Are Your Characters Made of Moments?
Consider the premise of so many time-travelling tropes: Character goes back in time. Character changes one thing. Character realizes the world of the future is now drastically different and they have to figure out how to put things back to the way they were.
While it may seem like a bit of a stretch to say that people’s lives – even their personalities – can change based on the ripple effect of a single moment, I actually don’t think Back to the Future is that far off.
The simple truth is that the trajectory of our lives is made from moments. It has been suggested that adults make up to 35,000 decisions every day. While it’s not entirely clear what constitutes a “decision” within this number (should I make toast for breakfast vs. should I move my arm to scratch my nose), if you stop to think about your own day-to-day life, it may not be much of a stretch to imagine yourself making thousands of decisions at a time.
Here's an exercise: try to pin down the first decision you made after waking up this morning. Did you decide to snooze your alarm? Did you check your phone? What came next? Did you decide to make coffee? Did you take a shower? Did you sing in the shower? If so, what song did you pick? How did you select your outfit for the day?
Now, think about how your day might have changed had you made different decisions along the way. What if you’d sent someone an “I love you” text first thing in the morning? What if you’d taken a different route to work? What if you had directed a tense conversation in a different direction?
Some of the differences may seem negligible. However, some decisions might surprise you when you consider the effect they had on your day. This morning, for example, I chose to sleep in, missed breakfast, and had an unproductive, impatient sort of day at work. Would the day have been unproductive and impatient even with a good breakfast? Possibly. Has this affected anything long-term in my life? Personally, I doubt it. But here’s the mind-blowing part. My decisions at work also affected the experienced moments of the fifty or so people I interacted with over the course of the day. Do you see how the ripples of my decisions have suddenly spread?
Moments are powerful. As writers, this is critical to remember. Sometimes, a single moment can literally mean life or death for our characters. Sometimes, the effect of a moment is more subtle, one moment leading to the next until our characters eventually find themselves neck-deep in the climax of the plot.
But don’t forget that moments do more than simply propel the story forward. They also serve to change the characters themselves. What does each moment in your book do to your protagonist’s psyche? Are they drawn closer to others or are they isolated by the moment? Is a truth reinforced somewhere in the back of their mind, or do they subscribe to a lie without even realizing it? Are they a better or worse human being than they were before they encountered that moment? Which are the moments that they will remember forever?
Don’t get so wrapped up in the sweeping arc of your narrative that you forget the significance of the moments along the way. Life is made up of details. Your world on the page should be no different.
Writing Challenge:
Pick one of your characters and write a list of their most significant moments. How did those moments go on to change their lives?
Pick one of the significant moments in YOUR life and track the ripple effect. What happened as a result of that moment?
Write a scene where a tiny moment has a life-altering ripple effect for a character.