Your Characters Don’t React to Each Other

A problem common to many early drafts lies hidden in scenes that initially seem perfectly serviceable. The writer clearly establishes the protagonist’s goal and the source of conflict. His dialogue not only sounds natural, it reveals each character’s unique personality.

The scene should work. But for some reason, it feels lifeless.

Early readers are usually the first to sound the alarm. And while they’ll rightly sense a problem, their diagnoses and prescriptions will often miss the mark. Maybe they’ll tell you to punch up the dialogue. Or they’ll suggest dialing up the tension, or cutting exposition in service to the usual suspect: pacing.

The trouble is, those fixes slap Band-Aids on a more fundamental problem: Your characters aren’t changing their behavior in response to each other’s actions.

Let’s consider a simple scene. Jane wants her brother Tom to sell their recently deceased father’s house.

Tom refuses.

Jane says she needs the money.

Tom insists that the house belongs in the family.

They argue for two pages before Jane storms out.

Now, that scene checks all the basic writers’ workshop boxes. It has two characters with well-defined yet mutually exclusive goals, leading naturally to conflict.

So why does it read like a small claims court transcript instead of a story?

Because Jane exits with her goal unchanged from the moment she walked in. Likewise, Tom’s position remains unmoved from the start of the argument.

It’s an issue I’ve come across more than once while editing for clients of my author services. To sum up, nothing either character said or did had the slightest effect on the other.

99 percent of beta readers miss that problem precisely because such scenes contain all the elements writers are taught to include:

Read the full post on Substack.