Story Quest with STORY GENIUS – Part IV

Lisa’s next mandate is to come up with a “thumbnail sketch” of our protag. If you want the nitty gritty on what should go into that then go buy her book here (I’m on chapter 4, and it’s still good :).

Still curious if this novel method will work for a short story? Me too!
Per Lisa’s instruction I need to sketch out who the character is just before the What If happens (see my last post):

For my story, I know that my little boy is going to need a values adjustment. I know there’s going to be an inciting incident that causes the dam to burst on his arrogance, so there has to be the potential for arrogance from the get-go. I know he ultimately will choose humility once he is forced to live the consequences of his actions (a mechanism we call ‘growing up’). This is going to be a story about a little boy with big ambition. Still, he’s just a kid and no one has to take him seriously. As such, I need to give him a sandbox kingdom where he feels important and powerful because he wants to be significant, but is unsure if he really is. I think he’s exploring who he is, and I think his name is Roti.

The real trick is going to be doing it in a few thousand words (instead of tens of thousands of words in a novel).