Story craft series: One To Watch shows how a protagonist’s misbelief sets the story into motion

I shared last week that motivation and misbelief go hand-in-hand. Misbelief tends to drive motivation, which causes the character to act in a way that reinforces their misbelief. This becomes the foundation of a story because the main character will generally operate under their misbelief for as long as possible, which keeps them from getting their goal—the thing they want most—again and again. That is until they’re willing to confront that maybe they have a slightly skewed worldview and they’re willing to change.

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London does a beautiful job of demonstrating this. It’s one of the reasons this book hooked me and kept me up late at night reading. I related deeply to the character, whose misbelief was so clear on the pages, and I wanted to see her overcome it to find love.

If you haven’t read it yet, One to Watch is about Bea Schumacher, a plus-sized fashion blogger who’s picked to shake up a reality dating show (à la The Bachelor), but her deeply held beliefs about love and her worthiness hold her back from fully committing to the show and finding love.

In fact, she pushes away the men vying for her attention under the mistaken assumption that none of them are really in the game for her; they just want their 15 minutes of fame. If she doesn’t open herself up to genuine connection, she can protect herself from getting hurt (and proving that her misbelief is true). But that comes at the cost of true love.

Flaw versus misbelief

Prior to reading Lisa Cron’s Story Genius, every craft book I came across touted the idea that a story protagonist needs to have a flaw. This is something that they must overcome if they want to achieve the goal that’s driving their story.

The problem with focusing on giving your character a flaw is that you can easily fall into the trap of superficiality. While a physical flaw, for example, might create plenty of hardship for your character, it’s still surface level. And a physical flaw might be something they can’t change.

The crux of a good story is that the protagonist will grow and change along their journey to achieve their goal.

This is why I like Cron’s “misbelief” so much better. Unlike a flaw, it’s an internalized belief—usually shaped early in life—that influences how the protagonist sees the world. And it keeps them stuck.

“A misbelief…something your protagonist honestly believes to be true. How your protagonist overcomes this misbelief is what your story is about.” —Cron

A misbelief can work with a flaw. For example, if a character has the “flaw” that they are short (as a short person, I use this example not because I think that being short is actually a problem…though sometimes I wish I was just a little bit taller). They can’t easily change their height, thus this flaw falls flat as the driving force for a story. But if being short has influenced the protagonist to believe that they are incapable of great achievements, now we have something to work with!

“All stories revolve around how someone solves a single, escalating problem they can’t avoid. After all, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be a problem, and there wouldn’t be a story. It’s not merely a surface problem, either, but one that causes the protagonist to struggle with a specific internal conflict at every turn, so that at the end she sees things quite differently than she did at the beginning.” —Cron

Regardless of whether the flaw or some external force is the “problem,” the internal conflict that is sparked by the misbelief is where the real story is.

How Bea’s misbelief drives the story

Bea’s story opens with her getting jilted by her long-time crush. We are led to believe that this heartbreak is holding her back when she signs up for the dating show. She claims that she’s just doing the show for her career—and to push the dating show into a new era where the contestants reflect more diversity.

Yet as Bea continues to keep her guard up and even self-sabotage with the men who do try to get to know her, it becomes clear that heartbreak isn’t the real issue standing in Bea’s way. Instead, it’s the misbelief that her crush’s rejection reinforced: that Bea is not worthy of being loved.

This misbelief comes to a head midway through the story when Bea takes the men home to meet her family—all of whom are coupled. Seeing everyone happily married around her exaggerates Bea’s doubt about her own ability to find lasting love.

She explains to her mom, “…when I come here, and I see all of you together—I want this so much. And it just feels impossible. Like you’re all living on this island, this place where people know how to love each other, and no matter what I do, I can’t figure out how to get there.”

Then a few beats later, her mom puts words to Bea’s misbelief when she reveals she had the same problem:

“When your father left—not Bob, your biological father—I thought I was done. A woman alone with four kids, no savings, this run-down house. I thought, Who could possibly want me?”

Learning this helps the reader see all the previous scenes in a new light—we suddenly understand exactly why Bea has been so guarded, and we begin to understand that there’s so much more at stake for her with the game show.

The revelation of her misbelief also makes her more likable. The character shows her vulnerability and imperfection, which is something every reader can relate to because…so are we! That’s also why we invest in her character going forward. We want to see if she can overcome these challenges (and subconsciously we want to see if there’s hope for us, too!).

But of course, even though Bea has acknowledged in the middle of the book that she has a deep-seated misbelief that she is unworthy of being loved, that doesn’t automatically “fix” her. She struggles with it for the rest of the book until she’s forced to finally confront it or lose everything.

What this means for your own story

Just like I’d encourage you to reject the notion that your character must be flawed, I also encourage you not to focus on the plot of your story first. Start by determining your protagonist’s misbelief and how they need to change to achieve their goal by the end.

That will give you the beginning and ending points for your character arc. Now you can determine a logical series of obstacles that will put the specific misbelief to the test and ultimately force change.

In Bea’s case, her misbelief is constantly tested by men who treat her like she is worthy of being loved (of course, there are a few bad guys in the mix, too, who reinforce her misbelief. That allows her to hold on to it for as long as possible, even in the face of contradicting evidence). It’s important that the challenges are related to the misbelief. If they’re not, it will be difficult for the reader to understand why those obstacles caused the change they did in your protagonist.

For example, if your protagonist doubts their ability to achieve great things, but the challenges your story throws at them consistently test their ability to trust, the story just won’t make sense.

That’s why misbelief comes first—a compelling plot can’t be built without knowing where your character needs to go.

Furthermore, as you develop your protagonist's misbelief, you’ll have to dive into their past to determine how they came to see the world this way. This will be exceptionally helpful as you begin to write your story because your character’s past dictates how they see the world and how they act or react. Just like we do in real life, your characters should tap into memories, experiences, and feelings to make sense of what’s happening to them. If you don’t know how your protagonist got to your story’s start, you’ll have a much harder time keeping them consistent.

So as you identify the central misbelief for your story, consider writing the origin scene: the moment your protagonist developed their worldview and why they’re so attached to that belief.

I promise it will become a part of your story, so this is not wasted effort! As you write forward, having determined your protagonist’s past will help you more easily view the events of your story through your protagonist’s skewed lens.

As the book I’ll be discussing next time says:

“We are all the sum total of our experiences at any given time, and our reactions to things are shaped by them. Just like in romance novels. Whatever a character went through before the start of the book will eventually determine how they react to things that happen in the book.”—Lyssa Kay Adams, The Bromance Book Club

This novel illustrates the next piece of the puzzle: creating believable change for your protagonist, so make sure you stick around!