Handling Characters’ Opposing Viewpoints

This week, as I continue to work on my next fantasy novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about my characters. My protagonist is haunted by a decision he made a few years earlier, and that decision set him up against a few of the other characters. While writing, I’ve enjoyed working through this character’s issues and offsetting it with the attitudes of the other characters. I think it brings more depth to the story when the main characters spend time at odds with each other. In their disagreements, more can be learned about them.

As I write these characters, I am coming to know them better, and this is still my rough draft of the book. I hope I can develop them better than I have in other stories. After all, my whole goal with writing every day is to improve my skill. One side effect of writing the stories I’ve written, is simply the way it makes me want to better understand people.

The same type of opposing viewpoints the characters have happen in real life. They can make times tough, but they can also make it interesting. In my day job, these types of opposing viewpoints, when dealt with respectfully, bring greater understanding of the task to all involved. Respecting others views or opinions, and listening to them, can bring a greater understanding.

Respecting the opposing sides views doesn’t automatically mean agreeing with them.

My last book, Collected Lives, is available on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback. This story takes place near the end of the twenty-second century, with vacations and tourism to Earth by off-worlders controlled by major corporations. The largest corporation, Collected Lives, has several enemies. The story follows the events as four people from different portions of Collected Lives’ process are thrown into the middle of a larger problem.

My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.

Malignance, my third book in my time travel series that began with Resonance and Dissonance, is on Amazon as a kindle and a paperback. That was a fun series to write, and for now, it is completed. I have also placed all three books from that series into one volume titled The Machina of Time.

If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.

If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.

If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.