What does Lyra want? Jennie, my book coach, asked me.
Ah, I got this. Killing the bad guy.
That’s external, Jennie said. What are her internal desires?
Umm… I don’t know? But it sounds like I’m supposed to know?
Jennie assured me (no doubt shaking her head and hiding a smile) that as the writer, yes, I am supposed to know what my protagonist wants.
The question seems simple; the answer maddeningly elusive.
It wasn’t until I hit on two separate points that I was finally able to piece it together:
- I need to have Lyra experience religion. As the manuscript stands now, I have Lyra learn about the benefits of religion, but it’s all from the outside, as if she’s listening to class lectures. At no time do I have her feel the magic and wonder and hope and faith that can come from religion.
- I need a stronger, more compelling backstory–things that happened before the novel starts that made Lyra who she is. Our perceptions are based on our past experiences, so if we don’t know the protagonist’s past, how can we understand how she’ll react in the future? We, as readers, need to know why a character does what she does; we can only answer that by knowing what happened to her before.
So I took those two points to create a new Lyra.
In my new version, I will no longer have Lyra merely reacting to those involved in religion; Lyra herself will be involved.
Which means she’s no longer trying to understand her boyfriend Jonah’s interest in religion–she’s no longer searching for why he would blow up their school in the name of God–she’s trying to understand her own pull toward religion.
(Which means I’ve jettisoned Jonah; I’m thinking he may not even exist in this new version. Sorry Jonah.)
Which means I need to understand why she feels pulled toward religion, especially in a society that demonizes religion. In a society where religious gatherings are outlawed because they supposedly incite only violence and hatred, why would a girl risk everything to find out more?
This, of course, is where the internal desire comes from. What, in Lyra’s past, would drive her to seek out religion when it’s dangerous and illegal? It has to be something big… something profound…
Something like…
…the death of her father.
In my original drafts, I have her father surviving a heart attack a year earlier, but dying in the school explosion. But say he died because of the earlier heart attack before the novel starts? What would that do to Lyra, who worshipped her father? To whom would she turn for comfort? Her mother, who’s always been distant? Her friends who have never experienced such grief?
And what comfort would she get from her society, her science-based, empirically-driven culture which explains that death is the end of the body, the end of the person, and that’s that? No soul, no afterlife, no angelic presence, because none of those things can be scientifically proven.
Say she couldn’t accept that her father was gone (before the novel starts)… say she’d heard rumours that religion might have a way to reconnect–somehow–with her father, even if she understands he will not return in body and mind.
But what about if he can exist in this new concept called “spirit”? The notion that someday, in the afterlife, maybe, she can again be with her dad…wouldn’t that appeal to her?
And would that desire be enough to drive her forward (to the point where the novel starts)? To propel the action?
Yes. (Maybe?)
That’s the work I have ahead of me. But at least I someplace to start. At least I now know what Lyra wants (impossible as it may be): she wants to see her dad again.