Don't Say Characters Lack "Agency." Here's Something Talk About Instead.

There's one common term that I was pretty careful not to use in my writing advice book, Never Say You Can't Survive: "agency." As in, "characters in a story should have agency."

Because, as I explain the one time I mention this term:

The concept of “agency” is very culturally loaded, and rooted in a lot of Eurocentric cis male notions of “rugged individualism.”

Of course, in the very next sentence, I do go on to say that as a general rule, if it's a story about searching for the magic bidet of t...