: Re: How to invest readers in a story that (initially) has no clear direction? The main character of my novel (third person limited) is an outlaw, on the run from government agents and living from

@Ogunnowo420

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You don't have to have likable characters to have an engaging story, but it does help. Brandon Sanderson has a "sliding scale" concept (which you can easily find if you look up some of his online talks) for making characters likable (aka, engaging for a reader). Think of these like sliders on a sound board that you can adjust for each character: proactivity (aka, protaging, how much initiative does your character show), competence (how good are they at what they do), and sympathy (does the reader sympathize or does the character sympathize with others).

Low Sympathy, High Proactivity, & High Competence could be your bad guy. But you can toggle all of these. Pushing a character up in all three of these is usually bad, but to have character development, one of these or a similar character trait, needs to start off on the low side and through action and event get pushed higher. Likability is usually derived from all three.

You've essentially told us that you're starting from a low pro-activity point; which is not uncommon. One path for characters in a story is to go from low-agency to high agency. IE, in the first act, the mc is acted upon. But in the second act the mc begins to realize this and accepts that they need to change, then in the third act the mc makes the attempt and succeeds (comedy) or fails (tragedy). If you're going to start with low agency, I'd recommend showing us something else that makes her likable (make her sympathetic or competent or both). Establish that the deficit of agency has a cost and make sure that some part of her character justifiably puts her in this position. Then decide whether she needs to overcome a handicap (an optional choice she's making that's hamstringing her ability to get what she wants; or if she has to deal with a flaw, a non-optional part of who she is that's a horrible weakness).

Meanwhile, the rest of your story should be progressing in interesting ways to throttle up reader engagement. These threads should be tweaking her competence and/or sympathy vectors while setting up the inciting incident that will propel her into a role where she exerts her agency. As she comes into her agency, it's a good time to mess with the handicap/flaw to create a try-fail cycle; or to mess with the reader's perception of her sympathy or capability. This will keep your mc from becoming a Mary Sue.

I would argue that you don't want to stray too far from your mc during all of this. That you don't want to get into info-dumps to get your world in place. That you want to spend as little time as possible repeating yourself. And that this first section should be shorter than maybe you feel is totally justifiable. (Like when you need to project your voice, you sound like you're almost yelling in your own head). Readers want development, but they also want a focused story. If you're writing something boring, find a way to write something interesting instead. Err on the side excitement. If she has to wonder in the dessert for 40 years before becoming pro-active, give us the sense this has happened, but start in media res if possible. Start as close to that inciting incident as you can. I'm pretty forgiving of books, giving them 50 to 100 pages to establish themselves, but I yell at the books that take that long all of the time. The average reader may only give you a paragraph or a few pages to be interesting.

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