I posed a question to my beta reader for the second edition of book two last year, before I sent the manuscript off to my editor.

I asked her if I should soften a particular bad decision one of my younger characters makes in the story. Her response was really gratifying to me.

“She’s what, eighteen? Let her do the dumb thing.”

That was enough to make me stop worrying the character was being too frivolous or too irresponsible. Because the fact is, teenagers do dumb things. They take risks unthinkingly.

The fact that my beta reader didn’t think this particular situation felt unrealistic or too forced was enough for me, especially knowing what this post is all about: her not so great decision has its consequences, and they’re real.

“Plot armor” is real as well, in the sense that main characters are generally going to survive at least to the end of a story, and readers know it. This might “rule out,” so to speak, some especially egregious consequences to the flaws and mistakes main characters make.

Still, characters are human, so they need to have flaws and experience some failures. They need to make mistakes, and these things MUST have real consequences that the characters FEEL.

Emphasis on FEEL. Mistakes have to hurt, emotionally if not physically. Emma getting yelled at by Mr. Knightley for being a jerk to Miss Bates? That’s “consequences.”

This is how characters develop. This is how characters grow. This is where plot actually happens. Your characters’ actions have to have believable consequences.

Don’t shield them too much. Let them do the dumb thing, as long as it’s realistic, and as long it blows up in their faces.

I’m also please to announce that I am running a Kindle Coundown Deal for a week, starting today. The Kindle version of my YA fantasy/dystopian novel will be discounted to 99 cents! Please consider supporting me and taking advantage.

I would love to give more people a chance to visit Herezoth before book two comes out this summer.

Check it out here.