{"id":746,"date":"2011-06-29T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/?p=746"},"modified":"2011-06-28T23:05:10","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T04:05:10","slug":"but-i-dont-want-to-go-to-the-rodeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/29\/but-i-dont-want-to-go-to-the-rodeo\/","title":{"rendered":"But I don’t want to go to the rodeo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Sunday’s #storycraft chat<\/a> we talked a bit about what happens when your characters refuse to do something. For me this is my brain’s way of saying, “Hey, you screwed up back there.” (Since I don’t feel that my characters are talking to me, it’s more a sense that they wouldn’t do something than them actually saying “No, I won’t go to the rodeo, are you crazy?”)<\/p>\n

During the chat I commented that “if the character ‘doesn’t want’ to do something, then I either have the wrong plot or the wrong character.” Someone responded that people have to do things they don’t want all the time, to get what they do want. <\/p>\n

Well, yes. Characters should have to do things they don’t want to. Otherwise where would the fun be? There just has to be a reason for them to do it. [1]<\/p>\n

If my character is “refusing” to go to the rodeo–if it feels wrong when I try to write it–then I haven’t given her a good enough reason in the story to go. If I change the plot so that she’s already discovered that the evil wizard turned her daughter into one of the pigs that’s going to be used in the pig roping contest, or if I change her so that she’s not deathly allergic to horses, just terrified because one nearly trampled her when she was a kid, she’d be willing to go. (Of course, if she’s deathly allergic and has to rescue her daughter, then she’s in for a challenge.)<\/p>\n

[1] Can anyone think of a good story where the protagonist doesn’t have to do anything they don’t want to? I’m coming up blank, but I don’t want to say there aren’t any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Sunday’s #storycraft chat we talked a bit about what happens when your characters refuse to do something. For me this is my brain’s way of saying, “Hey, you screwed up back there.” (Since I don’t feel that my characters … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethshack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}