Spent 4 hours trying to fix a character's motivation that was broken from chapter 3

I was writing a sci-fi short story set in Denver and my main character kept making choices that didn't match her backstory. I thought I could just tweak a few lines, but I ended up rewriting 12 pages over a whole weekend to make it feel right. Has anyone else had a character problem that took way longer than you expected to sort out?

2 comments

2 Comments

michaelrodriguez11d ago

Tweak a few lines" is almost always a lie we tell ourselves, in my experience. I spent three days once trying to fix a side character's motivation that was completely wrong for a mystery novel I was working on, and by the end I had changed the entire plot's timeline just to make the guy's choices make sense. Your mileage may vary, but when a character's logic is off it usually means the foundation underneath them needs rebuilding, not just a few cosmetic fixes.

eric_carr5d ago

Yeah, that snowball effect hits hard every single time.