Writing Rational Characters (Notes From Windy Con)

With all the things that have happened since mid-November, I haven't yet had a chance to touch on some of the pearls of wisdom I brought back from this year's Windy Con. In particular, though, I wanted to share some of the really good points that were made at my last panel of the convention, which was titled Writing Rational Characters. Because it sounds simple... but there was a lot that got covered in the 1-hour time limit we had.

Some of it was depressing, but we soldiered through it.

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What Makes a Rational Character?

While there were a lot of things brought up in the early part of the panel (Ayn Rand's name got thrown around, for example), we all reached a mutually agreed-on definition of rationality when it comes to characters in fiction. In short, a rational character is someone who, using the information and resources they have access to, takes sensible steps to achieve their goals.

Note that the goals of a character don't have to be rational... merely their efforts and actions for reaching those goals.

For example, a character might have the absolutely batshit goal of destroying all life on the world. This goal might be because they are a servant of the god of death and they hope to usher in their lord's victory, or because they believe that pointless suffering of billions can be ended by allowing all of them to ascend to a deserved afterlife as martyrs, but their goal is still the annihilation of all life. That doesn't make them irrational, as a character, as long as they take sensible steps toward actually achieving this goal, and reaching their victory condition.

It does probably make them the villain of your story, though.

Lessons From Reality

A topic that we kept circling back to on the panel was that people, by and large, aren't rational beings. We hold a lot of beliefs that don't make sense, we act out of pure emotion, or we can end up believing some truly out-there nonsense.

This is where we get to that, "according to the information they have," caveat that was mentioned earlier. Of course, "the information they allow themselves to believe," might be a better way to put it.

We had to account for some kind of variable, after all.

Let's take a look at some real-life villains for a moment. The fossil fuel industry has known for about a century or more than their product is causing problems with the environment. They also know that their product is limited in supply, and that even if everything else was going well, it will run out. Knowing this, it seems like the smart move, the rational move, for those who run these companies would be to transition to green, renewable sources of energy. This preserves the planet they live on, it acts as a good PR move, but it does something else as well; it sets them up as the new source of energy that they can literally make forever, turning it into the closest thing to an infinite money machine.

Yet for decade after decade, these companies didn't do that. Instead they spent buckets of cash on disinformation campaigns, on political lobbying, and on suppressing competition. Looking at the big picture, this seems like highly irrational behavior. However, just as with characters in our stories, we need to ask what information characters have, and what they allow themselves to have.

Take our Captain Planet villains. Are they indifferent to the harm their industry and product does, because they're going to be dead long before that bill comes due? Have they bought into their own propaganda, simply not believing any of what scientists say? Do they see a disconnect between that disaster and their job, since they only look at sales figures, or marketing, and thus they're insulated from it? Have they been trained so completely by their own culture to view competition and success in business as the ultimate goal that they simply do not see anything outside of bigger profits, bigger numbers, and who's winning in the stock market?

These things don't make a character inherently irrational. However, for the audience to recognize them as acting rationally, they also need at least a little insight into the character's views and perspectives. The same is true of characters who believe ridiculous conspiracy theories, or who suffer from religious delusions; their actions might seem monstrous, unhinged, or counterintuitive, but the audience needs to know what the character's framework is in order to decide whether or not they're rational.

Characters Aren't Required To Be Rational

The conclusion I reached, and which I felt was important to mention in the panel, is that characters don't have to be rational. Whether we're talking about villains like the Joker, or the shock troopers of a hate mob in your detective story, individuals aren't required to have a cogent set of beliefs that make sense to other people.

However, stories are generally supposed to be cleaner, and more orderly, than reality. Because there are hundreds of examples from our real-world history that would have readers rolling their eyes if they showed up in novels instead of textbooks. While rational characters are certainly a concern, you also need to ask what makes for the best story, what is going to feel like it fits within the conventions of this genre, and what actually follows the plot you laid out.

So I want to end this article with the same piece of advice I ended the panel with. Random chance can always make things harder for your characters, but it should never fix things. So as long as irrational actions, thoughts, and beliefs actively make things more difficult, you're on the right track!

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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Why is Your Villain Needlessly Exposing Themselves To Danger?

A long time ago I edited a manuscript whose author I won't name, and whose title I won't give. However, the plot summary was that a young noblewoman and a merchant prince were planning to run away together, until her uncle intervened. A sorcerer who was bartering her hand in marriage for an item of power key to a ritual, her uncle used a spell to transform her lover into a ring. Then, for some reason, explained to our protagonist that should this curse ever be broken, and she and her lover stand against him, it would be the only way to defeat his power.

This is literally the description given for the transformation, as well. Seriously.

Fast forward a few hundred years while our female lead has lived a dozen different reincarnations, her lover has been imprisoned in a gaudy piece of jewelry, and her "uncle" has made himself the next best thing to immortal with the powers at his command. Then (because there would be no plot otherwise) the current incarnation of our protagonist awakens her ancient lover from his prison, and breaks the curse. The lovers are confused, but reunited.

For a bit of context, the lovers are in Australia when the curse is broken. Our villain is in Thailand.

Despite having absolutely nothing to gain from confronting the two lovers, and everything to lose (as was previously mentioned, the two of them are now empowered in some unspecific way to stand against him now that they're reunited), our villain hops a jet, and flies for hours to a nation halfway around the world to find these two people who don't remember he even exists. He then confronts them, repeatedly taunting them with who they actually are, only to get himself killed due to hubris, and lack of imagination.

This sounds stupid (because it is) but this is something I've seen writers do time and time again.

The Villain Needs Goals, Too

In the scenario presented the villain has precisely zero reason to get involved in this situation. Even if we acknowledge that putting this dire curse on the man centuries ago was better than, say, just cutting his throat for some reason, confronting our heroes now is all risk and no reward. The villain could have paid a hitman to off them, keeping himself completely out of danger. He could have worked a dire ritual (or at least tried to) to slay them from afar. Or he could have just moved on with his life and let time kill them, because he was still immortal, and neither of them were now that the man was no longer a metal finger decoration.

Time, my friends, is one thing I have that you lack.

Breaking the curse did not, for example, cause the villain to age at a rapid rate, requiring him to kill or re-curse the original victim in order to maintain his immortality. The villain didn't have some great slight on his pride that still burned hundreds of years later that he needed to humiliate these two over. Hell, he'd completely lost track of the ring not an hour after the original curse was laid down, and he hadn't bothered in the slightest about the condition of his niece's soul moving from one life to the next.

He was there for one reason only; because the protagonist and her lover-out-of-time needed some threat to face together to add drama to the story.

The problem is, of course, that if a villain's presence seems pointless, then it causes the reader to start questioning why they're doing anything. And once they've stepped back to start questioning the narrative like that, it makes it easier to notice other flaws they might have been overlooking before. Which is why it really pays dividends to make sure the ballistics of your plot (the direction shots are fired from, and the purpose those shots were meant to accomplish) make sense.

Try To See Things From Their Perspective

Villains need to be just as organic and believable as any other character in your story. Perhaps more so, as people need a concrete reason why they're opposing the villain's actions and goals. And when you just sort of leave them on the back burner (or worse, make them arbitrarily evil just because that's easier to do) you end up with a bad guy who's carrying an idiot ball.

Which is to say, you have them taking certain actions or making certain mistakes that only an idiot would make, because if they didn't there would be no book to read, movie to watch, game to play, etc.

Seriously... just step back and question things for a moment.

This is not to say your bad guys should huddle in bunkers or remain entirely hidden in the shadows all the time. However, they should have a compelling reason to step out into harm's way, and that reason should do something to fulfill their needs, or achieve their goals. Maybe it's a thirst for vengeance, and wanting the protagonist to know who it was that killed them in their final moments. Maybe it's a special skill set that only the villain possesses, so they need to be present at a certain place at a specific time in order to do their thing. Whether it's purely practical, or something to feed their ego, make sure your villain actually has skin in the game before you put them in front of the protagonist's fist.

Because if they stand to gain nothing whatsoever, it makes no sense for them to risk everything.

Lastly, if you haven't signed up for my weekly newsletter, do so to get all my shiny new updates sent right to your inbox! Also, if you're having trouble dealing with villains in your story, consider checking out 5 Tips For Playing Better Evil Characters. It's meant for tabletop gamers, but it's also useful for writers to think about.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!