by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt

Are you looking for a catalyst to change the characters in your novel? Here’s a piece of advice for you: Exhaust your characters.

I’m not talking about wearing down your hero and heroine with high-action scenes, although those certainly can be a lot of fun for authors to write and for readers to read.

No, I’m challenging you to force your characters into an emotional battle, one where they face their past and how it’s influencing who they are today.

If you want to create compelling characters – and of course you do! – you start by developing a Dark Moment Story (DMS) for both your hero and heroine – a powerful experience that happened earlier in their lives. The DMS leads to an emotional Wound that creates a Lie they believe and a Fear that trips them up now that they’re adults. All of this creates a Flaw that affects how they relate to others and to God – if they even believe in God.

NOTE: That’s an uber-fast run down on The Story Equation created by award-winning author Susan May Warren. I encourage you to study this further.

The point of today’s blog post? At some point in your novel, the main character has to say:

• I’m tired of hiding behind this Fear.
• I’m tired of this Wound and how it’s affecting me.

This is when we, as the author, allow our characters to start changing. They have to change. Who wants to read a book filled with exhausted characters who have no hope and who remain the same from beginning to end?

No one.

Dark Moments, Wounds, Lies, Fears, Flaws are not just craft elements created to help us write better stories. Each one of us has our own Dark Moment Story that resulted in a heart wound. We each believe lies about ourselves and about God. Each of us is afraid … of someone or something.

At some point we, too, have to choose to say, “I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of letting the wound of my past control today and strangle my future.”

We choose to grow up, embrace faith and the strength of God.

As authors who have the hope of God in our hearts, we build such life-changing moments into our stories too. We allow our fictional characters’ lives to change because our lives have changed.

Consider you’re work-in-progress. Have you exhausted your main characters? Pinpoint when they say, “I’m tired of hiding behind this fear” or “I’m tired of this Wound and how it’s affecting me.”

Things I Never Told You by Beth K. Vogt

It’s been ten years since Payton Thatcher’s twin sister died in an accident, leaving the entire family to cope in whatever ways they could. No longer half of a pair, Payton reinvents herself as a partner in a successful party-planning business and is doing just fine—as long as she manages to hold her memories and her family at arm’s length.

But with her middle sister Jillian’s engagement, Payton’s party-planning skills are called into action. Which means working alongside her opinionated oldest sister, Johanna, who always seems ready for a fight. They can only hope that a wedding might be just the occasion to heal the resentment and jealousy that divides them . . . until a frightening diagnosis threatens Jillian’s plans and her future. As old wounds are reopened and the family faces the possibility of another tragedy, the Thatchers must decide if they will pull together or be driven further apart.

Includes discussion questions.

Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” Beth’s first women’s fiction novel for Tyndale House Publishers, Things I Never Told You, releases May 2018. Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us. An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Novel Rocket and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people, and their youngest daughter, Christa, who loves to play volleyball and enjoys writing her own stories. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.