It’s Nov. 5, 2024.
How can I not write about choices?
In this case, stark choices.
And I’m not going to take a political position here on the RMFW blog except to say that today’s vote, in my mind, is a case of decency versus indecency.
Enough said.
And, as we all know, today’s vote is about consequences.
And, sure, it’s a collective choice. And, true, tens of millions of voters have already filled out their ballot.
But when it comes to the story you’re writing, load up your narrative with choices for your main character. Why? It will help us readers get to know him or her.
According to Harvard Business Review, the average adult makes 33,000 to 35,000 decisions every day.
What to eat. What to wear. What to say. How to say it. When to do this. When to do that. What to do first. What to do last. Whether to go here. Go there. Call him. Text her. Watch this show? That show? Get groceries? Eat leftovers? Pay attention to that rattle coming from under the hood of my car? Or ignore it and take my chances? On and on.
Some are automatic choices. They’re embedded in “the information we’ve subconsciously stored about what is ‘good’ and ‘bad.’” In fact, the article asserts, 95 percent of our cognition occurs in the subconscious mind. “This is by necessity — our brains would short-circuit if we had to weigh more than 30,000 decisions one by one,” says the article.
And, yeah, you don’t want to overwhelm your reader, either, with the ponderous business of making those choices—but show us readers some mundane, day-to-day options as you start to immerse us in your character’s world.
More specifically, I would suggest, show us some choices they feel are within their control and some choices that are either limited or outside their control.
By what? By relationships. By conditions in their life that they have agreed to—a job they don’t love, a relationship they want to end, etcetera. Show us what choices are closed-off to them and give us a glimpse of what they’re willing to do to change their circumstances.
And then, of course, your story is going to give your main character one whopping big choice. Proverbial forks in the proverbial road. And by then? By then, your reader will have a really good idea of what your protagonist cares about, how he or she makes decisions, and will be invested in the choice ahead.
And it better be a big one.
With consequences.
Like today.
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Photo by Oliver Roos on Unsplash