Dear Editor, I recently watched The Road. I hated the movie because I felt like the stupid decisions the characters made were the only thing furthering the plot. They jumped back and forth from the frying pan to the fire so often, I was kind of hoping they’d just go ahead and end it all. How do I keep tension high, but keep my characters intelligent?—Kathryn Estrada
This is a fabulous point to make: the distinction between the characters’ motivation and the writer’s. Do not confuse yourself with your characters. They are not you.
The bad news is that this is a common failing in work that’s been well-outlined. You know where your characters have to go and what they have to do in order to get where you want them to be at the climax, when you intend to blow them sky-high. So you make them go and do those things. You have the power.
And in the process of accomplishing this, you strip them of the power that should rightfully be their own.
You have confused your motivation with theirs.
The good news is that this can be cured with ONE FIX.
Cause-&-effect.
Now, I’m being a bit disingenuous pretending this one fix is, you know, just the one thing you have to do, like turning on a radio. It’s not. It’s a mind-set you have to adopt now and forever, and you have to train yourself over the long haul to think in terms of cause-&-effect throughout the entire writing of every novel you ever produce, from the first squirt of an idea to the final polish.
Cause-&-effect means everything your characters do has effects, which ripple outward in all directions. Does your protagonist decide to go home after a twenty years’ hiatus? That causes certain things (and no others) to happen. Does your villain decide to give in to their urge for pyromania? This causes completely different things to happen. Do your characters say things they shouldn’t? Those cause effects. Do they go places they know better than to go? That causes effects. Do they meet or not meet, travel or not travel, exchange or not exchange information, turn left or right at the crossroads? Every single thing they do. . .causes effects.
NOT ONLY THAT. But the causes are different depending upon the characters.
You know why? Because characters are driven by needs. Each of your characters must have distinct and different needs. (What’s the fun of reading about a bunch of people who all have the same need? As Niles Fraser once so succinctly said about waltzing, “H’m. Boring. Yet difficult.”)
And needs are motivation. That motivation causes those characters to make the decisions they do, to choose the things they choose, to cause the effects they cause. The ways in which these conflicting needs cause conflicting effects are the complications that drive your story. And the inevitability of this chain of cause-&-effect (your characters need to make these decisions, they can’t avoid it) is the inevitability you need for a truly stunning climax.
Boom, boom, boom, from hook through development to climax: cause, its effect, which is a new cause, with a new effect, the tension of the inevitable. . .boom, boom, boom.
(I discuss this all in much greater depth in Chapter 14 “Plotting Your Way Out of a Paper Bag” of The Art & Craft of Fiction.)