Playing God

I came to the revelation that the reason why the Untitled story is so hard to map out is because I don't care. I like the ending a lot, and I like the beginning a lot. But the in between parts... the protagonist could hand down the shard of the Eternal Brother for generations upon generations so far that the universe would collapse not before the shard was ejected into a wormhole in space so that when the next incarnation of the universe took its infinite breath the shard would reappear and become the meteor that struck our Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and then I found it one day after a complete retelling of my entire life up until the point where I turn out to be the main character that finishes the story.

Talk about your run-on sentences. But that's what the middle of Untitled feels like. "And then he did this, then this, then that, then this, and this, and then that..." His life will remain the same if he backs down from the story. So why does he do it? Maybe because he feels like he should? What if he feels like a sandwich? Should he stop? The answer is no!

Okay, let me get to the goddamn point already. There is no pressure. There is nothing at stake. The situation is not time sensitive. He can do what he wants when he wants if he wants.

Unfortunately, I don't know how exactly to fix this. But here are some ideas:

1) The demi-goddesses girl with red hair is required by an underworlder who wants to take her place in order to be closer to the Eternal Brother. The protagonists witnesses her capture during the parade that occurs during his return to town in his search for answers about the shard and is compelled to save her.

2) The underworlders raid the parade for specimens of all of the Eternal Brother's creations which they are attempting to fuse together to recreate the Eternal Brother. This can get complicated by a lot of things such as the redhead being a captive, the information that restoring the Eternal Brother will devour the rest of the planet in the process, and the fear that his colleagues from the dig might be involved somehow due to their uncanny discover of a gateway to the underworld and mysterious disappearance.

3) Underworld explorers stumble into town during the parade and cause mass panic. The overworlders begin to mobilize for a "counter-attack" to remove these abominations. The underworlders conversely attempt to teach "forced students" the ways of self transformation. Obviously these worlds cannot be allowed to fully collide and balance must be restored by isolated division or divine unity.

The protagonist has to be forced into action for more reasons than one. It makes for a much better story if you know that he has to do something. It also makes it easier to write a developing character when he is forced into action, or at the very least that the results of acting quickly will differ from the results of taking one's time. The protagonist must be allowed to explore these choices or we will never understand who he is. I will never understand who he is.

I don't create characters. I discover them. I have honestly written things where I was surprised by my characters' actions. This is far from characters acting out of character. Characters are people that live inside your head. You can collect all the paperwork in the world on them, but you'll never really know who they are or what they will do until you watch them. Characters are the children of imagination; the more you tell them what they have to do, the worse they are. The really good ones do it all on their own.

What I'm asking here is for a catalyst to let me understand who this protagonist is. I mean, I don't even know his name!


I want to put him in his world and watch him.