Followed you over from naamah_darling, where I loved what you had to say and tried several times to come up with a good response but nothing sounded right.
One of the tricks I've seen to get the heroine to screw up is to have her do things that would be the right thing in any other situation, especially if it's a strongly in-character thing for her to do. Bonus points if the situation is confusing and tricky such that nobody really knows the right way to do it, or when there are multiple issues in play where following one's priorities to success with one issue could wind up blowing another one. It helps if the same tendency that leads her to be wrong sometimes also leads her to be right sometimes.
One of my favorites, the Cast series by Michelle Sagara, does this quite a lot with its heroine, Kaylin. At one point her boss is imprisoned for murder and tells her to leave him to it, but because she cares for him* (and quite justifiably hates his replacement), she digs for the evidence that he was set up, and winds up putting one of his wives and their daughters in the danger that he'd tried to keep them safe from by letting it seem that he'd committed murder. And then she fights with the same determination, intelligence, and drive to fix it.
*not romantically, but a close friendship with a strong hint of parent/grown child relationship, which is in character for someone who has come in at age thirteen and made a home and family of her workplace and coworkers. (This is, incidentally, the opposite of the vampire-banging drum kit lady mentioned above---she has two potential love interests which are much more to her, in various directions, long before anything of the sort is mentioned; it takes seven books (perhaps as many months in-story) before she and the guy she trusts have a talk about it and the guy she doesn't trust hints at it in book three and book six (after disdaining rape as beneath him in book one when she was outright afraid of him). And it works, it suits the character---she's not getting laid right now and that's fine.)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-02 01:47 am (UTC)One of the tricks I've seen to get the heroine to screw up is to have her do things that would be the right thing in any other situation, especially if it's a strongly in-character thing for her to do. Bonus points if the situation is confusing and tricky such that nobody really knows the right way to do it, or when there are multiple issues in play where following one's priorities to success with one issue could wind up blowing another one. It helps if the same tendency that leads her to be wrong sometimes also leads her to be right sometimes.
One of my favorites, the Cast series by Michelle Sagara, does this quite a lot with its heroine, Kaylin. At one point her boss is imprisoned for murder and tells her to leave him to it, but because she cares for him* (and quite justifiably hates his replacement), she digs for the evidence that he was set up, and winds up putting one of his wives and their daughters in the danger that he'd tried to keep them safe from by letting it seem that he'd committed murder. And then she fights with the same determination, intelligence, and drive to fix it.
*not romantically, but a close friendship with a strong hint of parent/grown child relationship, which is in character for someone who has come in at age thirteen and made a home and family of her workplace and coworkers. (This is, incidentally, the opposite of the vampire-banging drum kit lady mentioned above---she has two potential love interests which are much more to her, in various directions, long before anything of the sort is mentioned; it takes seven books (perhaps as many months in-story) before she and the guy she trusts have a talk about it and the guy she doesn't trust hints at it in book three and book six (after disdaining rape as beneath him in book one when she was outright afraid of him). And it works, it suits the character---she's not getting laid right now and that's fine.)