I’m trying to think of times in my stories when my characters feel hopeful, or when they dream big. I’m struggling.

I know my characters often feel driven. I know they want things, or see something they want to change in order to reach what they desire. Sometimes, maybe, the things they want are bigger than makes sense for them to achieve without expanding their scope, so they have to go through more to reach their goal. That feels distinct from dreaming or chasing a dream.

I can’t think of when my characters dream of things. They don’t often leave themselves open to wonder and awe, nor give themselves permission to wonder about what might be possible—they’re more likely to choose a goal and slog towards it doggedly even when the goal is improbable or unwise. Their ideas are solutions to discrete problems. Their outsize goals are born of ideals and convictions, usually reasoned out rather than springing forth from a vision of something better, or from some blend of hope and optimism.

Emotions-wise, I know that characters of mine feel plenty of moments of anxiety, fear, sadness, and anger. They also feel love, compassion, mirth, joy, amusement, and contentment. Yet somehow they miss the unfocused daydream of fantasy, the buoyancy of hope, and they lose out on the multitude of possibilities that dreaming up some vision of a possible future can offer.

The only exceptions to this whole pattern that I can think of show up in my Protectors stories, and even then hope is usually something people have to work for.

Does this mean something about me? I don’t know.

Do I need to write more hopeful characters? I’m not sure I have it in me. I suspect I’d need to put a good deal of effort into doing that—effort spent learning the style, given that it doesn’t seem to be reflexive.

I think this shapes the stories I write, the stories that come to me unbidden. This habit of narrative and character is inherently constraining. It limits my artistic palette, or specializes it in a particular direction.

Thinking of other genre fiction, I wonder whether my habits here are part of a larger trend or whether I’m somehow atypical. Given the push for drama and dramatic tension in genre fiction, I suspect this lack of big dreams—and the more concentrated focus on goals and drive—might be widespread. There’s drama in goals and drive, and the clearest drama I can see with big dreams and hope is the question of whether they’re achievable, or how they can be held onto.

With all that, I wonder what we are (what I am) missing out on by focusing so much on these driven stories… and what we’re creating for ourselves that we don’t notice.

And… writing hope believably feels tough. What distinguishes it from any other emotion or experience? How can I tease out hope as something distinct from stubborn idealism, without it feeling cheap?

I don’t have good answers here, just more questions. 

I’ll keep a weather eye out for hope in stories going forward. And maybe I just need to find a hopeful character to write, one who resonates with me. Settling deep inside a character’s voice sometimes changes my own perspective—perhaps writing a hopeful character I like will help me find ways to write hope elsewhere.