My post yesterday was all about the way forward so naturally a follow-up post to that has to go in the opposite direction!
Generally, characters do need to be moving forwards in their lives. It is the whole point of the story after all. Incident X happens to Character Y, they do Z because of it and then A happens etc etc. However, not all characters learn from what happen to them. Others take longer than perhaps they should to learn (because that is how the writer has portrayed them). Still others go backwards...
Not everyone responds well to pressures. As in life, characters can retreat into themselves, almost inevitably in an attempt to protect themselves from (a) having to face up to a situation and (b) dealing with it!
The story here then is do those characters stay at this point (in which case there is no resolution to the problem) or do they go "backwards" into a retreat position to give themselves time to get their act together, before re-emerging and dealing with the problem the way they feel it needs to be tackled. Do they find the retreating like this really does help them or does it just delay resolving the issue and they end up wishing they had NOT done this? There could be some cracking stories here...
Whichever direction your characters are heading, there do have to be good reasons and resolutions (of some sort).
Generally, characters do need to be moving forwards in their lives. It is the whole point of the story after all. Incident X happens to Character Y, they do Z because of it and then A happens etc etc. However, not all characters learn from what happen to them. Others take longer than perhaps they should to learn (because that is how the writer has portrayed them). Still others go backwards...
Not everyone responds well to pressures. As in life, characters can retreat into themselves, almost inevitably in an attempt to protect themselves from (a) having to face up to a situation and (b) dealing with it!
The story here then is do those characters stay at this point (in which case there is no resolution to the problem) or do they go "backwards" into a retreat position to give themselves time to get their act together, before re-emerging and dealing with the problem the way they feel it needs to be tackled. Do they find the retreating like this really does help them or does it just delay resolving the issue and they end up wishing they had NOT done this? There could be some cracking stories here...
Whichever direction your characters are heading, there do have to be good reasons and resolutions (of some sort).
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