Don’t you hate it when you’re reading a novel or watching a movie and the main character does something stupid? It’s one thing when a minor character in a horror flick does this—Don’t go in the barn, you idiot—but it’s another thing altogether when your heroine won’t run out the back door when a prowler is trying to get in the front. This is one of the most common problems I see when editing manuscripts, not only by beginning authors but also by professionals.
Readers and moviegoers hate stupid characters who don’t shoot the bad guy when they have a chance, who don’t call the police when it’s the easy and obvious thing to do, who don’t back away slowly or run like a cheetah when they hear a monster the size of a Winnebago snapping branches and overturning boulders in the woods, who don’t use the GPS app on their phone when they’re lost in a city, who fail to understand something that’s obvious to anyone with an IQ over 60.
I understand why this happens. It’s almost never because the author is stupid. It’s almost always because if the character does the smart and obvious thing, it will take the plot in a direction the author doesn’t want it to go. The author wants the character to remain in danger, and running out of the house or sitting tight until the cops show up would ruin everything.
Lots of people wish they were taller or prettier or richer or stronger, but hardly anyone wishes they were smarter. Nearly all of us feel smart enough, and those who aren’t seem blissfully unaware of the fact even if it’s obvious to everyone else. But readers want to spend time with characters who are smarter than they are or equally intelligent at the bare minimum. Nobody wants to read about a doofus who can’t find the sink in the kitchen.
Look, I get it. You want your plot to go in a certain direction. You want Sally to remain inside the house when the prowler comes in. You want Cletus to get sucked up into the flying saucer’s tractor beam. These things won’t happen if they run away like any sensible person would.
When you find yourself in a situation like this as an author, stop writing. Go for a walk. Sleep on the scene for a day or two if you have to. Spend that time imagining what you’d do if you were in the situation your character is in. Run away? Call the cops? Use the gun that’s already in your hand? Make a list of all possible solutions to the immediate problem, starting with the obvious ones. Then conjure up obstacles that make those options impossible.
And make sure the obstacles you create are logical, that they don’t feel like contrivances that you put in place to make things easier for yourself and to force your story to go in a direction it shouldn’t organically go. Whatever obstacles you place in front of your characters need to be well established in advance, long before they matter. Don’t have your readers suddenly learn that there are bars on the windows that they didn’t know about earlier. Don’t have the police dispatcher say she can’t send a car because all the officers are busy on other calls. Don’t have your character’s gun jam, and don’t have his phone battery die because he forgot to charge it in the car. Pull a stunt like that, and readers will feel like you’re cheating. Because you will be. And don’t try to make up for a lapse in character logic by later having her slap herself on the forehead and think, gee, why didn’t I think of this obvious solution earlier? Pull a stunt like that (and yes, I’ve seen this more than once), and readers won’t respect your characters—or you.
You need to do more than make sure your character doesn’t do something stupid that your readers would never do. You also need to make sure your character doesn’t do something stupid for that character even if somebody else might do it. Your homicide detective should not run screaming down the street to get away from a bad guy. Your firefighter should not drop a lit match into a gas can. Your lawyer shouldn’t libel someone on the internet. Your mechanic shouldn’t put motor oil where the radiator fluid goes just because you did it in college that one time. Your professional hit man shouldn’t leave behind a cigarette butt with his DNA on it. I mean, come on.
Continuously ask yourself if your character would actually do the thing you’re having him or her do. That includes the small things as well as the big things. Human beings are emotional creatures as well as logical creatures, so don’t have a rape victim go to a singles bar and agree to go home with a guy she just met unless you’ve first taken a deep dive into her heart and mind and convinced readers that, yes, it makes perfect sense that this is the exact thing she’d choose as her coping mechanism.
You are the god or puppet master in your novel, but you can’t let that come across to your readers. The story won’t feel real if you’re just moving pieces around on a board wherever you want them to go. Your characters are supposed to be three-dimensional, like real human beings. And real human beings have their own agency, their own ideas and opinions, their own experiences, their own reservoirs of knowledge, and their own blind spots. They make decisions based not only on what kind of challenge they’re facing at any given moment but also based on everything that has ever happened to them before that moment. You may want your character to stay in the house and fight it out with the intruder instead of running away and calling for help, but you’d better be damn sure that readers will think it’s perfectly logical for this particular character to do so even though hardly anyone else would.
If you write a bunch of one-dimensional characters, you’re dooming yourself to a plot that feels contrived. And if you write a contrived plot, you’re dooming yourself to one-dimensional characters. That’s because three-dimensional characters will resist when you want to send them in contrived directions that don’t feel right.
One-dimensional characters are like computer programs written in the 1970s, mindlessly scripted to do exactly what you want them to, no questions asked, even if it causes them to crash. If you try to force a three-dimensional character to move in a contrived direction strictly for plot reasons, that character will say, “Are you serious right now? I’m not going there, I’m going here. And you’re coming with me.” This is what separates an amateur writer’s characters from a professional’s characters. Three-dimensional characters have hearts and minds of their own. Not even the best authors can fully control them or predict what they’ll do.
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If you enjoyed this and learned something useful, you can read so much more in my book Write, Edit, Publish: What Every Writer Needs to Know but Only an Editor Will Tell You. I’m also a professional developmental editor, line editor, copy editor, and publishing consultant, and you can hire me to help you with your book. Reach out and tell me what you’re working on, send me your questions, ask for a free sample edit, or just say hi.
