We’ve all started a book that had great promise, or at least promised to be entertaining, only to run into a plot that could only happen if a normally competent character suddenly becomes incompetent when making decisions that affect the plot or character development, and then hands the idiot ball off to another character, who acquires sudden incompetence in their reaction to the first, and all their decisions…

Some books, the characters are only promised to be competent, and they spend the entire book being idiots, while the author has to resort to narrative summary to tell us that they’re actually beautiful, graceful, competent, suave, moral, ethical, and not complete morons.

Sometimes, the plot would only work if the characters were as idiotic as they’re portrayed as being, and the rest of their civilization as well. (Alien horrors come out of the sea every five years, and destroy all life and habitations on the beaches. Why not build up in the mountains you keep mentioning in the scenery? Or retreat up there? If this is so predictable, why are they surprised by it happening just like it did 5 and 10 and 15 years ago?)

Some of these books are incredibly popular, and gushingly recommended by fans who claim they identify soooooo much with the heroine (who sometimes has no heroic qualities, but we’re told she is the heroine.) Or that the hero is sooooo deliciously bad (when he’s spouting more therapy platitudes than a self-help book, and has all the spine of a milksop.)

What’s going on here?

I found out… the hard way.

I thought I’d reached the penultimate chapter for an original image in head that drove me to write 21,000 words to get here. In this chapter, to radically simplify, the hero wakes up the heroine, who is experiencing all the delayed onset muscle soreness of unaccustomed exercise you’d expect of a sedentary civilian exploring an airship stem to stern. She is in no mood to go anywhere or do anything, while he’s in a hurry to get her up, dressed, and gone, as they’re behind schedule. Frustrations and tempers flare.

When I finished the chapter, I was still in a grumpy headspace (which was also the product of non-book-related issues), and plotting out the next scene, the character interactions and movements required the heroine to do something very dumb and impetuous, in order to put her in the right place at the right time, while he would have to make an emotionally-driven decision to not be there to save her from the results of her stupidity.

The characters are neither dumb nor impetuous people. I found myself even more frustrated with the idiot-ball plot, and stopped writing for the night.

Two days later, I came back in a much better headspace, and looked at it again… and realized that in the walk between her quarters and the hangar bay, they’d have plenty of time to cool off, apologize, and be far more rational than initially plotted. Because I had written that walk down as a single transitional phrase when blocking out the next chapter, I hadn’t contemplated they had that time, and was about to break the characters by making them react to my emotional  state, not theirs.

That is when I realized highly popular Idiot-Ball Plots and Too Stupid To Live Characters can happen when they are forced to act to the reader’s emotional state instead of their own.

The audience sympathizes with the characters because they behave like the reader feels they would… even when the only reason the reader feels that way is because they’re all worked up from a prior scene.

How long does it take you to cool off? To cheer up? To calm down? To shake off dread? To stop snickering? How far can you read in that timeframe?

Instead of picking up an idiot ball plot and running it out to the Really Cool Visual I wanted to tell, I sat down and wrote the scene of them cooling off, lightening the tension with a laugh, and then taking the time to really take in the scenery, setting up for Really Cool Visual in the next chapter.

That’ll also give the reader enough time to cool off, and laughter to break the tension, so they can refocus on two competent people about to get in over their heads, despite doing their best.