So, you’ve got your hero. You’ve flawed them up good. You’ve given them a strong, compelling want and an even more compelling need that readers will resonate with. Now what? Well, to put it simply, now we figure out what to do with this beautifully flawed character of yours. Where are they going? What is their big journey? What is their most perfect plot? In other words: WHAT THE HECK HAPPENS IN THIS NOVEL?
CM is running to find a solution for his want: return his vision to normal—so he can see color again, and stop seeing these hellish creatures. Of course, if he thinks about it, his ability to see or not see does not change the fact that both are still there (both colors and creatures). Yet this begins to provide a story window into a greater problem: he’s been running from something long before he picked up a paintbrush, he’s running from something so dark and terrible, the absence (invisibility) of love in his young life, and the visible reality of no one to care for him, of falling through the cracks and being somebody seemingly invisible to the world.
He thinks he wants to remedy the strange malady of his vision, but what if he begins to see that there is another world he hasn’t seen before, a world where there is love, where there are people to care, and if he will “see” that world before him, take a leap of faith to trust in those giving this love and care to him, then he might become the most visible person that world has ever know.
