For all the talk of wants, needs and misbeliefs in fiction, the character is the obstacle.
Among her many writing craft books, writing coach Luna Azzurra landed on a startling but obvious revelation.
Let’s begin in the usual place. A character wants something but there are obstacles in the way.
Azzurra’s point is this:
“the thing in the way is almost always the character themselves. Not the villain, not the circumstances, the character’s own belief about what they deserve, what’s possible, what they’re allowed to want.”
As she says, the external obstacle is just the stage, the internal one is the play.
“the moment you understand what your character secretly believes they don’t deserve, you have your book.”
Azzurra takes a standard romance trope: “she can’t be with him because his family disapproves.” That’s the stage.
She frames internal obstacle as ‘some part of her has always believed that love like this doesn’t happen to people like her.’ That’s the play.
Azzurra’s take is ‘the family can be solved. The belief is the whole story.’
She just summed up our favorite case study, Pride and Prejudice.
Do I get it?
In the upcoming YA project, Yari Tamm doesn’t believe she can fight. But her fight isn’t about learning to use a sword and become some martial-arts badass. She has to lead the fight and rely on the skills of others to do the things she can’t.
In The Sixth Messenger, Aeryn doesn’t believe she deserves a family like other people. Her abandonment issues keep her isolated. She refuses to belong. Aeryn has to gather a found-family in order to overcome the real opposition. She can’t do everything alone.
Azzurra’s neat framing makes more sense of the character misbelief that everyone talks about. The protagonist has to get out of their own way in order to complete their transformation. It’s not about villains or aliens or a shark.
This is why Pride and Prejudice works, but Disclosure Day feels hollow. There’s too much external plot. Emily Blunt’s character plows through her quest, but there’s no sense that she’s blocking herself. She undergoes a transformation from weather girl to alien savant, but it’s all external. It’s all stage, but no play.