So the ever-brilliant
@cupiscent humored me some valuable advice in a message and I thought I'd open part of it up here in case anyone wants to throw down.
First up, though, let me make a sidebar caveat about the Farmboy of Destiny. A big part of my issue with this trope and its common depiction in fantasy is that it lacks agency.… I prefer a hero who demonstrates the potential for extraordinary from the first chapter.)
First off, let me say that I don’t have the trope allergy so many others do. I have nostalgic love of the tropes i grew up with, but I do break away, and when I do it’s because I want to *say something*. Ultimately this means my current WIP subverts tropes, meaning people who hate princesses getting saved and etc etc are going to write me off without realizing that I do turn that on it’s head by the end.
But back to the Farmboy of Destiny— I think you hit on something important here. When Harper Collins reviewed my WIP, they weren’t feeling my MC. He was missing something. He doesn’t have anything extraordinary— even less so than a Farmboy of Destiny! He’s not special by nature— he’s just trying to survive. He’s hearing stories about knights slaying dragons and saving princesses, and it’s something he can never be. The book (which is really the first act of a 300k book I wanted to write, but since 300k isn’t kosher….) leaves him responding to situations he’s thrust into (because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time) until the very end, when he finds his agency at one pivotal moment in the second to last chapter (ironically in deciding *not* to be the “hero” and becoming a rebel and an exile instead). In subsequent books he *becomes* extraordinary— as he rises to meet challenges and learns what he needs to of his own volition and initiative.
This presents a problem for me— It’s great in theory but I need something to hook the reader to the character, and I don’t think I’ve successfully accomplished that. I’m still wrestling with this problem.
This is not necessarily a problem by itself! I mean, Scarlett O'Hara has the most mundane of motives: she wants to never be hungry again. What makes her an amazing and compelling character is what she's prepared to do in pursuit of that motive. That's the extraordinary.
The flipside is a book I read that I was so unmoved by I can't even remember the title. (One Goodreads check later: it's Giant Thief by David Tallerman, and now that I actually look at that surname and that title side by side, all I can say is: seriously, dude? Sure, the book is about a thief stealing a giant, but TALLERMAN?? ahem. anyway. My point is...) Throughout the majority of the book, the main character's primary goal is getting out of this situation, while the situation itself is the main plot. While his desire to escape to safety makes sense, it and the main plot undermined each other, instead of one-upping each other.
I think this probably boils down in essence to: give the reader at least one compelling reason to care about this character in this situation. Whether it's because s/he is capable (meta/physically or emotionally) of incredible things and you want to marvel at their audacity, or whether it's because the situation is so damn important/fraught/hilarious you need to keep watching it unravel, have a Reason.
(If your reason why I should hear about these adventures is because of what the character does after them, then perhaps this is not the story you really want to tell.)
With your guy, trying to survive is a fundamental and compelling and above all relatable goal. We can all understand it. But because it's something everyone feels, the question is why we should care about this guy surviving. Why is his story compelling and deserving of being told? And the two big questions that jump out for me as having the potential for an answer: what is he prepared to do in order to survive? and why is it important that he survive? Somewhere in there is - or can be inserted - a strong hook to keep the reader engaged.
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