19.30: A Close Reading on Character: Agency vs. Choices
We have a theory that we want to work through on today’s episode: agency is the ability to take action, whereas choices are more about the interior life of the character. We use Mary Robinette’s talking cat, try-fail cycles, and C.L. Clark’s Your Eyes, My Beacon: Being an Account of Several Misadventures and How I Found My Way Home in order to examine this theory and its underpinnings.
Thing of the Week: Marginalia by Mary Robinette Kowal (Uncanny Magazine)
Homework: Create a scene in which your character has very little agency, but still must make a choice. Do your best to make that choice still feel critical.
Liner Notes:
Fluent pet buttons – Elsie the talking cat
“We Are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist” by Vida Cruz
Credits: Your hosts for this episode were DongWon Song and Erin Roberts. Our guest was Arkady Martine. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.
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Transcript
Key points: Agency, the ability to take action, choices, interior decisions. Many fantasy stories focus on going adventuring, but sometimes the people who stay home also live interesting lives. You don’t have to be in the character’s head to see them struggling with choices. Often characters will fall back into old patterns. What is this a fantasy of? DREAM: denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation. Look at the timing of these stages.
[Season 19, Episode 30]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
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[Season 19, Episode 30]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] A Close Reading on Character: Agency Versus Choices.
[Erin] 15 minutes long, because you’re in a hurry.
[Howard] And we’re not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I’m Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I’m DongWon.
[Erin] I’m Erin.
[Howard] I’m Howard.
[Erin] You had a lot of agency to that.
[Laughter]
[DongWon] I made some choices. That was to…
[Howard] I chose to pause. Pause on purpose.
[Erin] Speaking of… What do we mean by agency and choices? Let’s probably start by defining those terms a little bit.
[Mary Robinette] So, in my mind, agency is the ability to take action, and choices are more about the interior life of the character. I will admit that some of my understanding of this comes from my talking cat…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Who does not actually have an enormous amount of agency. My dog doesn’t… Also doesn’t have an enormous amount of agency. I decide when they’re going to eat and all of that. My cat, when she goes up to her button board will press the buttons and it’s like, “I’m concerned about the fate of the world.” My dog goes up to the button board and is like, “Here! Here, here, here. Friend!” So my cat has this interior life. My dog really does not. My cat makes choices. My dog just kind of reacts to things. When I think about characters, I think about characters… I used to think that I needed to pick the character that had the agency, the one that could make the most change in their life. But I realized that from reading things like Matthew Satesses Craft in the Real World that that was causing me to remove characters who were incarcerated or otherwise in oppressed communities, because they didn’t have a lot of agency. But the characters that are interesting are the ones that have rich interior lives. The ones who can make choices even as they are constrained by a lack of agency..
[Erin] Yeah. There’s a great essay that I read about this called We Are the Mountain by Vida Cruz. It talks about how so many fantasy stories will be about somebody like leaving the small town to go, like, off in adventuring. But what about the people when their town is destroyed by a dragon, but what about the people who are still living in the town destroyed by a dragon were just having to get by, and those people are also living very interesting lives. But… It’s because they have to make small choices about how they’ll react, how they’ll respond, how they’ll think about their lives in the midst of all this Dragon destruction. I think that that relates really well to the story that we’re talking about today, Your Eyes, My Beacon, which actually starts with someone on an adventure that doesn’t quite go sort of the way that they planned.
[DongWon] Yeah. I love this framework because both characters in this story are deeply constrained. One is constrained both to her role as the lighthouse keeper and being the light in the lighthouse herself, and there’s no one else who can take that role. She’s the only person who can do this and is also trapped in a fascist state, which is explicitly hunting down and eliminating people like her. Right? She’s so constrained, she’s so trapped, and needs a certain medication also to survive. Right? Still, we get this rich character who’s capable of making choices, who has interior wants and needs and desires. On the other side, we have this character who is this adventurer character who comes in, is wounded, is stuck here for other reasons. So, watching these two people interact and make their choices even though… Kind of going back to last week’s episode, there’s so many barriers in their way, there’s so many different things that are preventing them from accomplishing their goals, that suddenly they’re… Even what their goals are comes into question. What are they trying to accomplish becomes very fuzzy in the middle of the story in a way that I really enjoy because there’s so many constraints on them that it’s hard for them to figure out what it is that they want, which then leads to all the interesting choices made in the back half of the story, which are kind of heartbreaking in various ways.
[Howard] Absent any sort of support mechanism, the lighthouse keeper… Lighthouse keeper lives alone. Absent any support, the lighthouse keeper doesn’t really have much of a choice as to whether or not the light stays on. They’re doing everything they can, but when they reach the limits of their ability, there isn’t anyone to help them. So they don’t have a choice when the light goes out. That light going out removes agency from the entire crew of the ship. Suddenly, the only choices they have are figure out how to swim out of a shattered on the rocks ship, and many of them, their agency ends forever because they no longer have any choice, because dead.
[Erin] Sh… Sorry. That is sad, but also for some reason…
[Laughter]
[Howard] If you say it correctly, it’s a joke.
[Erin] The way you said it tickled me. But I… What I was thinking about, also, both of what you’re saying is… This story is not at all about how to stop the hunting of lighthouse keepers, about what the high court is doing, the characters don’t even think about it. Like, their agency is so far removed… Sort of the way that when the light is removed, you’re just trying to swim to shore. They’re not trying to change the system or take down the man. They’re really just trying to make connection. Like, the biggest choice is do I let another person into my flawed self or my flawed life, not do I change the way that my life is flawed. Which I think is poignant and beautiful.
[DongWon] Well, I love you bringing up the essay and going back to this idea of leaving the village versus staying in the village. Right? In a traditional epic fantasy, it falls into what I think of as a restoration fantasy, which is about fixing the world and restoring it to its prior state. Which kind of traps fantasy sometimes in a backward looking mode. So when you give characters full agency in the world, when they can change the fate of the whole world, then there’s so much responsibility that goes on that character that weirdly, you remove choice from them. Because if you have infinite power, how could you not try and fix things? Right? Versus, it can sometimes be so much more interesting to put people in extreme constraints, to take away their agency, and then we get to see what does this character do in this circumstance. Right? We see that in this story where they’re not trying to fix the world, they’re just trying to save each other. It becomes so much more poignant and powerful. We see this across all three stories. In The Cook, no one’s trying to stop this war. It’s how do I survive till the next meal, how do I take care of this person who needs to be fed? In You Perfect, Broken Thing, it’s how do I survive this race? No one, again, is trying to undo the systems that they’re trapped in, they’re trying to survive those systems. I think that’s why he’s made such wonderful character studies, because it’s what do people do under duress, not what do people do when they have infinite power.
[Mary Robinette] One of the other things that I want to point out is that you can demonstrate these even when you’re not in the character’s head.
[DongWon] Yes.
[Mary Robinette] That’s also something that I love about this story. There’s a moment, shortly after our protagonist wakes up, when she’s asking about the light, the light went out. So we’re in first person, and we’re viewing the other character. You can see the choice that is made.
“No,” I say. “The light. It went out.”
The other woman looks askance at the cup in her hand.
“I…was sick. I—the flame went out.” She doesn’t look at me as she says it. Ashamed-like, and why not?
So this is a fascinating moment, because the… Our main character, our viewpoint character, misinterprets what is happening there. The character is choosing to lie about why the flame went out. Our character believes that she is looking askance, she is hesitating, she’s coming up with excuses just because of shame. It’s more than that. But you are able to see that because of these small choices that that character is making. Even though our character… Our POV character is misinterpreting them.
[Howard] I’d like to draw a parallel between the opening of this story and some of the spatial worldbuilding in Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire. The idea of constriction and then expansion. At the end of the first section of this story, these three lines.
I have only two coherent thoughts in the frigid darkness.
Do not get hit by the ship.
Where did the light go?
In that moment, she really only has one choice. Swim in a direction that gets me hit by the ship or swim in a direction that doesn’t get me hit by the ship. Because there’s no light, I don’t even know which choice I’m making. It is very desperate. It is… Arguably, it is the most desperate possible narrowing of a person’s choices. Because you get to make a choice, but you don’t even know what it will do. When we get to the end of the story, where we are answering her questions, finally, where did the light go? She makes a choice to do something about the light, and it’s a whole series of choices. There’s a myriad options that she has, along this path, in answer to the question, and to help make sure that nobody else has to make the choice about swimming or not swimming out from under the ship.
[Erin] With that, we are going to make a choice to take a break, and then we will be right back.
[Mary Robinette] I have a new short story out in Uncanny Magazine. It’s called Marginalia and it gets its name and setting from the doodles in medieval manuscripts. Have you seen the ones with nights fighting giant snails? So I thought, what if the reason those were in so many manuscripts was that there were actually giant snails and knights had to defend against them, and we don’t know about them today because they were just hunted to extinction. I’d love it if you’d just hop over to Uncanny and read it. That’s Marginalia by me, Mary Robinette Kowal.
[DongWon] Yeah. Picking up with what Howard was talking about before the break, taking this idea of compression and expansion into this story, and how it applies to agency and choice is also, I think, really fascinating, because the pivotal moment in this story is when agency is restored to our protagonist. Right? When the pirate gets to rejoin her crew and go back out into the world and live the life that she ostensibly wants. One of the heartbreaking moments is that she chooses that. She chooses to do that instead of staying with the lighthouse keeper, instead of staying with Audei. She goes out into the world and reclaims her agency, and it’s a terrible choice and it doesn’t work and she suffers for it, and Audei suffers for it, and then people can’t pass through this area, so that their suffering for it, too. It’s such an interesting moment, again, where C. L. Clark is so good at this thing where I understand… It’s, oh, of course she chose that. How could I have expected her to choose differently? But it’s still so disappointing and heartbreaking that she does.
[Mary Robinette] This is a thing that’s really great with character stories, is that often a character will fall back into their old wants and goals, their old patterns. It’s something we see with people, too. That there’s a pattern that has served you that is comfortable, and if a character is stressed or pressured, they don’t really examine whether or not that still going to serve them. If Sigo had paused to examine it, like, had really taken the time to say, “Wait. Is this what I still want?” Then may have made a different choice. But, confronted with, oh, this is familiar, goes with the familiar, goes with the old pattern, and leaves.
[Howard] In many story forms, we see the… What we’ve called… In Writing Excuses episodes, we’ve use the term arm bar where… A term that comes to us from hand to hand combat, you put someone in an arm bar and you are now compelling them to move in a certain direction, you’re restricting their agency. We talk about arm bars as moments in the first act of a three act format, where the protagonist now has to choose to protag. The flipside of that is what we see in this story. There is no arm bar, she makes what we would argue is the wrong choice, and then looks at the consequences of that choice and examines her life, and because of the breadth of agency she still retains, is able to make the choice that answers the question about where the light went.
[DongWon] I love how resistant these are to traditional ideas of the hero’s journey. Right? Resisting, refusing the call to adventure, is the right choice in all three stories. All three stories are about choosing domesticity, choosing love, choosing care over choosing heroism and violence and participating in the systems that are oppressing people. I think that’s so beautiful, the way the author contrasts the agency and the choice in that way.
[Erin] Yeah. It makes me think about what is this a fantasy of? So a lot of time I think of big hero’s journey as being the power fantasy, I have a fantasy to change the world. I can do that in this book. To me, this is a fantasy of vulnerability and it’s a fantasy of connection. I think that in some ways, it is almost scarier, because that’s the thing that we can relate to. At least, I can more in my individual life. The choice to let someone in, the choice to do the thing where you are vulnerable to another person, is more my life experience than the ability to change the entire nature of reality. I think that knowing what your story is a fantasy of and that there are many different things that it can be. It can be a story of, like, big stakes or big changes, or big stakes and small changes. But the stakes are no less large for that difference.
[DongWon] Yeah. It’s so fragile. Right? Audei needs medication. There’s such a strong metaphor for chronic illness. They’re at threat from the state. There’s all of these things where Sigo is making these choices to… That are so counter to going off on adventure and the way it’s portrayed here is it so much scarier than going into the world and raiding whatever… Whatever she’s doing on this ship, that Audei thinks of as being a pirate. Right?
[Mary Robinette] The other thing also with Audei and Sigo is that Audei also has a full character story.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Also is… Even though her sections are much shorter, they’re in third person, she is making choices in every single one of those. So there’s an acronym that I’ve used in previous seasons called DREAM, which is denial, resistance, exploration, acceptance, and manifestation. This happens for Audei. When we first start, in that first section, she’s very much like I do this alone, and I can do this alone. She’s in denial that she needs help. She’s in denial that this is something that is more than one person. She had a family, she’s doing alone, she’s in denial. Then, when the stranger comes, when Sigo… She goes into resistance. But she still alone. She still believes that she can do the job alone, but she doesn’t object to having company. So, when we are in resistance, she’s not upset at the prospect of company, when the storm blows in. That’s that… She’s still in resistance, but she starting to let the idea of someone else exist. Then we get to exploration, where we try out the idea of what would it be like if someone else knew. That’s when… That exploration is as she’s letting Sigo help around the property doing the different chores. It’s like, oh, this does make it easier. Then we get to acceptance.
[DongWon] There’s such a moment here that I really love, and it’s when Sigo stepped away to go get the medicine from town. We know that she’s not going to… Or, I guess we don’t know at this point she’s not going to come back. But that’s the next moment.
The sudden crush of loneliness is too much to bear, but there is also hope and patience. Sigo will come back soon. She will come back and Audei will ask her to stay.
That moment of her accepting, like, oh, no, I do need this person, I’m going to ask her to stay. But she hasn’t done it yet. So the choice that Sigo’s about to make we know is the wrong one, we know that Sigo knows it’s the wrong one. But, Audei never actually asked her to stay.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. This is, I think, also one of the things that brings that idea of choice back in. Had Audei made that choice to ask, then the tragedy would not have continued to unfold. By leaving, Sigo has removed that tiny piece of agency from Audei, because now she no longer has the ability to ask. So that’s part of what happens there. It’s not until Sigo returns that we actually get the manifestation where we see what they do with the knowledge that they are working together. It is the last line of the story.
They are light. They are light, together, they are light.
That’s the manifestation, which is so lovely that I am sitting here, as we’re podcasting, trying not to actually cry…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Again, because of this story. But it’s… This beautiful little arc that is all about the choices that the character is making and the times that they have agency and when agency is removed from them.
[Erin] But that makes me think that I think is fascinating is thinking about the span of time on the page between the letters of DREAM. So, here, sort of, we get the first four in, not like rapid pace, but they’re coming pretty regularly. Then there’s this delayed manifestation. Because that’s what the story is driving towards, that’s what it’s about. Are they able to… They realize, I think, both of them, even in making the wrong choices, what they are to each other, what are they able to manifest, and that’s the question that the story is answering.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] So, thinking about a different story, like, that’s telling… A different tale, might have a big gap before acceptance, or a big gap before any of the other letters in DREAM. So it just makes me think where can you put those gaps in your story and where have you put them maybe not even thinking about it, and what does that tell you about the kind of story you’re trying to tell?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Each of them has a try fail cycle where the character’s trying to hold onto their character, to their self-identity, and when they fail to do that, that’s the catalyst that moves them to the next level. But sometimes a character will get stuck. Like, they will just be doing resistance over and over again. Those are the character stories that feel very flat. Or the ones where we jump straight from dream to manifestation, without the character demonstrating change through the choices that they’re making.
[Erin] All right. With that, I’ll take you to the homework. Which is to write a scene in which your character has very little agency for whatever reason, but still must make a choice. Do your best to make that choice feel exciting, feel high-stakes, feel real for the reader.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You’re out of excuses. Now go write.
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