: Re: How much agency should main characters have in the plot? I have two main characters. Character A is more prominent than Character B. I've been trying to tease out problems with the story

@XinRu607

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I have heard it stated as a fact on a number of occasions that people in general
only make two serious decisions per year, the rest of the time they just go with the flow. Most of the time life happens and people do their best to get through it. Assuming that all these people are in fact more or less correct and depending on the time scale of the story; the characters having made their decisions and the story covering them riding out the consequences of those decisions is not unrealistic.

Alternatively if characters can't or won't make decisions fast enough then they will lose agency, a case of "if you don't make the decision the decision makes you" and/or "he who hesitates is lost". If the pace of the piece is slightly frenetic then a certain lack of agency is to be expected as the protagonists are "overtaken by events".

Characters can be very active while not actually having a lot of plot control if they're reacting instead of acting, the example that comes to mind is the Nightside novel Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth by Simon R. Green. There's a plan at the very start of the story but by chapter two or maybe three that's a happy memory and the rest of the book is a series of ill-conceived responses to the latest obstacle, the protagonists don't really make any decisions they simply do what they think they have to to keep moving.

I some of that helps.

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