One of the writing newsletters I subscribe to had the headline: “The “everyone is too nice” problem”
The content of the post (at least the first bit) is:
Here’s one sneaky reason a scene can fall flat, and one I rarely see discussed.
The sneaky issue: Everyone is on their best behavior.
Your characters explain their feelings. They listen with empathy. They make eye contact. They use “I” statements. Somewhere, a therapist nods approvingly.
In real life, it’s lovely.
It’s terrible for your book.
And goes on for the whole post about how nice characters are bad, and everyone needs to be meaner.
To a point, this can be true… story needs conflict, without conflict, there is no plot…
But:
a. There’s more than one type of conflict/story structure.
b. Depending on your stories genre, NOT making characters nice can kill the story.
I see writing advice all the time that assumes that “The Hero’s Journey” is the ONLY story framework that exists.
And if your story fits in that framework, then great, that type of advice will work for you.
But if you’re writing a team dynamic in more of a heroine’s journey framework, then pulling elements from the hero’s journey (such as isolating the protagonist, having a crisis of faith that makes him go it alone, etc) will not work for you.
Characters should be nice to each other in a team setting. Sure, miss-understandings can and do add “flavor”, but in a team story, the story will still work when the team gets along… so long as there’s external conflict provided by an antagonist or such.
And in wonder fiction, very little conflict is needed. That kind of story is more about how cool and relaxing something is. Sure, a lot of people can and do call wonder-fiction “boring”… but that kind of story is not for those kind of people.
So go ahead and make your characters “too nice” if you want to! (Just make sure that it’s appropriate for the story framework that you’re using, and if everyone is nice, be sure to have some other type of non-interpersonal conflict from another source.)
Post author: Aaron DeMott
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