I had to find a better way to make this character a combination of positive and negative. I needed to make her function as a more multifaceted character.

Since then, I’ve not contributed so much as a single word to her story. A busy schedule is yet again my excuse. Podcast editing, show prep, and some preliminary work on an upcoming project yanked me away from the task at fixing Synthetic Emprie’s core protagonist.

Amidst that silence, I’m beginning to feel genuine guilt toward my lead. It’s not just a professional laps here, it’s a personal one too. I identified a problem with her personality, then I did next to nothing about it. I moaned about her, then allowed her to gather dust in a dark corner inside my mind.

Now that I’ve returned to her world, I’m looking at her and wondering, what on earth do I do with her? Who is she? What is it about this character that compels me to tell a story with her? What is the point in all of this? She’s a woman in a world not built for her. This makes her angry, isolated, and withdrawn from those around her. Okay, I get all that, but how can I relate that to what I’m going through right now? What is it about Michelle that relates to my current circumstances? And how can I plug my own life into this story in a way that’s more personal and direct to what I’m going through right now?

I ask all of this because I know full well that I only write characters who serve as representatives to my current state of mind. It took me a while to reach this conclusion, but it seems the protagonists and antagonists of my story often serve as pointers on my mind map. They connect to whatever is plaguing my mental state at the time of writing them. If I’m struggling with burnout, so are my leads. If I’m going through a rough breakup, so are they. They are mirrors, designed to help me simulate and work through real-world struggles occupying the forefront of my own life.

And perhaps this is the problem with Michelle. While her story relates to my own isolation struggles on a thematic level, it’s lacking depth. Yes, I’m feeling out of place in the world right now, which is almost certainly why I’ve decided to tell this story now, but why? What is going on in my life that is making me feel this way? What interactions, relations and/or events are feeding this sense of discontent that I’m grappling with? That’s what’s missing from this story. I’m addressing the outline of my psyche, without actually acknowledging the root causes.

It’s the detail that’s missing. A personal, relatable ingredient that plonks Michelle in a scenario that directly feels like that of my own. A conflict or relationship that can help me explore my own conflicts and relationships. Michelle’s world is cruel and extreme, but I also need her to be going through something much more…well, me. Don’t get me wrong, the subplot of ostracisation is imperative to this book, but I need more layers that I can properly explore. I feel that I need her to be enduring something similar to my own life circumstances. Maybe then I can relate to her on a more personal level.

Perhaps then, I can start writing Michelle from a more nuanced, relatable, and – dare I say it – likeable way. At present, she’s just kicking and fighting a backdrop.

So, this is my pledge. I’m going to zoom in. I’m going to focus on her relationships with the people around her, because right now, they are lifeless. I need to make these factors work properly. I need to make them more believable. How do the individuals in her immediate life really make her feel? What are the conflicts at the heart of these relationships? What is her history with them like? How does her behaviour differ depending on who she’s interacting with?

This is what’s missing. Right now, everyone is just a role she’s acting off. There’s the ex best mate, the trouble-causing stranger, the overbearing mum, and the overly clumsy dad. They’re just…props. While I’ve told myself they have their own backstories and internal worlds, the moment they start conversing with her, they turn into one-dimensional plot devices. This is the crux of the problem. This isn’t how real people react.

Going forward, I’m going to write with this in mind. The drama needs to come from more than just the authoritarian backdrop. It needs to originate from the relationships. They are what need to make up this story. They are the people I can use to make Michelle’s tale more nuanced and relatable.

And that’s the new key. How can I incorporate my own interactions and experiences, ones that reflect my own real world conflicts and relationships? What exactly am I going through right now, and how can I better channel them through Michelle’s stories? I’m not suggesting I clone people from my actual life and place them into this story. I just need to take more inspiration from those moments and interactions to give this story more depth.

These questions alone are giving me a whole host of new ideas. All of a sudden, life is seeping into my story once again. The possibilities are growing. The potential for new scenes, scenes where stuff actually happens, is beginning to flash before my mind’s eye.