By Janice Hardy

A choice I had to live with—despite the consequences.

My husband and I were kitten shopping and we came across a four-month-old gray kitten who was eager to get our attention. He meowed at us as he clung to the side of the kitten-cage, his little paw poking out like he was trying to flag us down. My husband picked him up and he immediately snuggled in and purred.

Then I got to hold him.

He was just as sweet with me, but my nose started running and my eyes got a little itchy. I figured it was just from the sheer number of kitties at the shelter and didn’t think anything of it. I’ve always known I had a mild allergy to cats, but it never bothered me enough not to have them.

Three days later, it was clear I was highly allergic to this cat.

But by then, he wasn’t “some random kitten from the shelter,” he was Sterling, our lovable boo boo kitty, and he was ours.

I had to choose—send him back, or keep him and spend the next 15-20 years taking allergy meds every day.

I chose to keep him, which led to an unexpected problem.

Tough choices are the first step to creating conflict.

Choices force a character to act, which moves the plot and story forward. Tough choices create unpredictable outcomes, because readers aren’t sure which option the protagonist might take. This uncertainty leads to curiosity, and readers want to know:

• Did the character choose wisely?
• What price will that choice demand?
• Will the consequences be worse than they feared?
• Will the price be worth it in the end?

Without a difficult decision at the heart of a scene, events just “happen” without conflict, and tension doesn’t build. Nothing important is truly at risk. Readers don’t care about the outcome unless that outcome matters.

However…a choice only matters if it’s a legitimate choice, not a cardboard conflict.

For example:

• Take the job and get the one million dollar signing bonus.
• Don’t take the job and lose your house, family, and everything you value.

Nobody is going to turn down a job with those consequences, and a decision this easy isn’t going to make readers worry about the choice. But if taking the job comes with consequences, and if losing everything is actually the better option, then readers will be dying to know why.

Look for meaningful choices the character can agonize over—like returning a kitten they already love versus accepting years of runny noses, watery eyes, and not being able to breathe.

Characters facing real consequences for their choices is step two.

A choice by itself isn’t automatically interesting—it’s what that choice costs the protagonist or those close to them. The consequences turn a simple plot-beat decision into a conflict that can have long-lasting ramifications for the story.

Consequences create stakes and uncertainty, and that engages readers and makes them devour your pages as fast as they can turn them. And a great way to do this is…

The impossible choice.

This is a sure-fire way to hook your reader. None of the options are good, and every single one comes with repercussions the protagonist would rather not face. Readers can’t see the clear path out, and they’re not sure how the repercussions will affect the characters, which draws them deeper into the story and makes them more invested in how that story turns out.

Impossible choices are great for shaking up the story, adding conflict to a character arc, and forcing characters into situations they don’t want to be in.

Are your character choices strong enough?

It all depends on the story and how dire things are. A light-hearted romp with lower stakes probably won’t have life-or-death stakes, and the choices will reflect that. But a thriller will likely have a lot more impossible choices and dire stakes for the protagonist to deal with.

Consider your genre and story and ask:

Does this choice have consequences for whatever the character decides?

No matter how dire your story, if only one option carries a cost, odds are it’s not strong enough. A real dilemma means both paths lead to consequences that will cause trouble for the protagonist somehow.

In your novel, ask:

• What’s the consequence if the protagonist chooses A?
• What’s the consequence if the protagonist chooses B?
• How personal are these consequences?

The more personal the consequences, the better the choice. “Everyone dies” might feel like high stakes, but readers don’t typically care about faceless masses. They care about the characters they’ve been reading about and rooting for. 

Do those consequences affect the character and the story?

Consequences that don’t change anything wind up feeling pointless and even melodramatic, because the story unfolds the same even if they didn’t happen. Good choices change the plot and affect how the story unfolds.

A choice might:

• Complicate the character’s goal
• Make future problems harder
• Remove options that would make things easier
• Expose a flaw or fear the character would rather avoid

The more a consequence affects the character and story going forward, the more weight that choice carries.

How would the story change if the protagonist chose the other option?

Knowing things would change is good, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to brainstorm how each choice could affect the story. You might uncover more interesting paths and problems you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Look at the other option and ask:

• What does it do to the plot?
• How does it affect the tone, mood, or pacing?
• How does it affect the character’s growth?
• What other characters might be affected or involved?
• Does it connect to a subplot or tie thematic elements together?

Sometimes we get so focused on what we know happens, we miss opportunities to make our stories even stronger. Some of my best scenes came from characters making choices I hadn’t expected them to make.

Pick whichever choice best serves your story.

Not the nicest choice. Not the safest choice. The choice that creates the most tension, growth, and delicious fallout. That’s the choice readers will remember.

For those wondering what happened with Sterling and my allergies…

After taking antihistamines for a few weeks, I found out they gave me heart palpitations, and I had to stop taking them. Which sent me to the allergist for tests. Turned out I’d always been highly allergic to cats, but I was also highly allergic to a slew of other things and never realized it. I’d thought a full-time runny nose was normal. I’m on non-histamine allergy meds and get regular allergy shots now, and life is a whole lot better.

And Sterling is still our snuggly boo boo kitty.

* * * * * *

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. and the chapter books Who's Haunting Who? and The Haunting of Cabin 13 for Lerner Publishing. For adults, she writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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