As my sister and I talk about the stories weβre writing and storytelling methods and how itβs goingβIβm learning what she means when she says βthe character didnβt want to do that.β
My rigid approach is, the character does what I want it to do. I made the character. I wrote the scene. The characterβs not real, itβs my puppet, I make it move, I change anything about it that I want for whatever reason I want.
And in one sense, thatβs true. That will always be true. Without me, the Author, there is no character. No setting it exists in. No action it takes. No expression it makes. No nothing. No story at all. Without me, there isnβt anything on that page.
And I can write like that. But if you have any experience writing, maybe youβre learning like Iβm beginning toβif the character never βbecomes realβ to you in your imaginationβif you never get a sense of what would and would not be in-character for them, to where you stop consciously having to mull over what theyβd do and your imagination just feels like itβs watching what theyβd do, subconsciouslyβ
βif that never happens, and youβre just choosing what the character does based on what you want, and thereβs no solid traits, nothing that canβt be bent to your whim-of-the-momentβ
βIf thatβs how it is, you know how that character will turn out. You know what itβll be to audiences, to yourself as you write it. Youβve seen the type in other peopleβs poor products.
The character wonβt feel genuine.
Itβs where you get the examples of Mary-Sues. When writers stop knowing βwho the real character is,β and it is just a face-claim puppet for whatever the writer is feeling the momentβwhat the character wanted yesterday when the author sat down to write a breakup scene is forgotten today when the author sits down to write a soccer match.
The characterβs made from the Author. It canβt be apart from the Author. Itβs not realβexcept in the sense that it can be genuine.
β¦β¦annnd that, God help me, is how Iβm starting to reconcile the idea of βfreeβ will.
God couldβve made us automatonsβand there is still no sense in which anything that happens is βoutsideβ His sovereigntyβ¦and, He didnβt do that. We live. We make real choices. We want things. Sometimes things He wouldnβt exactly want us to have or do.
We can even not want Him.
Why would He make us? Why would He give us any kind of will, knowing it would stray from Him?
Because we wouldnβt be genuine, real, without it. We wouldnβt be able to choose Him, either. We wouldnβt be able to make choices, either.
He does orchestrate everything toward the culmination of His own will, and the end of the story He wants to tell, and it will all work out exactly as He plans itβand, weβre real.
I know Iβm rambling and I know this isnβt theologically airtight. But honestly, I donβt expect to be able to defend it to anyone who hasnβt tried to figure out thisβ¦ βthe character doesnβt βwantβ to do that thing in the scene Iβm trying to writeβ paradox.
I mostly thought about this while I was thinking about people who dislike the idea of Yahweh because He supposedly forces people to live a life where evil and pain are a givenβeven if thereβs βgloryβ on the other sideβwhen He could have made it easier, if Heβs so powerful, or kept us from choosing evil. The problem of evil.
And thatβs the whole thing. He appears to have not done that because if He had, we wouldnβt have had the ability to choose. When we choose, and the evil is a consequence, He weaves it into good in the big picture.
Like a storyteller whoβs taking a Character from Point A in the storyβI just canβt wait to be king and have everything my wayβto Point B in the storyβI donβt get to decide Iβm a lazy self-indulgent waste out in the woods when Iβm made to be a self-sacrificial, responsible King who protects others. There has to be a dead father and broken childhood and the betrayal of loved ones to get from point A to point Bβbut this way, the character was real and the pain had a point. Without genuine, true charactersβwhich inevitably lead to conflictβthereβs no story. Storytellers can hold both.
