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October 8, 2025 at 8:19 AM
The idea for this article came to me after reading several amusing stories in which the author completely failed to accomplish this task. What the author stated verbally, rather than demonstrated, looked absolutely unconvincing. I won't provide links or quotes, because the authors have done me no harm, I'll just use a rough summary.
So, here's what you should pay attention to when showing what's truly important to your character. These examples will be from the romantic stories, but this applies to everything.
1. The amount of time spent in the text
An example with a flaw: in the story the role of two men in a woman's life is described (all three are famous historical figures). It begins by asserting that of the two, she loved the second one more. "He was her true love, the very, very..." the author states briefly, and then enthusiastically moves on to a description of the first man and their affair. And then we have the most beautiful part of the story: the first man was good both in love and in war, an entire paragraph is devoted to a colorful, explicit scene between him and the heroine (and this in a one-page story). At the end, a couple of sentences again emphasize that the second man was, of course, her true love. Well, that one - you still remember him, right? The author must have subconsciously sensed something was amiss...
The author clearly preferred the first man, but for some reason, for the purposes of the story, the second was chosen as the heroine's favorite. (Or maybe the heroine is lying to herself, but the story doesn't give that impression due to the protagonist's thoughts being conveyed through indirect speech. This technique creates the impression of a fusion of the author's and the protagonist's opinions.) So, if your character somehow loves something different from you, it's worth paying special attention to how much and how enthusiastically they think about it.
2. The order in listing priorities
An example with a flaw: the heroine analyzes her feelings for a man and mentally makes a list of his pros and cons. She starts with the pros and claims, among other things, that he's rich, although, of course, "that's far from the most important thing to her." She lists this fact as the second point out of about six... The first was "handsome"; at least something about this poor guy was more important to her than his money, okay.
3. Changing priorities should not happen out of nowhere
Examples of two similar flaws: the heroes develop relationships with the heroines throughout the novel or story, develop feelings for them, think about them among other things (we see their thoughts quite often), and then, at the very end, suddenly decide they'd rather go back to their exes. Meanwhile, in one story, the hero never mentioned his ex at all, and only at the end does it suddenly dawn on him that he has a better candidate. In the second case, the hero did remember his ex, but mostly about their squabbles or other completely indifferent moments. There were no arguments with the girlfriends who were with them throughout the story, and no admiration for the soul, beauty, or talents of their exes was observed - even though we were constantly "peering" into the guys' thoughts.
The works may have been written by someone whose boyfriends left them for exes, and from the authors' perspective, these exes appeared out of the blue. But if a person loves someone, they'll think about their love constantly.
That's all for now, thank you for your attention!
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Another article of mine about the art of writing:
https://fic.fan/readfic/6781-A-Candidate-for-Elimination
