Creating Change

Every hero of every story has some growing to do. They need to change, to become better, to become someone else than they were at the beginning. Because that is the core of a story. The world at the beginning and the world at the end differ. Perhaps only for the main character, perhaps for everyone - that is down to the author’s decision. But there always will be a change and the main character will have had a hand in it.

This is actually where ‘slice of life’ stories often fail, if the author doesn’t plot them well enough. A ‘slice of life’ story usually tells something about an ordinary person. It’s not an epic adventure, just a look into the life of someone. But even this look has to show us something, something more than ‘business as usual.’

A ‘slice of life’ story which just tells us something about a guy who goes to work in the morning, has lunch, goes home, and spends time in front of the TV isn’t interesting. But it’s not because of the ordinary life he’s leading. You can make this story interesting by a minor tweak and without adding a villain or a huge alien invasion. How? Let me give you an example. The guy goes to work like every day. You drop hints he’s very set in his ways, he likes routine. He leaves his desk at noon, like every day, to go to the same place for his lunch. But the place is closed. Suddenly, the guy has to figure out where to get his lunch that day. His routine is interrupted. He doesn’t live where he works, he hardly knows the streets around his workplace. He chose his little diner for lunch, because it was closest to work. Now he has to venture out into the unknown. He needs to find another place with food he likes, which isn’t too expensive, which isn’t too far away, since he only has limited time. That makes an interesting ‘slice of life’ story. The closed diner is the change which forces him to do things differently. He has to venture outside of his comfortable, little life. That is an interesting story.

Fairy tales also always include changes. The main characters have to do something new, something different. They have to go to new places (being forced out of their regular life is a trope you will find often), they have to meet with new people. They have to face failure and have to change to overcome it. Sometimes, the failure is experienced by someone else. The prince in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (the fairy tale, not the Disney movie) is not the first, he is the last who comes for the beauty behind the hedge. Because he has learned from past mistakes, he knows what not to do. Often, the prince who succeeds is the youngest of three brothers (three is a magical number in fairy tales) and his older brothers have failed already. Snow White has to leave her home behind, the princess becomes a housekeeper, she dies and is reborn. Those are a lot of changes. You can find those tropes, to a higher or lesser degree, in every fairy tale.

Any kind of story which is interesting to read deals with a change. And every protagonist, no matter how normal or how heroic, has to change with it. Has to grow and develop new abilities. Like the hero in a role-playing game who learns new abilities and gets stronger and more powerful, the hero in a story has to develop into someone new. It might be a minor change, as in that ‘slice of life’ story, just a man who has to explore and find a new place to eat. It might be a major change, like a simple peasant boy becoming a knight. It might only be visible to the hero him- or herself. It might be obvious for everyone who meets the hero. But there always will be a change.

Growth is what makes a story interesting. Action does as well, but even the action must be connected to some kind of change. You fight a battle, because you need to defeat the enemy. You don’t fight a battle and everyone goes back home without any changes in power, lands, or other things. You chase a car through the streets of a city, because something important is in it, something which will change a situation. You don’t just drive around the city on high speed just following another car for fun. The story of the hero changing, becoming stronger and better, is the core. Whatever else happens around it makes the story unique and gives it a theme.

And the change has to be felt. If that guy from the ‘slice of life’ story were eating his lunch at various places throughout the week, even if he’s always eating at place A on Monday and place B on Tuesday and so on, then the diner being closed wouldn’t be much of a change. He would have to swap hamburgers on Wednesday with tacos on Tuesday - the horrors! But the only place he ever eats at being closed forces him to leave his comfort zone and go on an adventure. That’s why I mentioned that you should show the guy loves his daily routine. He probably dislikes weekends and holidays, because they break it. And then - bam! - the diner is closed and he needs to find another place to eat.

A good way to decide what kind of change, what kind of challenge, a hero needs, is to look at their life. If they love routine, force them to break it. If they are close to a person, remove that person, so they have to follow. If they have power, take it away. If they don’t have power, give it to them. Find out what is most important to them and change it. Find out what will make them change, because they value it enough.

To tell an interesting story, you need to have a change in it, something which forces the main character to grow and change their ways. It can be a little growth or a big growth, but it always has to be a growth.