: Re: How to write characters doing illogical things in a believable way? As much as I would like it, both in Worldbuilding and Writing, not every action is logical or "right". There are two types

@Kristi637

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As the other answers have pointed out the key to not breaking immersion is to have the actions be in character and consistent with previously established traits the character has. You can have a character make decisions that seem incredibly stupid either in hindsight or to the observer but that made perfectly logical sense to the character in the moment, either because they have limited information (compared with the reader) or because they are in a stressful or time-pressured situation.

Having characters do "dumb" things is not always the easiest of things to do well (and there are many, many examples of even very well regarded writers getting it badly wrong) and the times this is gotten wrong tend to stick in the memory of the audience simply because they are often very jarring - and the examples where the writer gets it right usually don't because they are consistent with the character or even make sufficient sense that the reader can see how the character came to make the decision.

You can even have a character realise at the time that what they are doing is stupid - after all who hasn't done something like that and realized almost immediately what they have just done? It's a near universal shared experience so the reader can relate to and possibly even sympathize with the character.

In some scenarios you can do blatant and almost outrageous stupidity where it is consistent with the established norms of the "universe" - this would be normally done for comedic effect (usually in a farce) and in order to get the audience to accept this the levels of this stupidity ramp up during the story, often starting from something at least semi-reasonable. Things like Happiest Days of Our Lives and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil are good examples of this sort of idiocy curve - neither film, despite being ostensibly a comedic farce would have been able to start at the sorts of levels of stupidity to which they ultimately progress.

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