Mastering the Actions/Reactions of Story Characters

We pay attention to what characters do. Sometimes their actions border on being contextual, when when their actions come with their roles or jobs. A waiter takes orders for food. A soccer goalie protects her goal and launches balls downfield. A father is expected to care for his children. A sniper shoots people. While, at times, these dimensions of a character may be incidental, most stories have characters doing things related to their jobs and roles. (Or, going against expectations, failing to live up to commitments.)

For most stories, there are tasks related to the story question. Often, these are apart from jobs and roles. In fact, a lot of the fun of stories is seeing people called to do unfamiliar task. Dorothy has nothing in her initial description that indicates she’ll have to kill wicked witches, but getting home from Oz requires it. Luke forms friendships and loyalties that lead him to take on the responsibility of destroying the Death Star.

And the jobs, roles, and tasks both describe the character and shape him or her, building the capabilities required to reach the story goal (or fail, in the case of a tragedy).

Mastery of Story Characters 7 - Put characters in motion.

Practice: Come up with jobs or roles that would make a character more or less ready for a goal. A Navy Seal might be better at killing wicked witches. A schoolyard bully probably would be worse. Now think of skills and attitudes required for jobs and roles and how those might be related to the ultimate goal. Luke is a farmer, but he also has piloting skills. And he doesn’t really want to get involved with the social conflict, which is something he has to get over. Somewhere, there probably is a connection to the flaw that must be overcome.

As another practice, come up with tasks that must be successfully done to achieve the main goal. Make a list of at least ten, more if your story is already drafted. Make sure some seem impossible. Also, connect them with flaws if you can.

How do we do the impossible? Sometimes, through training and growth. But most stories don’t have the space to really on that. Which is a good thing because it forces the protagonist to work with others. While not every story needs an Ocean’s Eleven team, most include allies with skills the protagonist lacks. Since  he  or she can’t do it alone, success requires cooperation and compromise.  

This helps the story in two ways. First, it broadens the range of characters, forcing together those in conflict and creating odd couples. Comedies often rely on this. And romances would be five pages long if the lovers did not have a reason to be apart and a reason to be together. Danny Simon said Sgt. Bilko worked because everyone on the diverse team had been drafted into the Army and they couldn’t just walk away. (When a follow-up series put them all at the same company, audiences had in the backs of their minds, “why doesn’t he just quit?”)

Beyond the bond, there is working though the differences. Characters need to bargain. They make tough trade-offs that both show their values and force them to change. (And often help them to appreciate the other characters.) In real life, I’d say the way I came to have deeper friendships most often was by working with other people. Including some I initially didn’t want to work with. For the inner conflicts, alliances show who the character is through sacrifice, loyalty, and commitment (or their opposites).

This is not to say that everything is win-win. Power disparities can be interesting, especially if they are dynamic. Often, in a love story, the one who is in control shifts from chapter to chapter (or even scene to scene). Lose (learn), lose (learn), win is a nice formula for empathy and delight.

Mastery of Story Characters 8 - Make characters dependent on alliances.

Practice: Write down the skills and capabilities your character needs but does not have. (This may mean taking strengths away from a too-perfect protagonist. Superman, without kryptonite, is boring.) Now give these to other characters in this story. (Expected characters, of course. But see if a few unexpected characters can be included.) Then, give these sidekicks or lovers or frenemies reasons to NOT share what they could offer. They could hold a grudge, be too busy, not see self-interest, want the other character to become self sufficient, or not clearly understand how they can help. There are a lot of reasons. Finding ones that add to the fun may be looking at alternatives or (my approach) interviewing characters.

Where there are limits, dependencies and vulnerabilities, it’s valuable to look at things going wrong. Very often, the stories we love most include a time when a friendship goes bad. So consider how the protagonist might be betrayed (or betray), how that relates to the story theme, and what happens next (healing or loss).

With all this action, reaction is inevitable. Actions are usually the results of decisions that are considered and weighed. Reactions tend to be in the moment, and are revealing in a different way. Part of actions is creating and supporting the persona — who we want to appear to be to witnesses. But reactions show the real person underneath. Whether a raised eyebrow or a punch in the face, creating a scene that elicits a reaction provides a marker for readers and audiences of how far the character has come in the story. A character who would have lashed out at someone else in Act 1 may very well have the skills to calm a situation or walk away by the end of the story.

Mastery of Story Characters 9 - Make characters react to challenges and surprises.

Practice: Think of a good, effective choice your protagonist might make to achieve the story goal (or complete a task). Now, put yourself in your antagonist’s shoes and counter that in the most calamitous way (even if it hurts the antagonist, too). How does the protagonist react? Think of both the internal response and the external response. Think of good responses and horrible ones.

Come up with surprises and revelations to hit your protagonist with (especially after an action). I used to listen to the Life of Riley radio show, and I always knew the best stuff would come after he said, “What a revolting development this is.” Make sure whatever is discovered or how badly things work out, that it really matters to the protagonist AND creates doubt s about success. (Usually, this will shatter self-confidence, if only for a moment.)

By the way, surprises and revelations are difficult to master. They can’t be arbitrary. They must make sense to readers and audiences, at least enough so they don’t feel cheated. And often, they need to be set up and hinted at earlier in the story. That could be by planning, luck (thanks to a generous subconscious), or careful rewriting. But for practice, it’s less necessary to implement these than to be able to come up with good ones.

There are more than nine things writers need to master regarding characters, but I’ll leave this here for now. Storytelling requires more elements, and it’s too easy to get lost down this rabbit hole. Besides, the other elements, in their own ways, relate to and expand on the above, potentially deepening the lessons. So, next week, I’ll have a new focus.