Please.
Please, please, please.
Everyone get out your manuscripts right now. Please make sure your main character is doing something to solve their problems. I don’t care whether or not they’re going about it in a good way. All I care about is that they’re not just sitting around whining and feeling sorry for themselves.
And if you have a romance thread … double check to be sure that the problem can’t be solved by a mere conversation. Your reader should not be sitting there thinking, “Okay, if you two could sit for just five minutes and talk, we could be done with this.”
Let’s all agree to be better than that. Let’s agree to craft proactive main characters who can’t solve their love problems with a five minute conversation.
That’s all.
Signed,
Stephanie, who forced herself to read three sucky chapters of a book before closing it in disgust over the above two issues