Writing Connor
Connor McTaggart is the first main character we meet and the one we spend the most time with throughout Mattson Academy. He was the first character I conceived and the one I thought would be the easiest because I had a clear mission statement for him: take your standard, adventurous, good-natured, YA protagonist, but cut away all the dated tropes and traditions around them. Connor is not your usual tragic orphan or lucky widow’s son. He’s not a child of prophecy or a spunky urchin with something to prove. Connor has two living, loving parents and no history of personal trauma. I figured that if I gave a fourteen-year-old boy magic powers and a healthy thirst for adventure, that would be enough incitement to get a story going.
And everyone told me he was boring as plain toast.
Why do we care about this kid? What’s the hook? What makes Connor interesting? I quickly realized that all those tropes are shortcuts for investment and development of a character, a more socially acceptable “fridging.” If you’re not familiar with fridging, it’s a comic book trope in which a female character’s sole role is to get killed off to further motivate the (usually male) hero. It was named for Green Lantern literally finding his girlfriend in a refrigerator. It’s not to say that a character death can’t have meaning, it absolutely should, but killing off one, or both, of Connor’s parents to foster quicker attachment to the character felt cheap, especially in light of my original plan for him. Connor had to remain a normal, standard kid. He wouldn’t begin with any sort of dark or foreboding background.
Another issue with first draft Connor had was that he was too powerful. There are eight elements of magic in Mattson Academy, and Connor had early access to almost all of them, while most characters are really only proficient with two or three. For a while I tried to defend it. “One of the perks of being the protagonist,” I argued. Eventually, I listened to my readers. Now Connor was boring AND a Mary Sue. Fortunately, I found a solution to deal with both issues in a single change. I broke Connor’s magic.
For any element in which a character is proficient, they can create that element from scratch at the cost of their own essence, or personal magic reserves. A water magi could conjure a stream of water from the palm of their hand, or a fire magi could summon fireballs. Initially, Connor could do this with just about everything, but then I thought, “I’m already giving him access to more elements than everyone else, what if I put a limit on it?” So I took away this fundamental ability. Yes, Connor has control over seven of the eight elements, but he’s only able to manipulate what is already there. If he wants to use water, he needs to be near some, or he’s limited to what he can pull from the air. If he wants to use fire, someone else needs to start one for him.
This gave the character unique circumstances and challenges to overcome while keeping intact the background that I wanted him to have. It made writing all of his magic scenes a lot more fun, too. Where before I would sometimes get a little paralyzed with options, now I had a story-baked excuse to come up with extra creative uses of magic (and also rely on a little clever teamwork). It cemented Connor as more of a quick thinker and something of a trickster even, rather than just being kinda good at everything. It also gave him a realistic, identifiable conflict. All his life, he expected to show up at magic school and to just be good at magic. Everything else in his life has gone pretty well; why wouldn’t this? When that proves not to be the case, he is quickly frustrated and driven that much harder to overcome the limitation.
I’ll admit, I leaned a little heavily on Connor whining about his circumstances after the change. Obviously, his magic not working the same as other people’s would be disappointing, but he sure did complain about it. That took some work to get right. I think he’s in a good place now. He’s frustrated, sure, but I think it spurs him on to make the most of what he’s got. He still complains from time to time, but I think eventually he’ll get there. Teenage boys aren’t known for being the most patient. In the meantime, he’s got his hands full with the mysteries of Mattson Academy.
