: 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

In my opinion, your story would be fine, and readers would be fine, if your characters exhibit a significant amount of agency once and early.

If the hero (and sidekick or whatever) chooses to subject themselves to a harrowing experience that lasts the entire book, and this choice is real (not a "your money or your life" choice), then what follows can be coerced.

In the Hunger Games, Katniss makes a choice: Take her sister's place. She could legitimately have held her tongue, but out of love she chose to risk her own life instead of letting her sister march to almost certain death. That's a real choice that showed agency. After that, it's fight or die.

The same could be said for McClane in Die Hard (Bruce Willis). He could have left the hostage situation to the police, but chose to risk his life to save his wife and two daughters that were victims. After making that decision, for Katniss or McClane, future "agency" is pretty much in never giving up no matter how bad it gets.

Your story can be similar, just be sure you engineer the situation so the characters make one real choice in the beginning. Even if it seems a little coerced by love (like both Die Hard and Hunger Games), make it a decision against orders, wise advice, the law or the Expected Norm in their culture (as is true for both Die Hard and Hunger Games).

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: I have a retracted article for ethical misconduct, this means my career is over? When I was in my first year of M.SC. A professor told me to work on a project that the main data were belong

: 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

More posts by @Gonzalez219

: What liberties can I take with the monarchies in my own world? Could a writer make up his own rules, for a monarchy he created, in a world of his own making? My question is whether I

: This may depend on the writer and their style; what I think is a great opening line, and what you think is a great opening line, may be quite different things. Speaking for myself, I write

: Skip the flashbacks. That IS the story. Instead of flashbacks, just consider a story (trilogy or not) that shows present-tense scenes with time-skips between chapters showing the transformation

: I have a retracted article for ethical misconduct, this means my career is over? When I was in my first year of M.SC. A professor told me to work on a project that the main data were belong

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