When I was in high school, I started noticing that my main character didn’t have much agency in my novel.
Even during the final showdown, the main character still acted like she didn’t know what was going on. She spent a lot of time wandering through the story world with a bewildered look on her face. She only reacted, but she never threw the first punch, so to speak.
It’s been a long road to creating active characters who take initiative. But now, eight years after writing that story in high school, I believe I’m finally seeing improvement from my characters.
The main characters have agency. They don’t wait for things to happen any more, and they act before waiting for the villain to make the first move. They speak their minds, make choices, and steer the story more than ever before.
Today, I thought I’d share my process on how I took my characters from bewildered NPCs, to confident MCs.
Agency Starts With The Goal
Your character can’t take initiative if they won’t pick a direction.
They could be fighting for the story goal, or their own personal goal, or they could be fighting on someone else’s behalf. But in order for them to act, they need to pick a goal and pursue it.
What is your character’s goal? This can be different from the story goal, or they can be the same thing.
Example:
In Squid Game, the main character Seong Gi-Hun is an excellent example of character goals. When we first meet him, his goal is to reconnect with his daughter, and be a good father. Then later on, his goal switches to taking care of his sick mother, and finding a way to pay her hospital bills. Then, when he enters the games, he has to protect himself and stay alive.
All of these goals are strong examples, because they all stem from his character. Gi-Hun starts off as a flawed and beaten down man. He can’t get a stable job, struggles with a gambling addiction, and is down on his luck in every possible way. So it makes sense that his goals all revolve around money. (He can’t afford to buy his daughter a birthday present, for example.)
These goals make it so that Gi-Hun literally CANNOT walk away from the story. He is forced to take initiative in the games, or die.
Over the course of season one, we get to watch him grow from a gambling addict who couldn’t take care of himself, to a confident leader who saved lives and determined his own destiny.
The Goal Must Be Ahead, Not Behind
In my own writing, many of my characters have the goal of returning to the way things used to be. They either want to return home, after being sent to some fantasy world, or they want to reunite with a loved one.
- This caused some problems for me, because that made it way too easy for the character to walk away from the story.
Usually, a character who wants to return to the past will end up running away from the main story goal. They don’t want to slay the dragon or defeat the evil regime, they just want to go home. So I made some changes to fix this.
In one novel, I added a lot of subplots, so the main character had lots of short term goals. That way, he was forced to move THROUGH the story, not just run away from it so he could find his way home.
He couldn’t ignore any of the subplots, or they would cause him a lot of danger and potentially kill him. This forced him to be active and work his way through the story, in order to reunite with his family at the end.
Notice how that’s similar to Gi-Hun’s situation in Squid Game. Gi-Hun doesn’t want to play in the games, but he’s forced to because without that prize money, he can’t go back to the way things used to be. If he quits, that won’t solve his problems. His child is moving away, and his mom is in the hospital.
The only way to return to his old life is to survive the games and win the prize money. The only way back is forward.
If the character’s only goal is to go home, or go back to the way things were, why would they even bother going through the story’s obstacles? They want to go backwards, not forwards. So you have to put that reunion at the end of the story and make sure there’s no other way around it.
Hero vs. Villain Dynamics
Another big factor in your character’s agency is the villain.
Lots of stories make this mistake. We put so much focus on writing a powerful villain, that we make the playing field too uneven. This takes away our main character’s agency.
The easiest way to fix this is to level the playing field for your characters. How does your main character measure up to your villain? Do they have similar powers, or similar status?
The main issue happens when the hero has no idea what the villain is up to. If they are too removed from the villain, they can’t act. They can only react.
How can your hero learn what the villain is doing, before they do it?
When do they beat the villain to the punch and act first?
When they react, are they able to stop the villain at all? Does the hero’s reaction cause more problems for them? Or is it a constant cycle of the villain acts, the hero cries, and the story moves on?
Both the hero and the villain have to be somewhat equal, otherwise, your villain has 100% control and your hero has 0%.
The hero must believe that they can prevent or defeat the villain.
But what if your villain is more powerful than the hero? Even if you have a super powerful villain, like Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, or an oppressive system like in The Hunger Games, your hero still needs to have some level of equality.
In this case, it’s all about finding and exploiting the villain’s weakness. Also, your hero has to be aware of the villain’s movements, or some way to guess what they will do next.
The villain can be more powerful physically, but the hero should have just as much control over the story. The hero has to learn how to land the first punch. They become resourceful and “scrappy,” in order to beat a villain who is much more powerful than they are.
- This post has some good examples of making the hero and villain equal: https://neverfeltbetter.wordpress.com/2017/10/06/the-villain-checklist-equal-with-the-hero/
Make Them Defend Something
This was a tip I learned from one of the writing books by James Scott Bell. (I think it was Conflict & Suspense, but don’t quote me on that.)
If your main character feels like a pushover with no agency, bring the lion out.
What will make your character fight back?
Would they fight back if they get backed into a corner? Would they fight back if someone is picking on the new kid at recess? Would they fight back if someone held a gun to their partner’s head?
Whatever the tipping point is for your character, put that in the story as early as you can. Even if your character is supposed to be a wimp, show us that they have a backbone, even if it’s buried deep, deep down.
Even if you don’t want your characters to get in a blowout fight right away, they should still have an opportunity to defend themselves and their beliefs, early on in the story.
Put a character with an opposing viewpoint in their way, and see what happens.
By forcing your main character to stand up for something, you give readers a chance to learn so much about your character and what makes them tick. This is also a great way to give your main character more control of their own story.
Example:
Rapunzel from Tangled is a great example of this.
In the beginning, she meets Flynn Rider, who forces her to confront everything she’s been taught about how the outside world is evil and dangerous. Rapunzel gains agency, by choosing freedom over staying in the tower.
She’s making a choice, but we’re also watching her stand up for her beliefs and prove that she is capable of controlling the story.
In the end, she is forced to confront Mother Gothel and stand up for herself and her new freedom. Even if it looks more like a fight than a choice, this is what agency looks like. Rapunzel is taking back control.
And now for our last point: decisions.
Let The Hero Make Choices
Recently I started listening to D&D podcasts.
It might sound weird, but I believe this has helped me improve my craft as a writer, because a lot of D&D depends on the players making choices. The character finds a locked door, what do they do? They meet a new NPC on their journey, what do they do? Another party member is about to die during a fight, what do they do?
(And then it’s up to luck and a roll of the dice, but that’s not my point here.)
When I first started learning how to write, I learned that stories are told through either disasters (something happens to the hero), or dilemmas (the hero makes a choice). But my dilemmas felt too staged, and always felt silly to write.
It was like making the character pick between wearing a blue shirt and a green shirt. I added a choice when I was supposed to, but it never made sense.
Turns out, the disasters and dilemmas should blend together.
What does the hero cause in your story? (You might have to take some time to brainstorm this one.) Out of all the major plot points, which ones can be caused, either accidentally or on purpose, by the hero?
- In my first novel, the hero caused very little. She was a spectator for most of it, including the showdown (which was a fight between two villains where one villain killed the other). Then the hero solved the story by running away.
- In my second novel, the hero caused a bit more. She still had a lot of things happen to her, but she could at least be snarky about it. This character had a lot of reactions, but not quite enough actions.
- In my third novel, the hero caused a good amount of the story. He took initiative to do the things he wanted to do. When the villain got in the way, he fought back, and then kept going. Even though he didn’t directly cause every major plot point, his actions had consequences that made things better or worse for him down the line.
What Kind of Choices Can The Hero Make?
I’m glad you asked.
- Leave home or stay in the familiar
- Accept or refuse the call to adventure
- Protect others or save themselves
- Tell the truth or keep a harmful secret
- Trust an ally or stay alone
- Help an old enemy or abandon them
- Obey the rules or break them for a greater good
- Walk away from violence or choose to fight
- Embrace their identity or keep it hidden
- Risk it all or play it safe
- Follow their heart or follow logic
- Accept help or reject it to stay independent
- Follow or break tradition
- Challenge their mentor or obey them
- Stand up for what’s right or stay silent to avoid a scene
- Get revenge or seek justice through more legal means
- Let someone else take credit or demand recognition
- Choosing who to believe when friends disagree
- Return home at the end or continue the journey
- Become a symbol of hope or stay anonymous
Or of course, you could always go with the old tried and true method of laying out two clear options and forcing your hero to choose between option A and option B.
This could include voting on something, taking one of two items, going east or west, staying left or right at the fork in the road, you name it.
But sooner or later, these choices need to change what happens next in the story. A choice like the hero wearing a blue shirt or a green shirt has very little impact, whereas the hero choosing to keep a secret or tell the truth has potential to change the whole rest of the story.
You can figure out what choices to give your hero by brainstorming for every new scene, “What does the hero cause?”
It’s going to take some trial and error, but over time, you’ll find that it becomes easier, and soon it will feel like second nature.
Hope this post was helpful or interesting to you. If you enjoyed, leave a comment and let me know!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you again in the next post.
