NOVEL WRITING

“When You’re Living The Life Of The Character In Your Novel”

Analyzing the Protagonist of the Novel

Photo by: Pezibear

So, I’ve been writing this novel for the past few months called “The Summerland,” and it’s about this man in his forties, who’s married with an eight-year-old daughter and he’s a devoted Christian. He eats, sleeps, and breathes Christ. However, part of the story is that his life turns upside down when he suffers through numerous tragedies, which causes him to question God and Christianity as a whole. There’s more to the novel but I don’t want to give the entire story away.

However, the story tackles issues of homelessness and the underground topics of spirituality that a lot of people are either too afraid to discuss or don’t have any knowledge of; while the novel does have other significant characters, the story mainly focuses on Noah Taylor — whom in my mind, I think I have accurately written to be like a Dallas Roberts’ type of guy, in terms of dialogue, appearance, behavior, and mannerisms. (Dallas Roberts is an actor, search him online, if you’re unfamiliar with his work.) I always base my book characters on real people, sometimes the people are known, and sometimes they’re just everyday individuals whom I’ve seen out in public, or on social media. It just helps me write for the characters better and write the story better overall.

So, without giving anything away, throughout the novel, Noah goes through some tremendously bad tragedies, tragedies that would make anyone’s eyes widen with shock. I began writing this novel out of what I was seeing in the world around me: poverty, suffering, sadness, homelessness, and true anger at God and Christianity. When I began writing the novel, I was employed as a childcare teacher (just like Noah). I had a nice roof over my head, money in the bank, I was doing well, and I was also a Christian. However, I didn’t imagine that one day I would be living through quite a few of the situations that my main character endured in my novel.

The loss of people and things, the loss of money and employment, and the rush to try to find it before ending up homeless, the suffering, the fact of me now living through poverty, the fact of not wanting to be a child care teacher but instead wanting to do something more, something greater but not knowing how to, the growing anger I’m starting to feel towards God and Christianity — all the things Noah Taylor suffered in the novel, I’m now suffering with as well.

It’s unbelievable, this morning, I went through the pages of my novel and then I replayed one of the songs that I listened to while writing the entire novel — “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” by Fuel, and I thought, “holy shit, I’m now Noah Taylor. I’m the female version of him and what he went through in his life.” It was so overwhelming that it almost made me emotional and sad at the same time. I had heard of writers putting a little of themselves into a few of the characters in their stories, but, amazingly, it’s literally as if I’m living through everything that my main character went through.

So, what does this do to and for me? Well, it helps me understand this character of my novel better. I say that because previously, when it came to this main character of my novel, I used to think, “Boy, Noah can get out of this if he wants to,” “Man, I don’t understand why Noah feels this way about this or that,” and “Noah, stop complaining because God will do this and that eventually.” I never really, fully understood the plight of Noah Taylor until I walked in his shoes, so to speak. It wasn’t until I began to live through what he went through that I now understand his stubbornness, his anger, his hurt, his pain, his fears, his depression, his suffering, and his tragedies.

It has given me an entirely new appreciation for not only Noah Taylor but for my entire novel as a whole, and as I’m close to approaching the final pages of writing it, I can wholeheartedly say that this is the best story I’ve ever written, and it’s my favorite above anything I’ve ever written in my life. I can’t wait to share this novel with others, because I’m sure there are plenty of other “Noah Taylors” out in the world who are looking for something that truly describes their stubbornness, their anger, their hurt, their fears, their pain, their suffering, and their tragedies, and I hope my novel will be that something.