: Re: Character Development - How much is too much? I've read loads of books where the reaction and development of characters seems to extreme for the events that effect them in the story. However

@Lengel543

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If your character is in a bad emotional state (near a nervous breakdown) then it's perfectly justified to have them overreact, i.e. they get wet because it rains and destroy a car or shoot someone with a gun can be very believable if setup correctly - Overreacting only means it's not justified well enough.

Every action has a reason and leads to a reaction. If you want to have your character be short fused and easy to trip, set him or her up that way. Give them problems, small nagging problems here and there. You wake up late because a Power Outage turned off your alarm clock, you jump out of bed and trip over some clothing, you can't see in your bathroom because there is no power for the light, the freezer's ice turned into water and left a little sea in your kitchen, someone almost runs you over on your way to work, the taxi/bus driver is very unpleasant.

The character than has a meeting with his boss and the companies CEO because the header of a Report is missing a minor detail. Really, nothing important, the character is just supposed to quickly redo the report. Except that because of all the other stuff that happened, the character now yells as his Boss and the CEO for being such pedantic pricks and finds himself unemployed half an hour later.

Overreaction? Absolutely, but it's justified and the reader can relate, because we all had such days.

Well, you get the idea.

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