The first thing that really stood out to me in this chapter was the discussion of a character’s desire. Typically, when you read a story, the main character has this grand goal to travel the world, or score the winning touchdown, or get the girl, but no one ever really seems to talk about how powerful a small desire can be. The example that was used in the chapter was Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “Theft,” in which the main character really wants to reclaim her empty purse. While a large desire can be entertaining to read, it seems that in stories like “Theft,” smaller desires actually are more engaging. One begins to ask themselves “why does the woman want an empty purse? It’s not like there’s anything valuable in it.” or “does the purse have some special meaning? Was it a gift? Does it have a memory attached to it?” Asking yourself these questions shows your engagement to the story.
The character wanting so seemingly insignificant to such an extent gives us insight into that character as well. This longing will inevitably unveil different aspects of the character to the reader, and this slow uncovering will develop more tension, and thus, more interest. Another thing that this chapter mentions is to consider avoiding the all-good or all-evil characters, unless you are writing a fairytale. This advice made me think of the character alignment chart that ranges from lawful good to chaotic good, lawful neutral to chaotic neutral, and finally lawful evil to chaotic evil. To me, all-good is the equivalent of lawful good and all-evil is the equivalent of chaotic evil. I believe that anything that ranges between these would be helpful in creating complex and morally diverse characters.
