There is nothing quite like a good opening sentence. 

It’s the prim doorman at a high end hotel ready to greet you to the establishment in his shiny buttoned suit. It’s the pleasant smell of freshly baked bread as you step into the clean artisanal bakery. It’s the opening chord to the bombastic action movie, filling your veins with adrenaline as the title screen flashes before the movie theatre. 

In pretty much every medium, place of business and social interaction, the importance of a good impression is paramount. Your opening line is really the first taste someone is going to get of your novel. And much like a restaurant, you don’t want them stepping inside, looking around and wondering about the quality or cleanliness of your offering. And much like first inspecting a restaurant, people aren’t going to push past a poor first impression, look away from a rather unappetizing menu and push on through a bland and tasteless entree just to get to your delicious and award winning dessert. 

They’ll just turn around and try the next eatery down the street. 

Your first sentence is meant to hook prospective readers. You’re trying to entice those people who may be walking down the aisle of a bookstore, peering at covers and poking their nose into the first pages. Or, more likely nowadays, you’re hoping to grab people that are scrolling through online shops and scanning the short blurbs and sample pages as they go through lists of recommended items. 

Sure, your cover art is probably the first thing that will attract a prospective reader’s attention. However, very few writers are really in charge of their cover art. Either you’re a traditionally published author (or hoping to be) and the cover art is wholly out of your control or you’re not a very good artist yourself and you have to commission or use digital tools to slap something together. Very few writers out there are also accomplished artists especially given how difficult it is to master both fields of art. 

So we mostly have to hope the cover will do its work. 

Now, the next point of contact will probably be your back cover summary. And yes, this is often under your control. Or, at the very least, you should get some practice in writing them since they’re often what you’ll use to pitch to publishers anyway. However, that is a whole complicated can of worms itself that is well beyond the scope of today’s post. 

So we’ll assume that works as well. But once you have drawn your prospective audience’s attention with your cover and drawn them in with an enticing blurb, you now have them at your opening sentence. This is the real test and the moment of truth for you as a writer. See, most people know that covers and blurbs don’t give a true taste of the experience they’re hoping to bite into. They’re the clean dining room and the enticing menu trying to get you to try the dish. But that sentence is the first bite. And you can’t have them tasting something bland.

Because unlike a restaurant, your audience will just get up and leave. It costs them nothing to read the first few lines of your book, put it back on the shelf and walk out. 

I don’t think that would fly very well in Gordon Ramsey’s establishment. 

Thus, it’s important to hook your reader with that first sentence. You want to grab their interest and make them want to continue reading through that first paragraph, page and chapter. Leave them wanting more and unable to put your book down. That’s how you grab your readership.

But what makes a good opening sentence?

Outside of the obvious – whatever captures your reader’s attention – it’s a bit of a more nuanced discussion. It’s going to depend on the genre of fiction you’re writing, your tone and authorial voice. Which isn’t particularly helpful, I know. 

So when thinking about your opening line, look up your favourite books. See what they wrote as their opening sentence. Try and figure out how the author was trying to grab your attention with that line. 

For general guidance, I try to think of an opening sentence that has some measure of energy, action or intrigue. For the Red Sabre stories, I’m looking for something that gives that sense of adventure. Anything that evokes the wildness of the wild west, gunpowder and railroads are all elements that I want to highlight to build intrigue. On the other hand, for the Nancy Sharpe mysteries, I’m largely looking to create incongruencies in a lighthearted manner. A line that can set the humorous tone and create a setup for a joke are elements that can generate interest in a comedic mystery. 

And these are generally things I’m considering from my very first draft. A shorthand for energetic, engaging starters that I will typically rely on are opening lines of dialogue. Nothing sparks immediate engagement like beginning a story in media res. If the reader is starting off in the middle of the action then you’ve got built in dynamism as well a source of curiosity while the reader tries and puzzles out what is happening while it’s happening. Dialogue fits just about any genre and is also “action” even if most people wouldn’t immediately think of it as such.

So when you’re starting a draft or editing a draft, ask yourself:

How am I going to immediately hook my reader’s attention? What’s an opening sentence that will create engagement and interest? Can this sentence also convey important tone or themes of the story as well? If I were to read this opening sentence in a bookstore, would it grab my attention? Would it make me want to keep reading?

Is this really the first and most important impression I want to make to my audience?

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class, you’ll have been introduced to the narrative arc chart. It basically looks like a shark’s fin or crooked mountain. It’s a pretty standard visualization for the general structure of the story. You have the base of the fin/mountain as your beginning. This is where you front load a lot of your exposition and world building. You’re spending a lot of time describing your characters and explaining the setting. Generally, the action is fairly slow, the tension is low and your stakes are rather mild. The beginning generally ends with the introduction of the main conflict.

This is where the graph begins to ascend. Classified as “the middle,” your story’s narrative starts to coalesce around the action beats that define the central conflict of the story. Stakes are raised as your character’s fears are tested. Motivation is put on trial as obstacles begin to hold the protagonist back from their goals. You have a rising tension during this portion as your protagonist faces setbacks and failures and pressure builds to a breaking point. Much like the beginning, the middle typically ends at the height of conflict, often called the climax, where the protagonist and antagonists face off for the final confrontation. 

Like a pressure valve, the climax is the point where all the story’s conflict is met head on. While the peak of tension is the tail end of your middle, the conclusion of your story marks the end. This is the drop of your mountain or the fall of the fin. With the climax, your conflict reaches some definitive resolution and rather precipitously, the tension of the story is dispersed. In classic good versus evil narratives, this would be the fall or death of the villain. As such, much of the ending is typically reserved for tying up loose ends, explaining the fallout of the conflict and delivering the payoff for the protagonist’s journey – typically with them reaching their goal or resolving their motivation. 

Now, this is a pretty basic format. It’s like learning how to structure your first essay. And while the concept is simple, the execution is actually quite difficult. This is where we get into pacing. Trying to determine how long each section should be and how best to ramp up and release your tension. You can’t have too slow of an introduction. Too much exposition will bog down the story and drain readers’ interest. It would be like starting a race accelerating from the finishing line and then immediately starting to pump the brakes. Really, you don’t want to explode from the start. You want to create a burst of interest with your initial hook and then gradually accelerate into your tension. 

And reaching the climax is a delicate balance as well. Your middle portion is all about juggling the right mix of steadily building conflict but not hurrying past important character development and context that will deprive your reader of the satisfaction of your conclusion. If you don’t provide enough justification for the final confrontation then your pay off in the end will often come across as undeserved or even contrived. The reader wants to feel that the protagonist has struggled and earned their reward at the end. Hurrying too fast into the climax and resolving it too quickly will make it seem like either the challenge wasn’t really there or that the writer arbitrarily arranged things in the protagonist’s favour so there was never really any threat in the first place. 

As for pitfalls in the conclusion, it’s probably the most forgiving portion of the narrative arc. That said, too abrupt of an ending can leave the reader with more questions than answers. Which if you’re hoping to build an audience either for sequels or entice them to other stories then it might leave a sour taste in their mouth. Too long of a conclusion can result in the Lord of the Rings meandering finale where your readers just sort of lose interest and start skipping to the final pages. Chances are, however, that if they stuck through until this part of the story, they’ll probably see it through to the end. So, in my experience, authors generally indulge in wrapping up the stories and the fates of the characters involved. 

This is mostly just an introduction to the basics of pacing. However, getting the right speed for your narrative development is a very difficult and very tricky process. There’s lots of stories, professionally written, that still stumble with getting just the right speed. In future posts, I’ll outline some advice on how to pace your story properly. But for now, I’ll just conclude that generally pacing is a primary focus during the editing stage. When you’re first drafting, you can afford to have a bit of a wonky narrative arc that can be smoothed out later.

When writing your story, do keep some consideration for your climax. What is your final confrontation that will resolve the central tension of your book? And how can you steadily ramp up your tension to that final, explosive moment?

You know, I haven’t really gotten into a lot of the philosophy behind writing. I mean, there’s a reason for that. I’m giving (free) tips on how to write, what I’ve found successful, and ideas on how you can improve your own writing by reflecting back on my years of experience. This isn’t really some great think piece we’re running here. 

Also, writing is an art. At least, the writing we’re focused on. There’s lots of writing that isn’t art. No one is really going to be enshrining your new Apple iPhone End User Agreement in a museum. Well, maybe a modern art museum. We’re not looking at technical documents here but creative writing. As such, after all these post-modernism years that ravaged the fundamental beliefs and underpinnings of traditional art theory and history, it’s safe to say that basically anything can be art if you’re willing to be persuasive enough. So I don’t really see a lot of value in trying to espouse what one should be striving to do with their art. 

I firmly believe that you can, and should, write whatever you want. There’s no magic formula to success. 

With that disclaimer out of the way, there is a fundamental underpinning of writing that I do think is important. And it doesn’t matter what sort of story you’re trying to tell. But to peel back the philosophy of writing, I guess we should briefly ponder the philosophy of art. As I said, what constitutes art is a debate that I don’t feel worth holding. But why we make art is a different question and one worthy of a little consideration. 

And this is where I get to flex my psychology degree a little.

As humans, we are fundamentally a social species. It’s built into our DNA. Even the greatest misanthrope or hermit has natural instincts and psychological draws to interacting with others. We know that some of the worst punishment is not actually physical pain but rather isolation. Go to any prison and the ultimate tool at the warden’s disposal is to place difficult inmates into cells away from their fellows. Deprivation of social contact has a profoundly damaging effect on our psyche. Prisoner isolation can only be prescribed for a short amount of time. What few case studies – like Genie – that examine severe social isolation paint a rather bleak picture of our mental development and the brain’s ability to cope with the stresses of life. And, in many cases, some of our healing can just be achieved through empathy, commiseration and supportive contact.

This drive to communicate, understand and interact with each other on a deeper, personal level is what I believe drives us to create art. Our creative works are really just an attempt to communicate our own personal emotions and thoughts through entertainment and engagement. From the earliest cave paintings depicting hunts to the most complex of modern virtual reality headsets, we utilize the tools and technology at our disposal to share our inner world to others. 

But don’t believe me? Consider even the stories that focus on individuals stranded in the wilderness away from everyone else. Castaway and The Life of Pi are two recentish big name stories where a person ends up shipwrecked and alone. In Castaway, Tom Hanks ends up personifying a volleyball into a character called Wilson whom he interacts with throughout his time alone on the island. In Life of Pi, the titular character is left stranded on a boat with a tiger named Richard Parker. And the story examines their interactions as they strive to survive out at sea. 

It’s incredibly hard to write a story with only one character and no interaction. There’s simply that lack of social involvement which we use to help define ourselves and process the world around us. For me, the fundamental component of every single story  is the nature of these interpersonal relationships between our characters. 

Yes, even your military space fantasies about magic infused samurai fighting an evil empire of clones ultimately is about the emotional connection between the rebel members and the conquerors. I think this is what separates the quality of the Star Wars original movies and the prequels where those relationships were better developed, conveyed and told in the first three movies than the following. 

It is these relationships that will also pull your reader through your own fantasy and science fiction works. 

There’s not much to give as a suggestion at the end of this post. 

But when considering your overall narrative, take a moment to examine the nature of the relationships in your story. Keep in mind the importance that your main character has with their supporting cast and antagonists. Try and tease out more involvement and strengthen the nature of those relationships. Remember that you can have the best action beats ever in a story but if your interpersonal threads are weak then people aren’t likely to get to them or enjoy the tale you have to offer

We’ve spent some time discussing character motivation in order to round out your protagonist and make your book more engaging. Prior, I mentioned how important it is to know and express your main character’s drive and their stakes in the narrative. I’m doing this little summary because I just recently read a piece that did not make those points clear so I thought a little reminder couldn’t hurt.

Anyway, today we’re still talking about main characters! Hurray!

You know that girl back in high school? I assume every school has one. She’s smart – always scoring at the top of her class and the teacher is constantly reminding how the rest of you fail to keep up to the, frankly, unrealistic standards that she sets. She’s also probably part of a club or sports group. There, no doubt she’s the star member – bringing in all the awards for the school and pumping up its prestige. This, in turn, makes sure that you see her constantly at award ceremonies which mostly come across like they’re arbitrary assemblies mostly held so the rest of the student body can watch the staff fawn over how amazing she is. There’s little doubt she’s also on student council. Possibly she’s even the student president. She’s usually found leading student initiatives in the lunchroom. And she always has tons of friends who hang around, talking incessantly how amazing she is. 

For me, this was Clair. For the rest of the world, this is Mary Sue. 

She’s perfect. She’s beautiful. She looks like a model. She can do no wrong in the eyes of everyone around her. And you sit there, staring at her from across the classroom growing ever more suspicious. No one is that perfect. Something must be rotten behind that bright smile and never faltering upbeat attitude. You don’t know what that is but you can’t be convinced otherwise that there is something nefarious or hidden about her. 

No one else thinks that. And so you feel like you’re alone in your suspicions and doubts. The only thing you can be certain of is that you don’t like her. And there isn’t a damn thing she can do about it either. Maybe she’ll notice and she’ll try extra hard to earn your trust. She’ll rope you in to some of the favours or praise she gets. She’ll try to convince you that all it takes is a little volunteering and you too can be adored by the student body. Or maybe she’ll offer to help tutor you with whatever class you’re struggling with but you decline because you just know it would be her smugly baffled over how someone couldn’t “just get this concept – it’s so easy!”

The more she tries to win you over with how perfect she is, the more it drives your ire and resentment. 

This is literally what is happening with your reader when you make Mary Sue your protagonist. Now, I’m sure some people familiar with the concept may argue that it is sexist. That’s not true. Anyone can be a Mary Sue. You see, there’s a proud literary history for the Mary Sue. She started largely in fan fictions where authors would create an “original character” who just so happened to be an idealized version of the author themself. And this character would then take centre stage in stories revolving around whatever fandom the fan fiction was written about. I think earliest examples were the shockingly witting and beautiful new ensign on the Star Trek ships who won the hearts of all the captains and first mates while also earning the respect and adoration of whoever the female officers were for that ship.

I don’t know. I don’t watch Star Trek. Sue me – but don’t Mary Sue me. Please.

The basic problem with Mary Sue is this: she’s too perfect. No one is actually perfect in life. We all have our struggles and shortcomings. It’s what makes us delightfully, frustratingly,  human. It also is what makes our stories so engaging. In many ways, by making a “perfect” character you’re really undermining all that work you put into establishing stakes and motives. How can a character’s fear of losing what’s precious to them drive tension if the character’s never actually threatened with that loss? How is cheering for them to accomplish their lifelong want rewarding if the character effortlessly gets whatever they want with seemingly little difficulty or obstruction?

Furthermore, and perhaps we’ll get into this a bit more later, a Mary Sue has no character arc. There’s nowhere for the character to grow because, by design, that character is already flawless from the onset. They can’t improve – they are already the model of perfection. 

As a quick clarification, a Mary Sue is not every writer’s stand-in or character based on the author. The character needs to be strictly an idealized version of the author (or really anyone) lacking any real flaws or failings. I’ve mentioned before that basing characters on people that you know is a great shorthand for when you’re first writing. But it’s important to include the good and the bad. While you’re heightening the aspects that you like of that person in your fictionalized version, also take a moment to heighten some of their shortcomings as well.

So, when considering your main character’s personality and journey, also stop and ask:

What are my main character’s weaknesses? Are these weaknesses being brought up in the text and are they given moments to show my character in a less idealized light? Can I use my character’s weaknesses to heighten some of the drama or tension by making a situation worse for them because of these character faults?

We’ve all been there. You pick up a story. You’re excited by the cover. Maybe you even like the title. Possibly it’s an author that you love. You flip it to the back and your eyes roll so far into your skull they’re just about to drill out your occipital bone. “Not another Chosen One trope!” you decry. 

You go home, annoyed at the overused character device and sit down at your laptop/computer/pad of paper to continue your own story. You start writing about a new character who’s quirky, pretty and engaging and before you know it, this character has caught the attention of your protagonist.

You gasp! Oh no! Not a lover’s triangle! We can’t have that trope. It’s over done! You madly delete all your work. You’ve got to focus. Keep things fresh. New! You start writing about how your protagonist is going to save their home from the encroaching invaders led by a general bloodthirsty and power mad.

You pause. Wait, this is cleaving a little close to Good versus Evil trope. Or maybe you’ve stumbled into the Reluctant Hero. Now you’re wondering if you’ve accidentally placed your protagonist as the Chosen One. You break out into a cold sweat. Your fingers seize. Your mind blanks. 

Hours pass and you’ve done no writing. It’s no use. Every idea you come up with has been done before. To death! You think you’re in writer’s block and you rail against your own fragility for falling into that cliched trope too.

Then you load up tvtropes to go down a three hour rabbit hole of loosely and spuriously connected ideas and themes. 

I’ve seen this a lot. Certainly, when I was younger, I worried about this a lot too. I strove for some sort of creative novelty to the point of inspirational purity where I wouldn’t read anything while I was writing hoping that I wouldn’t be influenced and accidentally bleed some unwanted literary device into my writing. Now, with the wisdom of age and experience, I realize what all this fretting really is: nonsense. 

Please, get off tvtropes. It’s not good for you. I’m not sure it’s good for anyone.

But maybe you’re someone who has no idea what I’m talking about. Bless your sweet, springtime soul. Tropes are generally (or generously) defined as commonly recurring rhetorical devices, motifs or cliches. It’s like when you notice most fantasy is of a generalized medieval fantasy nature. There’s lots of things fantasy could be. It could be Chinese medieval inspired. It could be steampunk (though that’s now a trope) or set before the iron age. Hell, fantasy doesn’t even have to have some historical analogy. You could write a fantasy story about a world inhabited with sentient mushrooms who communicate through rigorous percussion and are struggling against an invasive melody that threatens their whole harmonic existence. 

Most of it, however, will be some sort of derivative of Dungeons and Dragons. Which is largely just kind of derivative of Lord of the Rings. And here’s the kicker, Tolkien’s stuff was just derivative of actual European mythology. 

At the end of the day, there’s a very long history of human existence and you’re going to be really hard pressed to come up with something that some person hasn’t conceived of over the thousands of years we’ve sat on this planet entertaining each other with wild tales. 

But it’s not just that originality is an illusion. In fact, I believe that originality is inevitable. Even if I were to follow the same outline of Lord of the Rings, my version would be markedly different than Tolkiens. Don’t believe me? Check out any manner of people’s fan fictions for whatever popular show or story is currently engaged with the modern zeitgeist. I mean, we got Fifty Shades of Grey because some person really loved Twilight but thought the teenagers should be a bit more freaky in the sheets. 

However, it’s the very nature of tropes themselves which can trap people into thinking that they’re “bad” and “overused.” However, trope classification is literally just observation. It’s noticing common elements and themes and trying to rope as many as you can into a single definition. It’s actively looking to make things appear more similar to each other. Trope classification is trying to fit things into arbitrary labels and boxes regardless of how well they’re really going to fit or not. Bonus points if you can give the trope some weird name (think Klingon Scientists Get No Respect). 

Moreover, if there is a rather widespread trope then it’s probably widespread for a reason. For example, in the opening, I mentioned the Good vs Evil trope. This is a pretty stock theme in fantasy and there’s a reason for it: it works. A lot of tropes are merely observing that literature relies on a number of shorthands or devices to actually make a functional story. I mentioned before that you can’t replicate reality in your work – it’ll just make an unreadable mess. So you, as the author, going through and condensing your narrative and giving it focus will inevitably make it fall into some trope or another. Tropes are just the tools we use. Railing against the overuse of a trope in fiction is like complaining about artists having green in too many of their paintings. 

Now, before anyone who actually enjoys discussing tropes comes after me, I don’t think tropes are bad. Honestly, if people want to engage in the discussion of tropes with their favourite works, all the power to them. At least they’re looking at their media critically and trying to actually tease it apart on a more analytical level rather than mindless consuming and disposing of the piece like capitalism encourages. 

I just think as a creator, it’s in your best interest to shunt the concept of tropes as far away from your mind as you can. Worry about tropes and their use, definition or application has no place in your creative process. Forget about them entirely. Let others diagnosis and classify your writing. 

Honestly, you’ve got way bigger fish to fry.

So, if you catch yourself noticing tropes in your own stories, don’t sweat it and forget about it. Tropes are oftentimes just common tools or devices that actually work for a story and, if nothing else, indicate that you’re using a conceit that has been shown to work in other people’s narratives.

Also, you should get off tvtropes and get back to writing.

Writing is basically psychology.

And I’m not just saying that because I have a degree in the subject. I honestly feel that stories are all about us as humans. They’re meant to reveal truths and experiences which we live. They carry our dreams, hopes and aspirations. They underscore the follies and foibles which we believe are meant to be avoided. Writing is ultimately the art of the mind and the narrating of behaviour – either those that are to be extolled or those that are to be condemned. 

I have spent a decent number of words discussing things like character motivations and fears. And I’ll no doubt have more blog entries pulling back the layers of our protagonist’s personalities and characteristics. I have little doubt that if you search for other writers or workshops on improving writing, we’re all going to be discussing the same things. In a way, as writers, we’re little psychologists. We’re trying to understand what causes our characters to do what they do so that we can communicate the reasons for those actions to our readers. 

In many ways, having a rudimentary understanding of psychology can go a long way in helping us to make more empathetic characters that our readers can be drawn into. And we want readers to be drawn to our characters. In fact, I believe readers are looking for that connection. Sure, exotic worlds and thrilling action are always fun. Movies don’t have action beats and car chases for nothing. The struggle against the conflicts we set before our characters are gripping – with the underlying assumption that we’ve been able to get our reader invested in the outcome before they happen. 

There’s no point in threatening the life of your protagonist if your reader doesn’t give to licks about whether they live or die. 

But even if you accept my assertion of psychology’s value in this field, what does that even mean in terms of a writing tip? Well, for instance, I think it’s important to see and treat your characters as people. Yes, they’re little puppets which we dance at the ends of our strings. However, if we can’t convince ourselves that they’re representations or standins for real people then how can we convince our readers of such? Our whole promise with our books is that we’re going to deliver something believable even if the action takes place in saucer shaped starships or in worlds infested with fire-breathing dragons. 

In this way, I think it is of great benefit to try and view the world around you with a bit of a psychologist’s lens. If you’ve never done it, take a moment to try and see the people in your lives as characters in your book. How would you break them down into motivations and fears? What sort of wants drive them and what worries hold them back? How do their actions in this moment of observation make sense with this little literary synopsis of them? What are they hoping to achieve with whatever interaction they’re having with you? Better yet, if they’re sharing a story of their day, try and think about the importance of what they’re telling you is. Why is it that they wanted to share this story of their colleague? Why are they sharing it with you instead of someone else? Take a moment, if you’ve never done so, to examine the potential causes for the connections you have with these people.

And then think about what connections there would be with the characters of your stories. 

In my earlier days of writing, I employed this sort of analytics more explicitly with my characters. My early stories are very much based on the question of “What would my sister as a fantasy knight look like? How would my best friend act if he were a world renowned gentleman thief?” From these mini psychological profiles of the people closest to me, I crafted the characters of my earliest works. And in that way, I had a starting point for understanding how these characters would react in ever more novel situations. I honestly have no experience with living in a fantasy Victorian steampunk setting. But I can take the blueprint of myself and imagine how I would react in the situations of my Red Sabre stories. I can then throw some of my other friends into the equation and ease the cognitive burden on my creative faculties by only changing a few variables rather than having to mentally construct wholly original people in entirely never experienced situations. 

And you know what I found? The more I wrote, the less I relied on the characteristics of the people I actually knew. I was able to imagine more realized and developed personalities which I could populate my stories with. 

So, take a break from writing. Interact with the people around you. Consider what motivations are driving their behaviours in that moment. Analyse them like you would your own characters. Imagine what that friend or family member would do in one of the situations in your story. Then consider, can you use any of these ideas for your book? Does it offer alternative actions or responses that you hadn’t considered before?

There is a trope called lampshading that I constantly misuse. Apparently, proper lampshading is to intentionally call attention to the improbable, incongruent or cliched nature of an action, element or scenario in your writing. My use of it is to contextualize, or shade these moments to draw attention away from them. So I will apologize in advance if I misuse this term while writing this post. I’m trying my best not to.

At any rate, today I want to talk about idiosyncrasies and out of character behaviour. In an earlier post I did a brief explanation of verisimilitude and how our works of fiction attempt to portray a “sense” of heightened reality: situations are created to elevate drama while conflicts and tension will follow a progressive build until it peaks in a thrilling climax. There’s lots of elements of a good story that don’t follow real world behaviour. 

But that doesn’t mean we don’t pull some behaviours from reality into our work of fiction. One such behaviour that can be a touch tricky to navigate is the propensity for people to tell falsehoods. I’ll probably cover lying in another blog post. But one thing we’ll notice – as writers drawing inspiration from the real world – is that people rarely, if ever, act entirely within their character.

What I mean to say is that people will do the most surprising things. Your most trusted, valued friend might go behind your back. A hated enemy may extended an unexpected olive branch or reach out to you. People are constantly change, evolving and growing as time goes on and this impacts their outlook and behaviour. Obviously, a lot of storytelling is trying to capture this kind of personal growth in our main characters. And, as such, it is very, very common for us to establish the personality of a character only to have them do something later that goes against this nature.

And yet, so many times your reader will object with “This isn’t like them! Their behaviour is contrived just to forward the narrative!”

Quite frankly, the reader is probably right. Our characters are servants to our narratives. They dance exactly how we want them so any incongruencies to their personality isn’t due to the myriad of real life influences and factors changing how they would expectedly behave. No, their actions are always deliberately made with our careful consideration. 

However, this isn’t to say that they shouldn’t act unexpectedly. Quite the contrary, I think that idiosyncratic behaviour can be a huge boon to your writing. You just have to do it well.

This is where today’s lesson comes in. Any character can do any behaviour as long as you provide the proper context for your reader to understand. Pacifists can kill people. Tyrants can show mercy. Vegans can eat meat. Dog lovers might take in a stray cat. As writers, we are gods of our little narrative domains. But to take someone on even the most ludicrous journey requires providing the external pressures that direct a character away from their normal behaviour.

This is where the power of writing comes in. In real life, there’s way too many influences that determine our behaviours for anyone to really, truly understand why someone does anything. But in our written works we’ve the benefit of being about to cut through the noise and highlight the most impactful moments that leave last reverberations on our characters’ very souls. However, these moments require conscious setup in order to land this surprising payoff. However, if you do it properly, it will generate scenes that resonate powerfully with your readership. 

And we see this all the time in successful media. There’s Han Solo – the shoot Greedo first rogue who flies in to rescue Luke and the Rebels in the twilight hour despite great danger to himself. Or we have the turn from Frodo in the depths of Mount Mordor where he turns from casting the ring to its destruction falling to selfishness and temptation despite a harrowing journey resisting its siren call. But in both these situations, a large bulk of the story is setup to explain why these changes occur. Han Solo has the budding friendship between him and Luke Skywalker. Frodo has the slow sanity chipping lure of power whispering from the One Ring that tempts even the hearts of powerful wizards and elves with its promises. Thus, these heel turns make sense even if, in the moment, the characters themselves are taken by surprise.

So, when writing your characters in moments where they’re going against the nature and personality you’ve established for them, always ask yourself:

Has this moment been properly setup? Have I provided the context for why this character is betraying their nature? Will the reader understand and, possibly, even empathize with this action? Will they realize this turning point in the character’s development?

If not, then go back through your earlier chapters and make sure you plant those seeds of change in your earlier passages.