So do we believe this? Of course not. This is a plot puppet, not a real person. We know that she needs to be attacked by the monster, so of course she takes that candle into the cellar where something is growling. She has no choice. The plot is pulling the strings and she has to dance. This is, alas, a common problem for many new writers of fiction. All too often we send our characters off to confront a peril when the person we created really would rather stay home and read a good book.

Every day we make a hundred decisions. Do we eat toast for breakfast or cereal? Do we skip the staff meeting and call in sick, or do we attend even though we hate those things? Do we confront our lying spouse or look the other way and pretend everything is fine? Each of these decisions, large or small, comes from who we are, how we think, how we view the world around us. Someone who is diffident and willing to accept blame without comment is unlikely to stand up to a superior without extreme provocation.

Live With Your Character

It’s easy to come up with a name and start writing. Events take place, moments of crisis occur, and your character reacts, carrying your plot along. But what does that character think here? How is she going to react when faced with this situation? Slow down a bit and invite your character to move in with you for awhile. As you read the newspaper, ask yourself how your character would respond in this situation, what would he think about this article? Let yourself get a sense of his or her history, her childhood as a shy bookworm, the tallest and smartest girl in her class, the over achiever who poured all her energy into getting the top grades to make up for her lack of friends. Perhaps he was the class clown, a mask that hid his pain and anger at his alcoholic and uncaring father. Only now that mask has become permanent and it will take a lot to make him confide in and trust another character. The more you know how your character will react to various situations and why, the more realistic they will seem to your readers.

Sometimes you’ll find that you’ve painted yourself into a corner. Perhaps your plot requires your character to stand up to the local bully and you have Jimmy, who is shy and retiring and not one to stand up to anyone if he doesn’t have to. Now what? He has to do it. Otherwise the story won’t work. So you have him lose his temper and punch the bully. Yeah, it’s not likely, but it could happen. We’ll just have to trust you, right?

It doesn’t work that way, alas. When we sit down to read your story, we have entered into an unspoken contract: You create a world for us, and we’ll suspend our disbelief and believe that it is real. But we’re all experts in human behavior. We’ve been studying people since we were born. When someone acts in a way that doesn’t fit his or her personality, we know it’s wrong. You’ve broken the contract. You haven’t created a real world for us, and so, we stop believing. We lay the story aside, perhaps saying something like ‘It just didn’t grab me…’. We may read to the end of an entertaining story because the plot is fast paced and strong, even if the characters don’t behave consistently. But the chances are that we won’t remember that story a week later, and may not bother to read the next thing we find by that author. Real people are what make a story memorable. If we care about that protagonist, if we’re holding our breath that he or she gets it right, succeeds, makes the right choice, then we’ll remember that story months and years later and recommend the author to our friends.

So what do you do now? Our main character really needs to punch that bully. Do we throw the story out and start over? You have two options here. You can change the character, rename him, give him a history and personality that lets him lose his temper and deck that bully. You’ll probably find that you have a very different story, now. Or, you can let the character pull the strings to make the plot dance. Since your character simply isn’t someone who can face off with that bully, take a look at your goal. What did you mean to accomplish with that face-off? Is that scene meant to defeat the bully? Or is it meant to get him out of the way so that the main character has to replace him as pitcher for the big game? Maybe you don’t need the confrontation that our character doesn’t want to have. The goal is to get our quiet and unassuming main character onto the pitcher’s mound. So perhaps, instead of picking a fight with our character and losing, the bully merely falls and breaks an arm. If the real conflict here is our character’s fear of getting onto that pitcher’s mound and risking failure, then simply getting onto that pitcher’s mound and pitching that game is a major triumph – and a much more realistic triumph than punching the bully in the nose would have been.

Next time your character must make a decision or take action, ask yourself if this person really would do that. Would she climb that tree to retrieve that kite, or is she afraid of heights, or tearing her clothes, or getting dirty? Would he ask her to have dinner with him, or is he too painfully shy to ever take such a step on his own? Listen to your character. When you find that he or she simply can’t cooperate with your plot, ask yourself how your plot can change. There are many routes from point A to point B. See if you can find another route for your character to walk between that beginning and the end. Remember that we care about people. Puppets are simply toys.