What is ‘Character Agency’?

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Good characters have agency.

Agency is the drive and capacity to make choices. Agency really is this simple, and yet so many new writers get it wrong. When we’re drafting, it’s easy to think of a story as the plot: what happens to the characters (Explosions! Death! Breakups!)—and this is a really dangerous outlook.

Nothing makes a reader put a book down faster than a character who just lets stuff happen to them. These characters feel like shells or puppets, cardboard cutouts that the plot is moving around arbitrarily. Your character should drive the plot, not the other way around.

We read stories in order to live in the mind of someone else. In her book Story Genius, Lisa Cron defines story as “how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result.”

Your readers don’t really care about what’s happening to your characters (the plot). Instead, they care about what those plot events mean to your characters. How are those plot events getting in the way of your character’s plans? What will they choose to do in the face of those obstacles? And how will they change internally in the face of the consequences of their choices? The only way to achieve this is to give your characters agency.

Drive: In every scene, your character should have clear goals.

No one wants to read a story about an apathetic character who sits around and lets things happen to them. Readers want characters with strong goals. We need to understand, from the get-go, what the main character wants and why they want it. What do they fear will happen if they can’t get what they want? What’s their plan to get what they want?

The first key to good agency lies in giving your character clear story goals and clear scene goals. Their story goal is the thing they’re after throughout the whole book. The scene goals are smaller stepping stone goals in their larger plan to achieve their story goal. For example, if a character’s story goal is “Slay the dragon and save his brother” then a scene goal might be “Get access to a horse” or “learn to sword fight.”

Make sure your character’s scene goals are clear in the first paragraphs of a scene, and make sure those goals tie to their plan to achieve their story goal.

Note: Want to learn more about scene structure? Check out our guide The Keys to Scenes That Work! This guide breaks down the 15 key building blocks and techniques—including an overview of scene goals!—that will take your scenes from good to great.

Capacity: In every scene, your characters should face a crossroads.

You know that saying “action speaks louder than words”? Nothing is more character revealing than decision-making. It’s in the moments at a crossroads, when your characters are weighing their choices, and what each choice would mean to them, that we learn who they truly are.

Instead of letting things happen to characters, and forcing your characters from plot event to event, give your characters the power to act. We now understand that our characters should have clear goals and plans. In addition, as plot events get in the way of those goals, they should confront a dilemma in every scene. A dilemma that they must have the capacity to respond to.

Story is about how your main character changes internally over time. Your character will reveal their internal change through their choices. They won’t always make the right or best choices—in fact they shouldn’t, because we’re reading to find out how they make mistakes and ultimately learn from them—but they need to have choices presented to them at every turn.

Through most of your story, the choices your character makes should be influenced by a flawed belief they have about how the world works, called an ‘Internal Obstacle’. At first, they’ll make the wrong choices because of their internal obstacle belief. However, as the negative consequences of their flawed choices pile up, they’ll slowly change—until they overcome their obstacle and finally make a different choice in the climax moment which proves they’ve learned the story point.

Your character’s choices should drive the plot forward. Each choice will have consequences that create future plot problems, which once again present the opportunity for them to make a choice. This cycle of choice, consequence, plot event, choice, etc. is how you ensure that your characters play an active role in what happens during your story.

On top of ensuring that your characters make a choice in every scene, ensure there are real stakes for each option they have (and up these stakes throughout the story!). By showing the reader what your character fears will happen if they fail (which is what actually prompts them to make the wrong choices), you’ll create a page-turner that sucks them in!

Put your main character face-to-face with your story’s point.

It’s important that you’re intentional with the dilemmas you put before your characters. Use them to put your main character in conversation with your story’s point. For example, if your story’s point is “Cheating only leads to loss,” then your main character should choose between cheating or acting with integrity in almost every scene.

At the beginning of your character’s arc, they’ll act in opposition to your story point—because of their internal obstacle. As they slowly change, their choices should shift ever closer to being in line with your story point. For example, in a story about cheating versus integrity, the character would begin by cheating, but as the consequences of cheating pile up, they’d move toward integrity over time. Use your character’s agency to demonstrate their internal change, while at the same time proving your story point!

Case Study:

One of my clients is writing a YA fantasy story with the point: “Lying about your mistakes only makes things worse.” When she came to me, she knew her draft wasn’t working, but couldn’t figure out why. When we broke down her scenes, we realized that her beginning chapters lacked agency. Her character, who harbored a dark secret about a past mistake, was being forced into an opportunity to atone for her wrongs. When we switched that moment from an obligation into a choice (with deep stakes), her character’s desire for atonement strengthened tenfold. Suddenly she became someone the reader could really root for despite her gruesome past. After fixing these early choices, we mapped out the rest of the book’s crossroads and made sure that, at each one, the character always had a choice between lying and telling the truth.