Writing Well-Behaved Characters
A post about keeping characters in line
Something I have frequently heard/read in interviews with other authors is talk about characters not behaving themselves. There’s the implication of a rueful shake of the head and then something along the lines of, “well, I had my story all planned out, but the characters had other ideas.”
I am not entirely sure if this is a confession or not, but across everything I’ve written, I don’t think I’ve encountered this situation a single time. Is this a flaw in my characterization? Is it because of my insightful planning? I genuinely don’t know.
I get the theory behind it. You get to know characters as you write them. Someone who starts out as a rough sketch on a page becomes a fully-fleshed three-dimensional creature. Their voice becomes something you can hear in your head. The way they look at things, the way they think about things, it all starts to come clear. And that process can definitely change things.
With my current novel, for example, I have a character who is part of the Stasi—the East German secret police. In the novel plan, he was going to essentially be a two-bit thug masquerading as an officer of justice. That was my idea for the internal tension within him. Presentation vs reality. Except, that didn’t last past the opening paragraph. Instead what emerged was a man struggling with his faith to a corrupt system, and what he did when temptation was put in his way. As I’ve been writing that’s evolved too, becoming an internal war within a man now torn between love of disco music and a burgeoning addiction to cocaine. None of this was the plan.
And yet, this character is still operating in service of the larger plot. He is still hitting his mark, and taking the actions I need him to take.
There’s a chance that this is just bad writing on my part. Plot and character are meant to be inextricably linked, right? If I change one, I should change the other. That’s the way it’s meant to be. So shouldn’t such a radical change in my character radically change the plot?
Maybe. Or maybe I’m thinking at too macro a level. Because things have needed to change. Because to get my character to do all the big plot points he needs to do, I have do needed to change the small things that get them there.
Characters are defined by their motivations: what they want and why they want it. At their core, I think that’s the most important aspect of any character. There are a lot of workbooks out there encouraging writers to figure out their character’s eye color and favorite meal, and none of that hurts, but at their core, in terms of an engine in a story, what matters about a character is what they do and why they do it. If you know that, then everything else is gravy (in my humble opinion).
So if I want a character to hit the big plot point—to go to the right place, to take the right object, to kill the right person, whatever it is—I have to make sure they’re appropriately motivated. Sometimes that just requires an internal change, nudging their train of thought in one direction or another, until this character lands at a conclusion that would reasonably lead them to the place I need them to go. Other times, it means I have to change what another character says to them. And yes, occasionally, I do have to tweak a plot detail here and there in order to push them in the right direction. But that’s the things, it’s just been tweaks. I can’t think of a time when I’ve had to reinvent a really chunky detail.
I’m not sure I’m advocating for what I do here. I really don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps if my characters were more robust then they’d wander off more and my books would sell more. Or perhaps my planning is already based around characters primary motivations and so it doesn’t need to change that much. My insight here is limited.
If there is any conclusion to all this pondering and wiffling, perhaps it’s just this: despite everything, I have still managed to get published. So perhaps, all that really matters is just figuring out what works for you. If it doesn’t match other’s reported experience, so what? Your characters have to be well-behaved. You don’t have to be.
Thank you for reading Something’s a Little Off. Fun fact: I have a novella coming out on September 15th. You can pre-order it today.