The Trouble with Characters Who Won't Behave

You'd think that being the author of a fictional universe would come with certain advantages. Complete control over the characters, for instance. After all, I invented them. I know where they came from, what motivates them, what frightens them, and, in most cases, where their stories are supposed to end.

You'd think.

The trouble is, characters have an irritating habit of becoming people somewhere between the outline and the finished manuscript. Not real people, obviously. I'm not quite that far gone. But sufficiently developed that they start making decisions which, although entirely consistent with who they are, aren't necessarily convenient for the poor bastard trying to write the book.

And that's where things get interesting.

The Outline Is More of a Suggestion

I do plan my stories. Quite extensively, actually. I know the major events, the relationships, the consequences, and how one decision affects something that might not happen until several books later.

What I can't always predict is how a character will react when I finally put them in the situation I've so carefully constructed.

Something that looks perfectly reasonable in an outline can become completely ridiculous once the character has acquired a personality. A decision I'd planned months earlier suddenly feels wrong because the person I've written would never make it.

And that's a problem.

I can force the character to follow the outline, of course. It's my keyboard. But readers are remarkably good at noticing when someone behaves in a way that serves the plot rather than their own motivations.

So the outline changes.

Which is fine, until that change affects three other characters, two subsequent books, and an event I was rather hoping wouldn't need revisiting.

Some People Are Particularly Difficult

Take Jasmine Martinez, for example.

Jasmine isn't the kind of character who can be reduced to a collection of admirable qualities and a few conveniently manageable flaws. She's difficult, frequently unreasonable, and capable of making decisions that are simultaneously understandable and spectacularly bad.

Trying to make her more agreeable would probably make her easier to write. It would also make her considerably less interesting.

Then there's Emmett Klessens, whose particular talent is remaining himself regardless of what someone else expects him to become. That's an admirable quality until you realise it means he isn't particularly interested in accommodating the author's plans either.

Connor and Caitlin present their own problems. Their relationship involves two fiercely individual people whose strengths don't automatically make their disagreements disappear.

The challenge isn't deciding what I want any of these people to do. It's deciding whether I've given them a believable reason to do it.

And sometimes I haven't.

The Inconvenience of Consistency

There's an interesting contradiction in all this. The more thoroughly you develop a character, the less freedom you have to make them behave however you please.

Their experiences matter. Their fears matter. The things they refuse to admit, even to themselves, matter.

A character who spent years learning not to trust people can't suddenly become trusting because the next chapter requires a heartfelt conversation. Someone who has never willingly surrendered control shouldn't do so because it would make a lovely romantic moment.

If they change, that change has to be earned.

Which means I occasionally find myself rewriting something that was perfectly good prose because it wasn't perfectly good behaviour.

Bloody inconvenient, really.

Would I Change It?

Not a chance.

The moments when a character surprises me are often the moments when the story becomes something better than I'd originally imagined. Not because the character has somehow taken control of the keyboard, but because I've finally understood them well enough to recognise what they'd actually do.

Of course, recognising the right decision doesn't make accommodating it any easier.

Somewhere in my notes, there's probably a perfectly sensible version of this entire series in which everybody follows instructions, makes reasonable choices, and arrives where they're supposed to be.

I imagine it would be considerably shorter.

It would also be a rather boring read.