We’ve all met them. Characters that are TSTL. Too Stupid To Live. The classic example is the buxom lass in stilettos who runs into the basement while being chased by the knife-wielding serial killer. You know she’s dead. That’s a movie example, but there are plenty of examples in fiction that fit the bill.
Sadly, this is a trope that falls on the shoulders of mainly female main characters, the heroine who needs saving. One example that comes immediately to mind is Twilight. Yes, at the end Bella becomes active in her own salvation (and that of her entire family) but throughout the book, she readily acts in ways that endanger her life.
The thing that almost saves Bella, however, is her motivation. In book one, Bella puts herself at the mercy of James because she thinks she’ll save her mom. But let’s be real. No one with an IQ over 3 is going to think the big, bad James would let them live. Why not bring back up?
And that is the key to saving a TSTL character. Motivation. You can’t just give them a reason (motivation), however. It has to be reasonable. If your character is going to confront the villain and tell them they’re going to reveal their villainy, make it so they’re wired and have police standing by. It can’t simply be a tool to put your character in greater danger to resolve the plot. Cliche alert! Frankly, they deserve to die at that point.
However, you can have something go wrong. They’ve planned the perfect confrontation – police are standing by, but at the last minute the character discovers the police are working for the villain, or the villain has the building rigged to explode, or the villain has kidnapped the character’s little sister and has her hidden away. The twist is the salvation of cliche.
If you’re not sure how to come up with a twist, simply play what-if. Your character is at the mercy of the police and villain and needs to escape to save the little sister. What if…
- a digital camera outside the building is live-streaming the entire event to FBI headquarters
- the character put a tracker on the villain’s car to keep up with their movements
- aliens land and neutralize all weaponry and electronics (nothing is off limits in what-if)
Fiction is not an excuse to escape common sense. Make your motivations logical. This is the rule for all characters, by the way. Not just protagonists. Even if the antagonist is mentally unstable, the motivation behind their actions must be logical, if only to them. Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th) killed in revenge for his mother. Freddie Kruger killed out of revenge for his own murder.
Characters may be fictional but readers are not. We want our readers to put themselves in the shoes of our heroes and heroines and if the reader is sitting there going, “Nope, I’d never do something that dumb,” then you’re at risk of your book being DNF’d.