Your Lead Character Should Make Bad Decisions

Recently I have been thinking a lot about character development, for the purpose of making my lead an actual person to the people who read what I write. After about an hour of reading, I found a lot of helpful advice. But not a whole lot of it was about morals, and I can't recall any of it that was specifically about moral choices a character has to make. So here I am to give you never-before heard advice, as far as I can tell.

In the first chapter, something has to happen, your main character should have to make a choice. (This doesn't always happen, but it's advisable that it does.) That choice must have a reason behind it, and the same choice has to be made for a reason. If there is, indeed, such a choice, it should be of a moral significance, even if only slightly. And your lead should make the questionable or wrong decision.

Think about it: if you really have to make a tough decision, more often than not, you would make the right one. Maybe you would regret it, maybe you would make it for questionable reasons, but it would still be the right decision. When you really have to think about something, and yet you still make the wrong (moral) decision, that shows a lot more about your character.

It is a rare occurrence when someone really has to think hard about a choice, and then makes the wrong one (talking about morals, not life decisions).

Everyone has something that they spend a lot of energy, thought, effort, research, money, time, relationships, friendships, or sanity trying to hide. That one deep, dark corner of their heart. And yet, the wrong moral decisions they make give you a glimpse into that inner person.

With all that said, the never-before heard advice is: your lead character should, in some chapter of your novel, make the wrong moral decision. Preferably, this paradox of creating a likable character would occur within the first or second chapters of your amazing story you have to tell the world. But it still should be there.

It doesn't even have to be the wrong decision. It could just be the questionable one. For example, do you get fired from work and chase the guy who just robbed a store, or do you leave it to the police? If that's a tough decision for your main character to make, the reader knows more about him than if it never occurred to him to help the store owner.

Just remember that thoughtful, yet wrong decisions on the part of your lead can help develop him or her so much more than the right ones, or none at all.

I say this at the end of every blog post, but thank you for your time. It comes in short supply these days, and I appreciate your willingness to lend me such a valuable currency. Thank you.