I loved your advice about the importance of varying the action. As a longtime reader, it feels like writers can get into a rut of writing the same type of action scene: e.g. the character goes to a dangerous place, discovers startling information, has to fight their way out, gets yelled at by superiors....again and again and again!
Do you think writers have a secret preference for certain types of scenes and then just end up recreating them? Or can "the character's personality drives the action" be taken too far to the point where the character drives the same action over and over because they have the same personality?
Your comments really are the highlight of my Substack experience. They always give me so much to think about
Writers can definitely get a little bit stuck. Especially once we've found something that works well, the tendency is to keep doing that thing and run it into the ground. A character can gravitate towards certain kinds of action for sure, but in those cases, it's the writer's job to find ways to experiment, challenge their character, and keep things fresh
It's a scary thing to do, especially when the established way works well, but if we resist the call to keep growing and trying new things (whether we're doing it for ourselves or because "that's what the character would do") things inevitable stagnate. And readers can feel it, like you say
Wow, I feel very honored and humbled by this! I do enjoy commenting on your posts. After I finished this comment, I walked away thinking, "Maybe if the characters have the same personality which keeps driving the same action, that's part of the problem." That is to say, your characters should be changing and growing, so the action they drive should also change. Repetitive action is a sign of a stagnant character.
The Pandora Pine series is a good example of how to handle this. The main characters start off as arrogant hot heads diving into trouble, but then they get married and have kids, which makes them much more risk-averse. Than the kids get involved, and that changes the action again. Character evolution keeps the reading experience fresh.
It's really fun to have these conversations with you. Thank you!
That can definitely also be the case! Especially in a long-running series, we generally want at least some amount of growth and change, although of course there are exceptions.
Just hitting the character with new and different challenges (that can’t be solved in their old ways, using familiar skills) can inject a huge amount of energy. I feel like as writers, we’re sometimes a little scared to have our characters fail, or throw them into a situation where they are completely unprepared and out of their depth. But those moments often make for the best stories, and failure is like rocketfuel!
I loved your advice about the importance of varying the action. As a longtime reader, it feels like writers can get into a rut of writing the same type of action scene: e.g. the character goes to a dangerous place, discovers startling information, has to fight their way out, gets yelled at by superiors....again and again and again!
Do you think writers have a secret preference for certain types of scenes and then just end up recreating them? Or can "the character's personality drives the action" be taken too far to the point where the character drives the same action over and over because they have the same personality?
Your comments really are the highlight of my Substack experience. They always give me so much to think about
Writers can definitely get a little bit stuck. Especially once we've found something that works well, the tendency is to keep doing that thing and run it into the ground. A character can gravitate towards certain kinds of action for sure, but in those cases, it's the writer's job to find ways to experiment, challenge their character, and keep things fresh
It's a scary thing to do, especially when the established way works well, but if we resist the call to keep growing and trying new things (whether we're doing it for ourselves or because "that's what the character would do") things inevitable stagnate. And readers can feel it, like you say
Wow, I feel very honored and humbled by this! I do enjoy commenting on your posts. After I finished this comment, I walked away thinking, "Maybe if the characters have the same personality which keeps driving the same action, that's part of the problem." That is to say, your characters should be changing and growing, so the action they drive should also change. Repetitive action is a sign of a stagnant character.
The Pandora Pine series is a good example of how to handle this. The main characters start off as arrogant hot heads diving into trouble, but then they get married and have kids, which makes them much more risk-averse. Than the kids get involved, and that changes the action again. Character evolution keeps the reading experience fresh.
It's really fun to have these conversations with you. Thank you!
That can definitely also be the case! Especially in a long-running series, we generally want at least some amount of growth and change, although of course there are exceptions.
Just hitting the character with new and different challenges (that can’t be solved in their old ways, using familiar skills) can inject a huge amount of energy. I feel like as writers, we’re sometimes a little scared to have our characters fail, or throw them into a situation where they are completely unprepared and out of their depth. But those moments often make for the best stories, and failure is like rocketfuel!