I’ve had an epiphany today.  You always hear advice like, “make your characters active vs. passive,” and “a character that simply reacts to situations around them is weak, a strong character makes decisions and drives the plot.”

I thought I was doing that.  I really did!

I thought if my character had an experience, that would lead to a thought, and then change their action or goal, that was enough.

However!  It has just occurred to me that a writer must think of the plot differently than the character does.  The ending must be created.  There must be small clues that continuously drive the inevitable conclusion.  Every little piece pushes the character, hapless, towards a pre-determined end.

The characters themselves will be reacting to events throughout the book until they stumble upon the conclusion.  Stumble is the key word.  Each event is new and surprising.  It has to happen that way, unless they are capable of seeing the future and even then they only live in their present.  If they don’t react and stumble, they’re not very authentic.

The author, however, must create each single step of the plot, every thought, action, and inappropriate detail, toward that ending.  Nothing happens by chance.  Especially not how the characters feel.  Especially not what decisions the characters make. *shudder*

Can you imagine if characters actually had thoughts of their own.  Chaos!  If I was a character in one of my books, I’d jump ship right away!  Clear off the page and into some nice and dull story about sheep farming.  I think if we truly let the characters decide, they’d all smarten up and sit down, waiting for rescue.

But the character truly has no choice.

From the very first word, we force them into a thought pattern that drives their actions and decisions.  We mold those thoughts.  And we twist the knife into these thoughts.

Yes, characters must appear to have thoughts of their own.  In truth they nothing but a complex puppet, the writer manipulating the strings behind the keyboard.  A good book takes a free-form, free-thinking character and, from page 1 on, funnel-funnel-funnels them down until they have no choice but to think what we – the writer – tells them to, and ends up where we tell them to and risks the ending the way we tell them to.

Every little piece is a funnel.

Writers, it turns out, are criminal masterminds.

Good news though, I’m feeling the spark of evil genius!  Time to make some characters dance.

Featured image courtesy of axamarionettes.com