The Character House, Pt. 6: The Walls of Action

Your characters might have tearjerking backstories, compelling goals, and witty dialogue. But if they don’t do anything, your story will go nowhere. 

We’ve been running a series on the Character House, a model that provides the tools you need to create characters whose backstories, goals, actions, and personalities fit together like a well-constructed house. Here are the posts in this series so far:

• Pt. 1: The Character Development Tool You’ve Been Waiting For
• Pt. 2: The Backstory Basement
• Pt. 3: First Floor Fears
• Pt. 4: First Floor Goals
• Pt. 5: The Walls of Dialogue

Today, we’ll explore the other component of the First Floor Walls: Actions.

Just as the walls of a house rest on the first floor and basement, characters’ dialogue and actions depend on their backstories, fears, and goals. As I mentioned in last week’s post, dialogue and actions are visible expressions of invisible histories, beliefs, and priorities. When you know what your characters want, fear, and believe, you can determine what they will say and do to achieve those goals.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Characters can talk all they want. They can say they want to complete a goal, run a marathon, or defeat a villain. But their words don’t mean anything unless they take action. 

Of course, some stories contain more “action” than others. In a wilderness adventure, the characters will be doing a lot—setting up camp, scaling cliffs, foraging for food, etc. By contrast, in a contemporary coming-of-age story, the majority of the conflict might appear in the dialogue and character interactions.

For these reasons, this post defines actions as decisions—the choices that your characters make. Even when a story doesn’t contain “action-packed” car chases or battle scenes, it should show characters making decisions that drive the plot forward. 

This article can’t tell you exactly what specific actions your characters should take in your story. That would require specialized guidance tailored to your novel (which I’m happy to provide in Developmental Editing!). Instead, this post will explore general advice on making sure your characters’ actions are logical, meaningful, and fascinating. 

1. Keep the characters’ goals in mind.

In a well-constructed house, the floor supports the walls. Likewise, in a well-developed character, the First Floor Fears and Goals support the Walls of Dialogue and Actions. In other words, characters’ goals influence the actions they take and the decisions they make.

In each scene, the character makes a decision to pursue a particular scene goal. But an obstacle forces the character to react and make a new decision. 

Suppose a character named Daniel is trying to win a cooking competition. This overall goal can be divided into smaller goals. In one scene, Daniel’s goal is to win round one by cooking the perfect entrée, so he makes the decision to prepare a potato soufflé. But he faces the obstacle of accidentally leaving the oven too hot, which burns his meal. Now he makes a new decision to scrape off the burned parts and serve his dish to the judges. He just barely avoids being eliminated, so he makes a new decision to cook an even more amazing meal in round two of the competition. This sequence of decisions, obstacles, and reactions continues throughout the story. 

Make sure to show the cause-and-effect relationship between your characters’ goals and their corresponding actions. If they’re trying to get a promotion at work, they might arrive early, work long hours, or treat their boss to coffee. These actions are reasonable steps toward their goal. But if they want a promotion, it wouldn’t make sense for them to cut down a tree in their boss’s backyard—unless you showed a clear connection between the tree and the promotion.

In each scene, ask yourself, “What do my characters want in this scene, and what actions do they take to try to achieve that goal?” As they encounter obstacles, they must react by making new decisions.

2. Consider the character’s beliefs.

Every action, no matter how small, results from a belief, whether true or false. 

• Rachel believes that she’s running late, so she rushes around getting ready for school.
• Alex believes that his coded letter contains a message that could save the world, so he guards the letter with his life. 
• Casey believes that people with superpowers are despised, so she hides her powers from others. 
• Benjamin believes that his village is in danger of invasion, so he joins the king’s army to defend it. 
• John believes that he’s worthless, so he sabotages relationships to avoid the pain of people leaving him.

As these examples show, beliefs and their corresponding actions come in all shapes and sizes. Minor beliefs, such as “I’m running late,” lead to minor actions, such as rushing to get ready for school. By contrast, major beliefs, especially the character’s Lie, lead to drastic actions, such as sabotaging relationships. 

The Character House shows how all these components fit together. The Basement (Backstory) holds up the Basement Walls (Beliefs), which reinforce the First Floor (Fears and Goals). In turn, the First Floor supports the Walls (Dialogue and Action).

For example, Patricia might work long hours in an effort to get a promotion (goal) because she fears losing respect (fear) and believes that success determines her worth (false belief/Lie). This belief resulted from an upbringing in which her friends only paid attention to her when she succeeded (backstory). As you can see from this illustration, the backstory, beliefs, fears, goals, and actions all fit together.

When you’re stuck on a scene, don’t simply ask, “What should my character do in this scene?” Instead, ask this question: “What does my character believe in this scene, and how do those beliefs impact his or her actions?”

As you write your first draft, you don’t have to obsess over understanding the precise reasons behind every action your characters take. Polishing can come in edits. 

3. Don’t force your characters to do things for the plot.

Readers want to believe that your characters are living, breathing human beings—not puppets in the hands of the author. 

When characters behave naturally, their beliefs drive their behaviors in a logical way. If a character believes that the villain is following her, she might look over her shoulder and keep a close eye on her surroundings. These actions logically result from her belief (whether it’s true or not).

On the other hand, when characters’ actions feel unnatural, the author may be forcing the characters to behave in ways that don’t stem from their natural beliefs about the circumstances. This problem can make the characters seem like they’re actors in a play instead of people reacting to situations. 

Suppose a character named Milo believes that his duty is to protect his younger sister at all costs. But your plot needs Milo to go alone and investigate a mysterious creature in the distant tundra. So you have him leave his sister alone to investigate the creature by himself. However, this action violates Milo’s belief that he must stay and protect his sister.

If you encounter this issue, you have a few options:

• You can revise the plot to fit the character. Why does Milo have to go alone? Maybe you can have him bring his little sister along to investigate the creature, or the creature sneaks up on his camp. 
• You can revise the character to fit the plot. Perhaps Milo has always been fascinated by these creatures, and he desperately wants to see one in person. Maybe he’s impulsive and tends to leap before he looks, so he runs off to the creature without thinking. (If you change the character to fit the plot in one scene, you may have to rewrite other scenes to keep the character’s personality consistent.) 
• You can give the character a strong reason to take this action. Maybe Milo thinks that the creature will hurt his sister if he brings her too close, so he tells her to stay put while he scopes out the danger.

Any of these three options can help your plot and characters fit together. When characters consistently act according to their beliefs, they’re more likely to feel cohesive and realistic. 

4. Present the characters with difficult choices.

You don’t really know a person until you see him or her under pressure. For this reason, forcing characters to make decisions under pressure reveals their true principles and priorities. 

In a simple way, the middle grade Choose Your Own Adventure books illustrate this principle. Written in second person present tense, these books place the reader in the story as the main character. Each page ends with a dilemma: “To make choice A, turn to page 43. To make choice B, turn to page 59.” Your choices influence how the story ends. In some endings, you survive; in others, you don’t.

I recently found an old copy of a Choose Your Own Adventure book that focused on jungle survival. These books make fantastic use of scene structure, as described under point 1. As the main character, you encounter many obstacles: you’re running out of food, you need to cross a river, or your injured hiking partner has heatstroke. These obstacles force you to make tough decisions (by turning to the specified page numbers): Do you eat the unidentified berries? Do you cross the alligator-infested river? Do you move your partner out of the heat and risk worsening her injuries, or do you leave her in the heat and risk her death by heatstroke? Once you turn to the page number of your choice, you encounter another obstacle that prompts another decision. This cycle repeats throughout the story until either you’re rescued or you die. 

Of course, not every story will have the life-or-death stakes of a jungle survival adventure. In a contemporary or historical story, your characters might need to decide whether to reveal a family secret, how to respond to a sibling’s betrayal, or whether they should pursue their dreams despite their father’s disapproval. Even minor choices reveal important aspects of your characters’ personalities.

In any genre, difficult decisions raise the stakes. When your characters have no choice but to act, they become more personally invested in achieving the goal, and they have more to lose if they don’t achieve the goal.

Tough choices also prevent your characters from becoming passive. Passive characters let the plot happen to them instead of making decisions that drive the story forward. To avoid this common problem, you can make the cost of not acting greater than the cost of acting. If you’re trapped in the jungle with an injured, overheating partner, you can’t simply refuse to act. 

As you can see, presenting characters with tough decisions can reveal their values. Readers will keep turning pages to see how the characters respond to each new problem they encounter.

5. Establish our expectations—and then break them.

In general, characters should behave consistently. As mentioned under point 2, characters’ actions stem from their beliefs about the world. For example, Julia might believe that it’s best to look on the bright side, so she remains cheerful in the face of difficulty. Likewise, Anthony might believe that no one can be trusted, so he barks gruff comments at anyone who tries to get close to him. 

However, characters shouldn’t be mechanically consistent, where they react the exact same way in every single situation. Human beings don’t always understand the reasons behind their decisions. They might think they want one thing, but they actually want something else. They might be keeping secrets, or they might have conflicting beliefs and goals. For these reasons, a character who responds the same way to every situation can become flat and unrealistic. 

Returning to our examples, Julia should have moments when trials dampen her optimism, and Anthony should occasionally reveal a tender side. These surprising reactions display well-rounded characters. 

Practical Exercises

1. State your protagonist’s story goal, and name three specific action steps that he or she takes to accomplish that goal. (For instance, if your protagonist’s story goal is to host a fundraising concert, some action steps might include making flyers, recruiting volunteers, and organizing local bands.) 
2. Name three major actions that your character takes in your novel. State the belief(s) that motivate these actions. (If your character tries to rescue her younger brother from the villain, this action might result from many possible beliefs: “I’m the only one who can protect my brother,” “I can’t let the villain win,” “My brother’s life is worth more than mine,” “My mom will be furious if I come back without my brother,” etc.)
3. Imagine your character in a high-pressure situation, such as being trapped in an elevator or stranded on an island. (This scenario doesn’t have to be an actual scene from your book, but it certainly can be.) Consider three difficult choices that your character might face in this situation, and determine what your character will choose and why. (A character stranded on an island might have to choose whether to seek shelter in a cave that may be home to wild animals.) After you use these hypothetical scenarios to discover your character’s true priorities, you can display these priorities in your novel, even in lower-pressure scenarios. 
4. Name a consistent behavior that your character displays. Consider three possible situations where this character might behave “inconsistently.” (If your character is normally the take-charge leader, what situations would cause your character to step back and let someone else lead?) 

Taking Action

In a house, the walls rest squarely on top of the basement and first floor. Similarly, characters’ actions and decisions stem from their backstories, beliefs, fears, and goals. To develop realistic decisions, consider what your characters believe and want in the scene. Present them with difficult choices that reveal their priorities under pressure. Finally, although your characters should usually behave consistently, try to create situations where their reactions break the norm and surprise your audience. 

As you apply these tips to your characters’ choices, their actions will propel your plot and keep your readers on the edge of their seats. 

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Next week, we’ll discuss External Traits, such as interests, hobbies, and clothing, which are represented by the Furniture. Explore how to use external traits to show personality, reveal backstory, and add depth to your story world. 

What’s the most difficult dilemma your protagonist faces in your story? What does the resulting decision tell you about your character’s priorities and beliefs? Share your thoughts in the comments!