Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Interviewing a Potential Character for the Starring Role

Here I am in a bit of a dilemma. How to I describe what I'm trying to accomplish in getting students to understand the Three Step Character Developmental Model from a practical as opposed to a theoretical standpoint?

The theory is straightforward enough. To begin novel a student picks a potential candidate for Central Character (CC) and puts them through the three hoops. Theses are writing three vigenetes that show the Before Snapshot, being caught up in an uptempo of fact moving events, and carried over the brink into a Life Changing Event that will change the direction of their lives.

Once these three are written for the candidate Central Character, they will reveal other characters, some major and some minor. Starting with the Major ones the next most likely candidate for CC is auditioned or put through the same hoops.

Essentially the writer is saying to themselves, maybe my first character is not the best choice for CC. Let us now check out Major Supporting Character #1 and see how he/she will perform and if the performance is stellar, maybe I have a new CC for my novel.

Now here is the rub. Everybody who is interviewed is shown the same story line. They are all constrained by the same events and dialog. The story line is this... Show the CC in Placid Waters, then Caught in the Current, and finally carried over the falls. The problem is that once the first candidate auditions the events and dialog become a matter of record. No longer is the next auditioned CC able to write anything they want. In vignettes 2 sonf 3 they are bound to go along with what the original auditioned CC described as the events and dialog that transpired.

So the purpose of the exercise is to first provide an example of the three part process and second to audition another character to potentially fill the starring role. In doing this the student gets practical experience using the model.

The question becomes, what is the best way to explain this once the student is shown the model and sees Prudence run through the auditioning process.