100 Things #90-Turning Your Characters Stupid to amp the tension

[jana_denardo]

Turning Your Characters Stupid to amp the tension is something I see all too often. It's something I fear doing unintentionally myself. I read a lot of mysteries and it's unfortunately a pretty common trope. The author wants to give us a heart-pounding, everything-on-the-line ending with our protagonist in mortal danger but rather than work on a way to do that naturally, we get the lazy way out.

For instance let's look at the last two mysteries I read. One has our heroine go off to a strange city by herself, telling no one she's there. She knows the bad guys are after something in an ancient Mayan ruin and have killed to get it. So what does she do? Goes into the ruins by herself completely unarmed. Because that's what people do in mysteries some times. They're one step up from the ding dongs in horror flicks that Geico so beautifully mocked in their commercial last year. I guess we could excuse her because she's an amateur detective, but really? She even knows the bad guys are there because she's watching them and thinks she can sneak past him.

Maybe a professional detective would know better. Not so much, the book I read before this one was about a lady cop and she also goes hiking off into the woods without telling her boss, her partner or anyone so she can spy on the bad guy who has kidnapped, raped and tortured numerous women. Yep, because this is what smart cops do, go in without back up. At least she was armed.

And it's not just the ladies doing it. It's one of the reasons I stopped reading the Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware books. How many times could I watch Alex do something stupid just to get that 'exciting' ending? Even authors who are expert in their fields have done this. Kathy Reichs, Linda Fairstein and others have had characters do something so incredibly dumb they're lucky to be alive and somehow not lose their jobs. As much as I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel, all too often the tension was in the characters not sharing something vital and doing something dumb instead.

Then I had to sit back and think to myself, have I done this? If I have, is it at least justified? Humans DO make stupid choices after all (though I still maintain a trained detective knows better than what I see half them doing). I'm struggling with this right now in my Vampires in Vegas story. In the very original story which I wrote back in the 1990s, I was far less experienced as a writer and I have to say, Arrigo was a complete nitwit and the villainess, Eleni even stupider.

Granted some of that was an artifact of trying to tell the story in the much more restrictive word counts back then. 5-7K was considered generous. I was rushing the story through. Now that I've completely reworked this and am turning it into something newer (basically all that remains of the original is the idea), I'm struggling to make them more believable. However, if Arrigo is as sharp as he should be, the main action would never happen. Eleni is smarter in this as well. She does still send taunting letters but anonymously because killers DO that sometimes.

But that leaves me with how to make Arrigo's less diligent aspects seem realistic and believable. I don't want it to look like I took the lazy way out. It's harder than it sounds. If Arrigo does everything like he should, the Eleni should fail almost immediately. I did add in a new level, a partner for Eleni, one Arrigo doesn't know about. That makes it much harder on him. He might think he's got the bases covered. Lust is also in the mix and that can often lead to bad choices.

Regardless, its a harder row to hoe and I'm not sure I'm getting it right. Time will tell. My question to you then is, how do you avoid making your characters do stupid things just to get that tense ending? Or do you avoid it?

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

If I can ever get to an ending, I'll let you know?

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

snort. Yeah I know how THAT goes too. Looking at you, Arrigo & Luc. Quit being little dicks and end this thing