Writing Belief Systems: The Foundation of Character and Conflict

We judge them for what they do, but is that fair? What makes a character do what they do?

This is a concept I am fascinated with as a writer, and I am sure I am not the only one. This is where fiction crosses nicely over into the real world. What shapes us as people?

Our families, our loved ones, what we were brought up to believe, our morals, where we are from, our age, what we spend our days doing, our likes and our dislikes, our natural strengths and our weaknesses? The list is endless.

Thinking now about characters in the books we have loved most, what is THE most important requirement for a character we love?

We need to connect with them; we need to feel like we understand them. We need to see why they make the decisions they do, and we need to feel: pride that they made the right choice or despair that they made the wrong one. All of this comes back to this idea of why they are having to make these choices in the first place, and I believe this stems from their world. (Obviously it is not the only reason but it’s pretty important.)

This is where, as a fantasy writer, it gets seriously fun.

Why?

Because I get to make that world. I get to dream up that context that puts them to the challenge; what will they do?

Context changes everything. A person who is naturally easy going, kind, wants to feel like they are doing the right thing and wants to matter might be forced to act and make choices that turn out to be very different, depending on the context.

Let’s call this character May.

Now let's put her in a world. (I am going to try and keep this simple and have these following areas as a base. We will then change one):

·      A Class System: upper, middle and lower.

·      A Gendered Culture: women are expected to be quiet, dutiful, respectful. The property of men. Second class citizens to men.

·      A Belief System: Women are second to men in this system. To be truly good they must, live to the gender ideals; it is what your god/gods expects of you.

Challenge set: A man is beating a woman in the street for disobeying her husband.

What does May do?

May is naturally easy going, kind and wants to feel like she is doing the right thing. Without the above contextual categories (by ours – a western audience I’m surmising right now), theoretically she should step in and ask the person to stop beating the woman. She might even tell him the reason for beating his wife is not acceptable, I would hope she would pick her off the floor and call the police on the man.

Now, let’s enter my world set out by those three context settings.

            May is a woman in this situation, so she is constrained by the same laws and ideals. In her world, women are the property of men and have to do as they are told to be true and good in accordance with

their belief system.

            Being a woman, we have a few choices to play with here that would affect what sort of character she would be. If she watched and let it continue, she would be acting perfectly normally and understandably for her world. But would it conflict with her moral compass? If it did, she would actually be quite rebellious for her world, even if she didn’t intervene. Remember, her belief system says this is the right thing. Would that give her internal conflict too, the fact that she is questioning her own beliefs? Why is she questioning her beliefs?

 If she were to intervene, that would suggest a few new ideas about May. Why does she intervene when her world would make this very difficult for her? That is when we would have to go further into her back story to understand the why. Her class would definitely play an important part in this, thinking about power, education etc. Also, her age, her life experiences. In this situation, May would be rebelling against her system.

What I find fascinating here is how significantly the context matters for a scene like this and how much it says about a character. Our view of being “good” is so different. If May were to act in accordance with our morals, it would pull her right out of her contextual system. This brings us right back to that wonderful question again, why?

I am constantly brought back to this question. Why are they doing this? Why do they feel this?

I find, when I’m trying to answer why about my characters, I have to keep coming back to the context of the world they are inhabiting. People generally don’t act in isolation; they should generally act within the system. If they are acting outside of it, it is my job to work out why – what happened to them to make them break out? I am also aware that their natural inclination might not sit well with my own morals and that is usually because of the contextual world they inhabit.

The uncomfortable truth is people do terrible things and don’t always believe what they have done is terrible. Usually, they think they are doing the right thing. That is what is so fascinating about writing.

The hard part is finding the balance between their world and that of the audience. If your characters are doing something that is completely understandable due to their motivations, their beliefs, their cultural context yet it is so against that of the audience; that is when it becomes a balancing act. How do you stay true to your characters and write a story people will want to read?  

That there is the art of writing a great story. I find it is often this space where the reading becomes truly engaging.