Finding your Healing Star & Creating Characters

We went on a ramble in the car at the weekend into the countryside to find a “healing star.” It’s basically a bunch of rocks laid out in a star formation to mark a site of concentrated "biofield" energy that can supposedly help cure any ailment you may have.

Naturally, I was curious to find it.

Although many would roll their eyes, I’m pretty open to the theory of healing energy. So off we went off to look for this star, accompanied by Jak the dog, who I hoped would not desecrate the site by needing to go potty in it.

Long story short, after many u-turns and attempts to find it, we didn't. The energy forces clearly no help here. What we did find instead, completely by accident, was an enormous field of sunflowers.

There were boxes set up nearby and soon there were bees everywhere trying to say hello. I managed to successfully wave them away without incident, not unlike those YouTube videos where people calmly pick up floorboards covered in millions of bees. Well, not like that at all actually. But it did turn into a fun, meditative, dare I say it, somewhat spiritual experience, strolling through the lanes between what seemed like thousands of sunflowers. It wasn't a "healing star", but there was definitely healing involved.

The message here isn't that I’ve decided to chuck everything in and start a bee farm–although that would be a nice complement to my long-held dream of raising goats. Point is, we might set off looking for one thing, but that may not deliver what we actually need.

What's this got to do with creating characters?

We are constantly at odds, aren't we, in terms of our external wants versus our internal needs? This mirrors the contrast the characters we create should face. It's the classic Want vs Need that contributes to that magical main character energy.

And the inherent tension of those two forces makes for excellent DRAMA. I go into more detail on this here.

The obvious moral of the story is that it’s not about the destination, it’s the journey that matters, no matter how meandering it might be. The road to success is never a straight path. Detours happen, etc., etc. This is equally true of the story world.

As writers, we should interpret this as: don't go easy on your characters. Your protagonist should have a goal in mind–a personal "healing star"–but don't put obstacles in their way that are clearly very easily overcome (E.g., a few domesticated bees). Make them work hard for what they want and suffer even more for what they need. This journey or character arc that you create for your protagonist needs to be believable.

And everyone knows, life ain't easy.

Story Inkubator was founded by writer, scriptwriter and teacher, Kristina Jilly, an Australian living in Central Europe who's written for HBO Europe and RTL Television. A teacher at the University of Applied Sciences in Upper Austria, Kristina also writes online content about the art of storytelling and topics that inspire creativity. 

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