Stories without conflict, in the vast majority of cases, are just plain uninteresting. Taking your protagonist and contrasting them with an impact character is going to bring up conflict in some way, whether tangible, emotional, spiritual, or esoteric. Whether that impact character is stereotypical evil, cartoonishly so, anti-hero, or misunderstood, they are an impact character because their ideas, presence, fortunes, or fate put them in a position that opposes the main character in some fashion. Your protagonist is ultimately changed by the impact character, in most cases.
So, there must be some idea or reality your protagonist lives in, and some idea or reality your impact character has that begins to create, force — or fails to change the protagonist.
Detaching myself from my novel’s darlings, I find so many of the characters unmemorable. The initial impact character, while certainly having an immediate impact on the protagonist, does little work to induce him to change. Indeed, he is a bit tedious, and no one is likely to care if he changes at all. What does he have to change?
I like him, and I can’t murder him.
But I can lobotomize him... somewhat.
I need to slice open the frontal lobe and run down the rabbit hole. What is he? What is he *really*? Where are the frayed edges? The callouses? The tangled webs? What switch resides within, waiting for the external person to turn on the light? And why should anyone care?
So far, the narrative depicts a path that’s far too smooth. A rumbling of carriage wheels below that lulls the reader to sleep rather than eagerly turning the next page.
The people I created at age 18 were caricatures. Single-dimensional representations of the person I was still learning to be. They haven’t grown with me. I never learned to murder them.
But I must break them. Put them through Hell. And see who re-emerges at the end.
