Be unreasonable

One of the biggest problems I had when I first began writing stories way back when was that my characters never did anything that didn't make perfect sense. They were always perfectly reasonable and their actions justified, one would think that this prevented conflict and so the villian must have been unreasonable. That's not really the case or the point. Two reasonable ideas can be opposing and you get great stories from some of those ideas...

But the real world is messier than that and nobody is perfectly reasoned at all times.

I sort of covered some of this with my flawed character discussion in an earlier post but this deserves it's own area because we as thinkers and feelers are a tangled mess, and your characters should be too.

I the story I am writing right now, Attir sees himself giving up any pretense at being civilised like the city dwellers that tried to hunt him down, he decided to only care about himself. That's not really the best answer, but it works for his current reasoning. But Then why does he go to the rescue of another character, especially at gret risk to himself?

Because as much as he has reasoned out that he seeks to be alone and only cares about himself he must react realisticly to the peril of another. And what's more is the one he rescues has sought to put herself in deaths way. Very unreasonable, and Attir who is determined to not care about anybody but himself tries to tell her never to do that again and to stop he running off to whatever fate she wishes to inflict on herself.

All this seems so very unreasonable, they have made their choices and have reasoned out why they have done so, yet time and again they act against their own reason. Why?

Because as people we don't always know exactly what we want, and sometimes we try to impose a differant set of reason and behaviours over our own true selves. It leads to difficulty and struggle, which deepens a character both in the real world and in a story.

So look for the unreasonable things and ask what they tell you about you and your characters. It's clear to me that Attir was hurt and fleeing the risk of such betrayal again but Also that he is deep down heroic even if he wants to be left alone.

I'll Try to get you another post tomorrow and then I'm going to be working extra hard to make my word goals so it may be a little while between posts.

Take Care of yourselves.
Roving Jack.