“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This is Newton’s Third Law in physics – it is also a good guideline for a fiction writer to follow.
Where your character is and who he is must be a result of everything that has happened before, even if what happened before never becomes a part of the story. Every action your character takes has a consequence. How your character reacts to the consequence will cause another action – and the cycle continues through the story.
It may be helpful for you to KNOW your character when you begin writing: What were the important things in his past? Did he have a happy childhood? Did he live through any tragedies? How did he do in school? Was he ever betrayed? Did he grow up in poverty or privileged? Was he bullied or did he bully others?
Know anything significant about your character; these are the things that will affect the way he reacts to many current day events. If he was betrayed by someone close to him then he might have a difficult time trusting now. If he lost a loved one in a car accident, he may be over-cautious about driving. His reactions should be calculated by his past. For every incident in your story ask yourself “what would [insert character name] do?”
You have multiple characters, even those that never appear in your story, whose actions will cause reactions. These actions will call for different reactions from each character and the consequences of these reactions will affect all of your characters. If you have a financially savvy and responsible individual living with a gambling addict, for instance, the normally secure environment may be threatened and this is not a consequence that your savvy character is prepared for. This could be the basis for conflict.
Even if your character appear to be able to handle whatever situation you put before him, sometimes there will be an unexpected consequence – maybe another character made a change and the intended reaction didn’t happen.
Imagine “Pete”, a very methodical routine-oriented guy who gets up at 6:30 every work morning, showers, puts the tea kettle on, gets dressed and is ready to leave for work with a standard five-minute window to make tea in his travel mug before driving to his office; now imagine Pete’s undisciplined kid sister Cindy is visiting, she monopolizes the bathroom, decides to use all of the hot water in the tea kettle for a facial sauna, and used Pete’s car the night before leaving the fuel nearly empty. So now Pete has to leave for work late without his morning tea, he has to stop for gas along the way and he gets to work late missing the staff meeting – he is flustered, he doesn’t know what the boss wants him to do that day (because he missed the meeting) and his whole day seems thrown off.
Cindy’s actions caused all sorts of unintended circumstances for Pete. Decide how Pete is going to react based on what you know about the character. It’s possible that his reactions are going to be “out of the norm” and may cause even more unexpected reactions. After all is done, you should still be able to know WHY each consequence or event happened and WHY the character reacted the way he did. Even though it is fiction, it should still reflect real life.
Writing Exercise: Pick up your local newspaper and read any article. If YOU were experiencing the events of that article, how would you react? Write a paragraph or two explaining what you would do. Why would you react that way? Write down your reasons.
Writing Prompt: Your protagonist is absorbed by guilt. What does he/she feel guilty about? How will that guilt influence future decisions?
Challenge Assignment: Change EVERY character in your story to an animal, Choose an animal whose personality will represent that character best. Write a short-short fairy tale from your story using only those animals; try to keep the main conflict in the story.
