Acting Against Their Nature

Four ways to create effective uncharacteristic behavior in your characters.

- Tiffany Yates Martin

Creating consistent characters is one of the mainand most important-jobs of writing. If a character acts in ways that feel incongruous with how the author has developed and presented them, their behavior often feels jarring and erratic, and can undermine the reader's investment and a story's impact.

Human nature can be complex and opaque, but even our seemingly irregular actions are almost always based in reason, even if not in logic. We may not know what's prompting it, and nor may those around us, but something is causing our behavior. It does not exist in a vacuum. What may seem to be a person acting against their nature is usually simply someone doing something for which we, and sometimes even they, don't yet understand their motivations.

The author's job is to determine and believably convey what those factors are and ensure that when characters seem to be acting against their nature it's deliberate and supported and for a purpose that serves the narrative. Using out-of-character behavior intentionally can create more interesting, faceted characters, build reader engagement, and drive the story propulsively forward.

What Defines Character

Consistent characterization stems from three main elements: their personality/traits, their background/ situation, and their identity-in other words, who your character innately is, what forces shaped them, and who they have become as a result. Nature and nurture combine to form cohesive characterization, and the writer's job is to show that consistently on the page in how they act, react, and interact with other characters.