forum Ohhh Boy I probably shouldn't have killed off this character but I had too. Help :/

Started August 25, 2020 by @All_The_Snakes_In_Ireland

tune

Hiya,
So, I -like a fool- couldn't stop myself from writing a sequel to a story that probably didn't need one but here we are. The kind of emotional core behind the first one is you have these two life-long friends who used to go on all these childhood 'adventures' when they were young. But decades later one of them has grown up into this kind of passive, sort of depressed disillusioned man who feels lost in the world, but the other is still living with his head in the clouds as confident and happy as ever. One grew up, the other is still like a kid, but both of those things are good and bad. So the story is pretty much the second one dragging his reluctant (yet appreciative) friend along on more 'adventurers', but the catch is that because they're adults and this is the real world these 'adventures' have turned them into criminals, and people have gotten hurt as a result of there actions. Anyway the story ends with the adventurous one dying with a smile on his face as the result of a police shoot out and he quite one becomes a wandering vagabond south of the boarder.
So my problem is that I really like the quite one, he's a good character I think, but unfortunate he's not a good protagonist because he's so increasingly passive and has no real goals. It worked when he had the best friend along to add that sense of charm and magic to the first one but now all I have left is a sad friendless man walking down dirt roads and it's depressing.
I thought about adding in another fun colorful sidekick but that just feels cheap.
I tried to give my character more motivation -like maybe he wanted to get back home- but there's nothing left for him there. He doesn't want to be rich so money doesn't motivate him, he doesn't really hate anyone so there's no one to get revenge on, he doesn't have a family or other friends so there's no one to put in danger. He might fall in love but he's the type to do it so slowly and softly it would be incredibly boring to read, plus if I were to introduce a romantic interest there'd really be nothing else to do (and I really hate when female characters are just plopped into stories to give guys (even genuinely good and worthy-of-love guys) someone to fall in love with.

I want to keep writing this guy but there's really no story to tell anymore, at least not a good one, or anything that could be as charming as the first one. I thought about not killing the best friend but then it really undercuts the whole point of the story that way so he has to die. So what do I do? or should I just accept that I need to let this guy go and make his own way?

I guess you could take that passivity and turn it into a character trait he has to overcome? Maybe he tries to take initiative or change himself just for the dead characters sake, esp if the dead character dies as a result of his unwillingness to act. Basically, his passivity has to get him into trouble and he has to become someone that takes initiative to get out of it

Oh that's a great idea! He's always been a real door-mat and easily gets taken advantage of but is too go-with-the-flow to defend himself, I wonder if I could get him to end up as the fall guy for an elaborate crime and go from there. Or better yet let that accusion fall onto his friend posthumously, and then it could turn into an almost detective story as my boy tries to prove his dead friend's innocence and protect his name. That'd be a good way to add complicated and interesting characters, even if they aren't necessarily 'charming'. Does that sound like it has potential?
Thanks so much for your help!

YES! Those ideas are awesome! I have a character I adore of mine, who, bless his little soul, is inherently boring by himself. I was able to solve that by keeping people around him constantly, he even had an adventurous morally questionable friend like yours, who died pre-canon. Of course, my solution to your problem has to have said dead friend be the narrator for the story and also get hallucinated by bland man mcgee
But what you're coming up with sounds really good, I think proving his friend's innocence and overcoming his own negative passiveness could be a really cool story ^^
(honestly, your whole story sounds super dope, I would definitely read both these books)

What if the quiet one did another adventure in order to homenage the one who died? Like going back to some place they used to play younger or maybe trying to make true his last wish or something like that