by: Shannon Redmon @shannon_redmon

As an author, I’m always striving to give depth to my story’s heroine. The last thing a writer wants is to create a flat, boring character. I learned this lesson after an editor commented about the shallowness of my protagonist. Ouch. The truth hurts sometimes. So, what was I going to do? Kill her off? Start all over? Not a chance. I decided to go back and dig deeper.

Some authors interview their main characters or have pages and pages of traits they fill out to define who their heroine is. These never worked for me and I had to find another way.  Here are five ideas to try when creating the not-so-perfect heroine.

Visualize her appearance

When we write multiple books in a year, our characters can sometimes blend together and are not memorable. To create a heroine who remains in reader’s minds, she must jump off the page to us. I like to start with figuring out what she looks like. If I see her in my mind as she moves through all the action scenes I put her through, then my reader will do the same. Picture your heroine in your mind and then scour the internet for several photos that closely match her image. Print them out and paste them in a story journal with several pages dedicated to the heroine, her love interest, and your villain.

Create a backstory

Every character has a past and that past dictates many of the choices they make in a present story, so we must understand what drives our heroine. We all have things in our background, we regret or wish had never happened. Our histories often have many scars and fears. To give our heroine a not so perfect image, she too must have scars, past sins and fears that delays her from meeting her goals until the end. Write these in the story journal.

Goal oriented

Often times in life we meander through each day, mindlessly completing tasks assigned to us or we are scattered with too many items to mark off our to-do list. Both of these scenarios don’t really work in a story. If our heroine mindlessly completes tasks through the story, then our plot will be too slow and boring. If she’s scattered with a million things to do, then our story will feel confused and contrived.

When we write a strong heroine, she must have one main, overarching goal that last throughout the story. She will complete smaller goals in each chapter, but they need to build and add to the main goal until the climax of the story.

Provide problems

Conflict is a reality of our world. Some of us face more obstacles than we want or can even handle. When we battle through the struggles, our victories are even sweeter. Almost ever reader loves a story with a heroine who fights a worthy adversary and comes from behind to achieve her goal. Problems and our heroine’s attitude during the battle give her tenacity, relatability and hopefully inspires our reader’s lives to persevere in whatever trial they may be facing at the moment they read our book.

 Heroine’s Faith

As an inspirational romance suspense author, giving my heroine a deep faith, even testing her at times, is a trait I include in every story. Without being preachy, I give her a life that depends on God through her conflicts. I strive to live this way too, even though some days are better than others, but I’ve learned God is the only true way to have hope, peace, and joy through the trying times. By making this a part of who my heroine is, I hope to inspire others to follow God who loves us so much even when we are the not-so-perfect heroines in our own lives.

Shannon is a Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and her greatest hope is for her stories to immerse readers into a world of suspense and escape while encouraging faith, hope, and love in Christ.  She has three books published by Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense line–Cave of Secrets, Secrets Left Behind and Mistaken Mountain Abduction. She is also one of the Managing Editors of Acquisitions for Spark Flash Fiction Magazine, where she received her first official published byline. Shannon is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube
Agency.