Characters Acting, Well, Out of Character
Image ©mis1il | Deposit Photos
As I write this, we’ve already begun the slide into fall (autumn being the British term!). The days are cooler, though that’ll change the minute the air conditioner is turned off. We’ve also got the long tail of the hurricane—overcast, some rain.
This topic was inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love the first three seasons. Fourth season, okay. After that, it ran into trouble and veered away from who the characters were. It was like the producers said, “Okay, Buffy needs a romance. But she can’t get it.” So, instead of thinking about character and story, they threw random bits together. Buffy and Spike. Really?
But the worst was Willow. In the sixth season, she turned evil and killed a man. It amazes me that no one asked, “How would she come back from this?” The answer is that she can’t.
There are some things, once a character steps over that line, it’s done, and irreversible. None of the gang should have accepted her back, or trusted her. Ever again. As a work acquaintance once said, “Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose.”
I read a formerly enjoyable fantasy series. Had a character with special powers and she could also talk to her Jack Russell Terrier, and he talked back. Then she got hooked up with her father, who dragged her into black magic territory. She sunk so deep, she killed her dog with magic. That shook her off the path, but that irrevocably changed the character to this reader. It didn’t matter that another character did a hand-wavy thing and brought the dog back to life. I stopped reading at the point; I wouldn’t have been surprised if the author thought all was well, especially since the dog was okay.
But there’s that pesky line of not being a heroine anymore.
Still another book, a very long-standing series, had a heroine who desperately needed answers from someone. It was in the “all is lost” portion of the story. So she tortured someone. Didn’t think twice about it. I think that author painted herself in the corner where it became the only way the story could resolve itself. And some non-magic hand-waviness…just pretend like it never happened in future books.
But J. D Robb (Nora Roberts) did it right in one of her In Death books. Sorry, there’s so many that I don’t know which one. Except that a killer got into a place that should have been safe. The fight triggered Eve’s childhood memories, and she turned more animal than human. In that state, she would have crossed the line and destroyed herself. But Roarke talked to her and brought her back from the brink. That’s powerful…because of what didn’t happen.
Why do you think writers have their characters step out of character? Is it influenced by TV and film, where this is a frequent occurrence as a series ages? Is it looking for bigger and more impactful? Or is it something else?
