Readers care about story details and they care about characters.
Both last night and this afternoon I had conversations with readers upset about the way authors had portrayed a character. The first conversation was with a grocery clerk, a stranger to me, and the second was with a family member. Both mentioned that a character who deviated from his personality and from his regular practices really bothered them in the books they were currently reading.
Actually, the grocery clerk was more than bothered. He felt the story had been ruined by a character acting very much out of character. The family member asked me about editing standards at publishing houses.
What’s clear is that readers do notice—and not for the good—when a character behaves in a way that doesn’t fit. Neither of these characters had undergone a legitimate kind of change that would have allowed them to behave in a manner inconsistent with their personality, experiences, emotional status, or skills. For both characters, apparently, the changed behavior was needed to make the plot work. But with the change, the character no longer worked. So changing the character to fix a plot issue wasn’t a successful strategy.
The reading experience shouldn’t be ruined by characters who don’t behave as they ought to. And if readers notice that characters do behave in ways that don’t fit them, it’s because the author created the character one way but had them act in a way that didn’t match.
If you’ve done a good job revealing your characters, readers will notice anomalies. There can be very good reasons for an anomaly, but when there isn’t a good reason, anomalies are problems.
I have no difficult suggestion regarding this issue. Just know your characters. Know their backgrounds, their education, their dreams, their failures and their successes, their disappointments, their expectations, their mentors and heroes, their life-defining moments, their go-to responses, their fears, their emotional triggers and hot buttons.
Know their habits, the responses they make without thinking. And understand what kinds of issues require them to think deeper about a response.
Know what would or could make them act in a way that was outside their normal pattern.
Understand their motivations, but not only for the big issues. Understand why one day a character needs coffee first thing and why the next day he wants tea. Understand why a character acts one way when the bank account has extra money in it and another way when the dollars are few.
Beyond knowing your characters, learn what kinds of characters and what character traits and behaviors will be needed to work with the plot.
If you haven’t included a character motivation that’s necessary for a pivotal scene, you’ve probably got some major rewriting to do. But even for side issues, you may need to go back and weave a character’s motivation into the story.
You can’t wait until the moment you need a character to behave a certain way to provide the motivation for that behavior. Not for crucial or turning-point moments in a story.
Lay the groundwork ahead of time by showing a character doing something that will allow readers to understand motivation. Then when the character acts as a result of that motivation, readers won’t doubt the response.
Keep character behavior logical based on all the elements you’ve introduced. And be mindful of what you haven’t introduced. If the story needs to use them, character motivations need to make it to the page.
Keep readers enjoying the story and keep them lost in the fiction. While you might want readers talking about your stories, you probably won’t want them complaining to a stranger about your story in a grocery aisle in the middle of the night.
