that was definitely not my intention!! She’s supposed to be a distinct character, a medical student that has been dropped into another world. Pragmatic and rational yet she hides her emotional inner world.
I honestly thought my main character was the strongest point of my opening so this is terrible news
May I ask what specifically made her feel more device than character? Like if there was a moment that stuck out as jarring.
On a second read through I think I see where my execution failed! I want to keep her thought patterns since Lila is a person that combats fear with extreme rationalizations but I need to make that more apparent to a reader.
I need her to actually falter at times, to show her fear through her body more, and make the reader feel like she isn’t just processing everything well but that her logic is the only thing she has to hold herself together with.
Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention, I would have never realized it on my own!!
Well, now I'll explain what I felt as a reader when reading chapter 1.
Honestly, the atmosphere of your chapter 1 was good. The description of the environment was detailed. I liked it because I felt like I easily entered your story world, the visualization of the environment was very easy to imagine in my perception. This can be considered a strength of your narrative, at least based on my reading experience.
But everything changed when the fire nation attacked—I mean when your narrator led the reader too much. You may not have noticed... but during reading chapter 1, I didn't find the protagonist speaking (monologue).
She did move and breathe but she didn't feel like a human being with a personality and thoughts. She just moved but didn't think from her perspective. Why?
Because what the protagonist did was explained through the dominant narrator's voice. Even the protagonist's identity was given by the narrator's voice, instead of the protagonist thinking about her identity through inner thoughts.
Your narrator was like a
puppet controller dictating how the protagonist moves. He even explained your protagonist's anxiety in a strange situation, instead of narrating the protagonist living in her world.
This is what I call
narrative distance between the reader, the narrator, and the characters. In the third limited POV, the narrative distance between the reader and the character should be close to zero, allowing the reader to experience the protagonist's experience without becoming her.
Therefore, you need to minimize your narrator's voice in the scene and let your protagonist truly live in her world. The solution?
Make your protagonist perceive her environment more, feels, and thinks. Thinking here is not just through the narrator's explanations such as:
She feels strange in her environment...
But make your protagonist think truly through her monologue thought such as:
"Where am I? Hah... hah..." Her breath was short. "Mom, Dad... help Lila get home... hic... hic..."
See the difference? In the first example, the reader is just a passive audience given the narrator's explanation regarding the protagonist's fate. In the second example, the reader directly feels the protagonist's anxiety through her thought.
You need to make your protagonist thinks more and interacts with her environment. Narrate through your protagonist's head about her anxiety in a new environment. Make the reader feel empathy for her. That way, your chapter will be more immersive and impactful.
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