In a post on Writers Helping Writers, Angela Ackerman offers advice on how to fix a character whose actions aren’t making sense. “Cause-and-effect is very important in the real world,” she says. “In fiction, this means paying attention to your character’s behavior. Their decisions, actions, and choices will tell readers what’s really important, what the character wants and needs, who to root for, and what outcome is ideal.”
When your character’s actions don’t make sense, readers become confused and may lose interest in your story. To get to the heart of your characters’ behavior, you need a deep understanding of what they want, fear, and care about. “By exploring a character’s deeper layers, we learn everything we need to know to determine what they will logically do in any situation,” Ackerman says.
She suggests some factors to consider:
- Emotional Range. Your character’s baseline emotional state is how they act in normal, everyday situations, when life is generally going their way. Your character might be reserved, expressive, forgetful, or extremely disciplined. When you recognize this baseline, you can imagine how they’ll react when you ramp up the conflict and tension. “Emotional extremes push them out of their comfort zone, lead to missteps and mistakes, and create MORE tension and conflict,” Ackerman says.
- Personality. “Personality traits reveal a character’s moral code, impact how they interact with other characters, how they view the world, and how they go about achieving goals,” Ackerman writes.
- Backstory. Past is present. Your character’s experiences and influences guide how they act and react in the present. Positive and negative experiences and people have taught your hero how to solve problems and colored their worldview. Backstory gives your hero strengths and dysfunction.
- Character Motivation. Your character’s motivation is powerful and capable of changing both how they see the world and how they decide to move through it. “No matter how many hurts your character has endured, what they fear most, or how jaded they are at the world, they can and will change if it means getting what they want most,” Ackerman notes. “So knowing the goal will also help you know how they will behave, especially as they grow and evolve.”
