5 People Watching Tips

by Jemi Fraser

Summertime is here (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) and many people will be heading out on vacation sometime in the next few months. As a writer, one of my favourite things to do on vacation is people watch.

1. Spot the Tourist

Or business person or teacher or musician or pilot or artist or... Switch it up to find different kinds of people during different parts of the day. Look beyond the obvious clothing and check out some of the less obvious clues: head up/down, eye movement, fluid/jerky body movements, facial expressions, accessories, hair, jewelry, hand gestures... Think about the vocations of your characters and find someone who does the same job. How do you know?

2. Eavesdrop

So much fun! Love hearing bits and pieces of conversations and wondering about what happened before to create that particular snippet and what will happen afterward. You can capture great hints for dialogue: length of sentences, tone, pauses, interesting speech patterns and so much more.

When you're eavesdropping, listen to the flow of the various languages and dialects as well. Can you identify the speakers' home regions? What makes their speech patterns special? Listening to people speak different languages to each other is especially fascinating - I love the blend of the languages and the brain's ability to think in both at once.

3. Big Crowds

If you have the chance to be in a big crowd at a sporting event, a concert, charity event or any other big venue, look for what stands out. Who's been dragged to the event and is bored beyond belief? Figure out why that person is there (obligation, business, love...). If it's a sporting event, spot the people who are cheering against the home team and watch how they handle it.

Look at the range of outfits in the crowd. Listen for the uncomfortable voice or the one that drips with sarcasm or the person on the edge of tears or temper. Find the most passionate fan. Watch the body language change as the event moves along. Find the couple most in love, the one about to break up.

4. Public Transit Footwear

When I'm on public transit (everything from subways to buses to boats) I like to check out footwear first. Then I build an image in my head of what else the person might be wearing. After I've got the image set, I check out the reality. It's often WAY different from my expectations. (You can do this anywhere, but for some reason, I like public transit for this  one!)

5. Clothing Fiascoes

(Disclaimer: I am one of the least well-dressed people I know!) As you're moving through your vacation, look for those folks with the wildly inappropriate outfits, then assess their emotional states and figure out how they ended up wearing the exact wrong thing. Are they over-confident? Oblivious? Obnoxious? Rude? Desperately uncomfortable? Superior? Again, body language, tone and eye movements are your friends and will tell you so much more than the person would expect.

So while I think vacations are the perfect time to leave your laptop at home and recharge your energy, there's no need to let your observational skills get rusty!

What's your favourite people watching venue?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Words Versus Resolutions: writing with your character in mind

by Cat Woods

Instead of resolutions to usher in the new year, I learned a neat trick from a fellow writer years ago: a word of the year.

The appeal of this word is that it has the power to change behaviors. Instead of "Lose Ten Pounds" which can be fraught with frustration and failure, the word "health" invokes positive connotations that impact more than the scale. I will eat better, work out more regularly, get more sleep and pay attention to my mental well-being. After a year of practicing health, I will have acquired the behavior patterns I want for a life time goal. After losing ten pounds, I might eat an entire bag of Doritos while mindlessly watching Sponge Bob reruns and crying into my diet soda. After all, I did lose ten pounds. I did accomplish my resolution.

When we write, it might behoove us to give words to our characters rather than just resolutions. While the immediacy of the resolutions and the very definitive outcome of them is what inherently drives the story and offers up our novel's conclusion, I like to think beyond the last page and into a possibility of life where my characters have changed, yet remain the same. I like to think of them as someone with integrity--in the sense that they are consistent in their behaviors and beliefs and actions. They are true to their core--whatever that core may be.

And so, I offer up the word.

• Harry Potter is tenacious. He refuses to back down until he has solved the riddle of his life. Sometimes this is a detriment. Other times it is admirable and courageous. Yet he never loses this core trait.
• Katniss Everdeen is virtuous. Her strong moral compass about the way humans should be treated drives every action she takes. Weary and terrified though she is, she holds onto her ideals to the point of stubbornness. Good, bad or indifferent, this trait is what makes Katniss one of the strongest female protagonists of this generation.
• Verity is ingenious, while her best friend is loyal in Code Name Verity.
• Curious George is...well, curious.
• And our own Mindy McGinnis's Lynn is independent.

Readers look to our characters for guidance. They want something deeper than a resolution. They want virtue and tenacity. They want independence, love, hope, faith and curiosity. They want to see themselves in the pages of our books so they can believe that they, too, can overcome the obstacles in their lives and survive beyond the moment.

And so I ask, give your readers a word...and maybe nab one for yourself.

Which character traits do you admire and why? How have you infused these traits into your writing? If you could only use one word to describe yourself at this moment in time, what would it be?

Curious minds want to know.

Cat Woods writes from home, often in her jammies with a mug of chai tea--not potato chips--and surely without the help of Sponge Bob. She wants you to know that no scales were harmed in the writing of this blog post--only egos--and that her word of the year is organization. As in plan and proceed, not declutter closets and junk drawers. Currently, she's the acquisitions editor for a middle grade anthology on bullying. You can find more of her whimsy (and guidelines for submitting) at Words from the Woods.

Writing for the Senses

by Charlee Vale

Everything in our life is interpreted by our senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. Sense of time. Sense of distance. I would even argue that our emotions are a kind of sense—interpreting to us our state of being. How else could we perceive them?

The magical and wonderful tool that is our brain integrates all of these senses so seamlessly that we barely even notice the differences between one and another sometimes. It's just a part of being.

I don't know about you, but when I'm going along in my daily life, I don't, generally, narrate to myself what I'm feeling with my senses—I say generally, because there are some times when we do do this. We'll say, "Man it's hot!" or "I smell popcorn,"—but for the most part we don't.

There have been many times I have found while reading books, (and definitely in my own work, I am equally guilty) that most of the time things are described fairly intellectually. The character notes what they see, how they feel, what they are thinking. It's like reading a transcript of someone's experience rather than experiencing it with them.

This post came about while I was chatting with a friend about writing an action scene. She expressed concern that she felt she was using words/phrases like 'suddenly' and 'without warning' too much to indicate the pace and flurry of the scene. I told her she needed to focus on writing for the senses, but she didn't know what I meant.

Here's what I mean, and to illustrate, we have a little quiz!

If someone unexpectedly shoots a gun near you do you:

A. Think "That was a gunshot."

B. Duck.

If you stub your toe in the middle of the night do you:

A. Think about the fact that you stubbed your toe, acknowledge how much it hurts, and then hobble off for ice.

B. Grab your foot while shouting obscenities because it feels like you just broke your toe. Geeze, what did I hit with my foot?

If a person you are not attracted to tries to kiss you do you:

A. Analyze their approach and how repellent they are until they're so close you can barely avoid the kiss.

B. Push them away/step away immediately.

If you answered B to every single question, congratulations, you are CORRECT! (And the other good news is you are not a robot. Good for you.)

So if in real life, all of us would react with option B, then why do so many of our characters react like option A?

I find this very prevalent in action scenes, characters analyzing and absorbing far more of the scene around them than is physically possible. To a degree that's fine, we are after all telling a story. But part of telling a story is to make sure your audience is there.

I don't have any easy solutions for this other than awareness.

• When you read, look for both good and bad examples, and see how you can either emulate or avoid those passages.
• When you write, be aware of how your character is moving through the world, and how their senses are reacting. Is your character hot? Then don't say they're hot—say they're sweating. Are they sleepy? Look for how sleepiness affects the body and implement that.
• Trust your audience. The people who are reading your books are human. They have senses. Odds are they know the signs you're describing. Trust that you don't have to dictate cognitive thoughts for every sensation. Don't worry—we'll get it.

Remember Newton's Law—Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So let them react!

Charlee Vale is a Young Adult writer, photographer, and tea lover living in New York City. You can also find her at her website, and on Twitter, and quite possibly trying to revise a new and crazy story.

Things I Learned About Writing From Actors

by Brighton Luke

In addition to this whole novel thing, I also write screenplays, and was in New York this past summer directing a film I wrote, American Dreamsicle. One of the things that struck me was in talking with the actors about their characters, I realized a few things I could take back to my writing.

One of the actors who originally had been considered for Troy, the lead male character, asked if he could be considered for a supporting character, Mercer. At first I was surprised, because I myself am not an actor and I had wrongly assumed that when given the chance people would always go for the lead. He told me that he preferred the Mercer role because the character was really interesting and more of a challenge.

Looking back on it, I did a better job writing Mercer than I did Troy. He was more complex and thought-out, he was driving the plot even when he wasn’t on screen. He may even actually be the main character despite his far fewer minutes on screen. (I know, super embarrassing when you get who your main character is wrong.) As a writer for the screen it is obvious to say: write characters that actors will get excited to play, characters they will fight over to get cast as. I think it’s also an interesting way to think about writing characters in a novel as well, even if no actor will ever portray them. Think of a really kick-ass actor or actress you like and think: would they sign on to play this character? Because if it’s not a role that an actor would get excited about portraying, then chances are a reader isn’t going to find them all that compelling either.

Another thing I learned from the actors about character was about choices. It is so easy while writing to focus only on the big choices, the ones that really drive the plot. Will this character call the cops and report their friend, or will they help them cover up the crime? Big choice. And also a choice already made by the time the actor gets to it. For them the choices they get to make are smaller, choices about how they move, and subtleties in their interactions with others. They add up to a lot, and are something that when writing a novel you as the writer need to be making. I’ve had instances where it’s easy to get pulled into making choices for the character to serve the plot without thinking of what about that character’s personality would actually drive that choice.

The actors were always concerned with what their character’s motivation was, for freaking everything! (Which near the end of a 12-hour day I was tempted to say: because the script tells you to.) I remember one afternoon we were shooting on the pier at Coney Island. While waiting for a problem with the audio to be resolved, I was talking to the actors about the scene we were shooting, where these two characters who are best friends are having their last poignant moment before all hell breaks lose, and it was really important to establish the powerful brother/sister nature of their friendship.

In the script it simply has them walking back down the pier after their conversation, but Sarah Jean, the actress in the scene, suggested that right before they turn to leave they do this little finger touch thing, which is just this one second gesture, that could be so easily left out and not thought of, but it completely pulls the whole scene together and establishes their relationship so much better than any dialogue could. She arrived at that choice by looking back into her character and really thinking what would she do in this moment, not just doing what is convenient. The plot didn't need that action, but is enhanced by it. It’s those little details that enrich the story and make the characters more authentic, because it arises out of who they are.

So going back into novel writing those are some things I’ve taken with me. Write actor-bait characters, and try to look at choices from your character’s point-of-view, not just from a plotting standpoint.

Brighton Luke is a novelist, filmmaker, and purveyor of all things awesome. You can find Brighton (being forced to be much more concise) on Twitter @BrightonAwesome, and at BrightonLuke.com

How to Make Unlikeable Characters Likeable

by Jean Oram

Last Friday RS Mellette dug into character descriptions and today we're going to dig into characters again--they are the bread and butter of a good read, after all. And that's always our goal--creating a good read. Let's get down to it.

There is one fatal flaw you never want to commit as a writer.

Never. Ever.

And last week I  committed it. In spades.

There is one thing a reader seeks when reading a story, and in particular, a romance.

And I didn't do it.

In turn, I received a well-placed (and well-deserved) smackdown from a traditional romance publisher.

What evil sin had I committed?

I made my hero (the love interest) unlikeable.

I know! How did that happen?

In my efforts to show how screwed up he was in the beginning of my story, CHAMPAGNE AND LEMON DROPS, (so he could later turn himself around and sweep the heroine off her feet at the most inopportune time--hello!) I inadvertently made him unlikeable. The reader couldn't see what the heroine saw in him. In fact, the reader probably cheered when the heroine returned the engagement ring.

You don't want that.

You really, really don't want that. At least not in the opening of a romance when the reader is supposed to be feeling the same heartbreak as the heroine.

So, in an effort to save you all from this fatal, fatal flaw (bangs head on wall repeatedly) here are five things you can do to make for a likeable (but still flawed) hero (or heroine):

1. Show Their Redeeming Qualities.

I know. That should really go without saying, shouldn't it? But it is important to note that even villains should have redeeming qualities. You need to offset the bad with something good to make them dynamic. And believable. Because really, who is all evil, all the time? (For example: Al Capone was sometimes called "Robin Hood" due to his generosity.)

2. Make it Identifiable.

For my story, the editor mentioned that (because it was a 'romance') the hero could be moody because of a romantic falling out, but not because he was screwed up. So in other words, make their issues something the reader expects of the genre and something identifiable in that regard. Romance readers don't want to read about alcoholics (unless it is backstory I am told), they want to hear about ROMANCE, ROMANCE, ROMANCE!

As well, character flaws should be identifiable to the reader. The average romance reader can identify with someone feeling like crap because of a bad romance. But for being an alcoholic after accidentally killing their father? Well… maybe not so much.

3. Use Humor to Show Flaws.

In one of my other stories, THE FIFTEEN DATE RULE (chick lit), I wanted to create a character who was on the fringes of the social world. In other words, she is a big, ol' geek. I wanted to show how awkward she was. I hit the mark. But so much so that my first writing critique partner didn't even want to read about her! My heroine was awful and unlikeable because she was so out there (non-identifiable). My critique partner very nicely informed me that if she was going to be awkward it should be presented in a humorous way. She wanted to like her. She wanted to identify with her even though she wasn't a gangly astrophysicist with a horrible dating record. But she needed to laugh along with the craziness. If we were going to do crash and burn relationships we needed humor. It was chick lit after all. Light is good.

4. Connectable Characters Connect.

In order to feel that vital empathy and get fully involved with a story we need to connect with the characters. We not only need our readers to identify where the pain, and flaws are coming from in our characters, but we also want our readers to connect with it so it becomes their issue as well. We may not have all been broken up with via an undating service like Allie in THE FIFTEEN DATE RULE, but we have (probably) all experienced a break up. And maybe even a humiliating break up to boot. Opening this story with a break up is my hope of providing something the reader can identify and connect with. Immediately.

5. Actions Have to Make Sense.

if you can believe it, I screwed this one up too. I had my characters in CHAMPAGNE AND LEMON DROPS do some stupid things without apparent motivation. Hint: That doesn't make them likeable. There has to be a BIG, SOLID reason for doing stupid, out of character, bad things. (Think of the shenanigans in The Hangover. Bad things, but we connected and liked the characters, right? Why? Because their actions make sense. They're stupid… but they make sense.)

People read to escape from their problems and the real world. More than anything they want likeable characters (even the awful characters--because we love to hate them, right?) and a story that whisks them away. Readers want to slide into the character's world and live their ups and downs.

Now that you have looked at characters from the write angle, what do you think? Have you met some unlikeable characters? What made them unlikeable for you? Did they redeem themselves? (I'm thinking of Professor Snape, here.) If you've cured unlikeable characters in your stories and have some tips on how to do so, share them below!

Jean Oram is now going through her manuscripts making sure those blasted characters are likeable. You can find her on her blog sharing her thoughts and tips on writing as well as on Pinterest, Facebook (do you like her?--ha ha!), Twitter, & Google+.

Nature and Nurture: Growing Characters

by Cat Woods

Gardening is a bit like writing. We carefully plan out our landscape, filling it with colors, textures and scents. Sometimes we don't take into account every little nuance that ultimately impacts the garden's development. Sunlight, water, heat and soil. Some of these variables are within our control. Others are not.

Yet, these outside factors shape a plant more than you would expect. Take my grasses, for example.

Notice the slim, white blades with lines of green? This grass stands about twelve inches tall and has white spiky seed tufts that barely peek out over the top of the blades. I planted this grass in a full sun area on a bit of a decline on the south side of the deck. Inevitably this means hot, dry conditions.

Ironically, I planted the exact same grass in this flower bed.

The same genetic make-up placed in a shaded, damp bed gives me wide, dark green blades with thin white stripes. It stands almost twenty-four inches tall and boasts seed spires that soar another foot over the bulk of the plant. 

When we write, our characters--like my grasses--must be a product of both nature and nurture. They cannot feel like clones of each other and must have distinct traits and quirks of their own.

So how do we populate our manuscripts with fully fleshed-out characters? It's as easy as planting a garden.

CAT'S GUIDE TO GROWING CHARACTERS

• Physical Nature. What does your character look like? Does he have black hair and green eyes? Is she slim with small hands and skin the color of skim milk? This part of character building is easy. It's the plant we pick up at the store and bring home to the garden. It is the building block for all that is to come. Physical character traits are as basic as describing the difference between a rose bush and a dandelion.
• Physical Nurture. How does your MC wear his black hair? Long and silky or short and spiky, and why? Does she keep her nails painted and long or are they chewed down and rough—a direct contrast to the rest of her delicate appearance? As writers, we choose these variables for a reason. They can be modified as our characters change and grow throughout the story. It's akin to watering our plants. Less water can force a plant to become more hardy, while consistent water usually results in a fuller, more robust plant.
• Psychological Nature. People are naturally predisposed to act a certain way. Some live with their glass half-empty, while others carry around one that is always half-full. As writers, we must understand the very basics of our characters' inherent psychological make-up. Is your MC timid?  Does she like hanging out in the shadows, or does she follow the light like a sunflower in an open field? These tendencies are natural and with us from birth. They cannot be changed, but they can be modified by the environment.
• Psychological Nurture. Even a timid character can be ferocious when the time is right. What triggers your MC to break out of her normal tendencies? What words force your happy-go-lucky character to withdraw? Writers control the amount of light they shed on their characters' lives. Cloudy days impact a character's natural predisposition as much as consistently clear skies.
• Social Nature. The community surrounding our characters is a bit like the dirt in which we plant them. They cannot change the fact that they have three vicious siblings and Crazy Aunt Betty living in the garage any more than the grass can control the acidity of the soil. Yet the social environment we create can be toxic or nutrient rich and largely shapes our characters and their behaviors.
• Social Nurture. Boosting a character's environment is as easy as fertilizing a daisy. By providing the supportive coach or the business mentor, writers can give an otherwise socially fragile character the chance to shine. Consider the following: A typical baby of the family can, in fact, act more like a first child if certain pressures are exerted on them. What makes your MC of an alcoholic parent embrace sobriety or embrace the bottle? What stunts your character's growth? What motivates them to break the mold or to follow in Crazy Aunt Betty's footsteps?

By modifying even one or two variables, we can largely change the personality and behavior of our characters. It honestly doesn't take much to create unique traits and toss stereotypes altogether.

I live in zone 4—a cold winter climate that doesn't allow for many perennials. Most flowers I plant are annuals that must be replanted each spring. However, the winter snows this past year created the perfect insulation for my annual flowerbed. Many plants that would traditionally die off returned with spunk and vigor. I love this defiance of genetic nature. It's what I strive for in my writing.

So tell me, fellow scribes, how do you create your characters? What factors influence their growth and development? Are you conscious of the natural traits you give them and the outside influences that impact their overall personality and motivation? Do you have a reason behind the long hair and nail-bit fingers? Have you ever planted a flower character in ideal conditions and had it die anyway? Have unexpected marigolds bloomed against all odds?

Curious minds want to know.

Critique Clinic

by Cat Woods

I won't lie to you, sometimes getting feedback from critique partners can stink worse than a riled-up midget skunk. Sometimes it makes us want to fling ourselves to the ground and pummel our fists onto the floor.

Is all feedback good feedback? No...and yes.

No, not all commentary on a piece will resonate with the writer, and not all feedback works with the writing style or the story. However, every single snippet of feedback can, and should, allow writers to see their work from a fresh perspective. Because not every reader will get the same message from our words, we need to pull on our big-girl panties and learn how to gracefully accept and use critique and commentary.

Please enjoy the snippets from seasoned writers and learn how feedback shaped their writing.

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS: A crucial scene in an agented writer's manuscript didn't ring true to a crit partner who works in the juvenile court system. Having his young MC detained overnight in a jail cell would never happen in real life based on the story events. And yet it was imperative that she would be locked up and supervised to make her escape appear magical. Our diligent writer had to tweak the scene to make it believable for all the hoodlums who would know the system and call him out as a liar.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: One writer--finishing up her soon-to-be published book—needed group discussion questions. She found a beta reader who is active in the kind of book clubs where she envisions her book being read. This helped her weed out redundant questions, as well as those that typically shut down a book club discussion.

Successful juvenile lit author, Donna Jo Napoli, once stated at an SCBWI conference that she "bribes" kids with a box of chocolate to read her WIPs. They are allowed—nay, encouraged—to quit reading whenever they feel like it. Her only caveat is that they must tell her exactly where they stopped reading. Not why, but where. In this way, she can pinpoint where her writing fails to engage her audience.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: An agented writer told how she used a sounding board of fellow scribes to help her brainstorm motives for her MC. The complaint by critters had been a lack of overall character oomph. The only thing that kept an otherwise delightful MC going was...well, hmmmm...so, the writer talked through her problem and hit upon a motive that resonated within the heart and soul of her MC—an unrealized pregnancy. No longer does she pine for love, but she has a reason to move forward. Her broken heart forced her to make choices she never would have made otherwise. All of which drastically changed the way readers perceived her MC.

UPPING THE ANTE: One MG writer told how crit group commentary changed the payment of the vet bill in his story from Dad's checkbook to the contents of the MC's piggy bank. By creating a scenario where the MC had to gamble with her pennies instead of her dad's paycheck, she felt the pinch. All of a sudden, she had a decision to make and a stake in the outcome. This gave readers something real to connect with—ah, yes, we've all had to weigh our spending habits carefully—and something to root for where the MC was concerned.

SEQUENCING: Have you ever tried to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg? A chapter book writer described her timeline faux pas. A mad mama who assaulted a grumpy king for calling her family a demeaning name. Yet the king didn't actually shout his expletive until after his toes had been smacked. "Hmmm," said Writer's Agent, "how does this work again?" And so, the scene was rewritten to create a believable timeline.

BOOKSHELF BLUNDER: An amazingly gifted storyteller once tried to sell her crit group a false bill of goods. Within the first few paragraphs it became apparent the manuscript was not a middle grade novel, but rather begged to reside on the shelves in the adult section of the book store. Listen up if more than one reader hints that a manuscript is something "other." Weigh a critter's words carefully, and be prepared to take your writing in an unexpected direction.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: Winter-worn tar roads aren't the only things that need filling. Sometimes our manuscripts have more plot holes and missed opportunities than we dream possible. A journalist/aspiring novelist described how his crit group almost unanimously cried out for a key character to have an affair. All the signs were present from the first chapter and yet he was the only one who didn't see the growing attraction and potential hook-up. Whether the affair actually happens or not remains to be seen, but the writer is now aware of the vibes these characters were sending out and has consciously incorporated these feelings into the plot.

There is nothing wrong with honest feedback. It's how we handle the information that counts. Click here to see the actual evolution of a critiqued passage—pre and post feedback. To get a better understanding of how feedback affects writers and what to do with those feelings, stick around for RC's words of wisdom on wearing those big-girl panties (slated for Monday).

What feedback have you received that drastically changed a portion of your manuscript? How has feedback from crit partners helped your writing? How do you know what to accept and what to reject in terms of crit commentary?

And to answer Wednesday's question: will a crit partner lay down his/her life for you? Darn right. When things kick into high gear and agent requests roll in or edits are due to publishers, it’s important to have at least one critter who will literally set aside their real life to read an entire novel on a moment’s notice. Deadlines can be tight in this business and writers need to count on their buddies.

Two Sides to Motivation

by R.C. Lewis

No, this is not a post on how to get yourself to meet your NaNoWriMo word count goals. This isn't about "get your cursor moving" motivation at all.

This is about motivation within the story—motivating the characters as well as the plot. First, a little background on what prompted this post.

I was reading (and generally enjoying) a pair of books from a particular series. The first red flag came when a side character was killed and I felt nothing. Maybe it happened too fast, maybe it was a failure to develop an emotional connection earlier ... or maybe it was because it "just kinda happened." Moving on, the MC executed an impressive string of "just doing things" for no clear reason other than to conveniently get herself in trouble. That's when I really started thinking about it and the failings of motivation.

Anyone who's tried to write a query letter has probably explored character motivation related to central conflict. What does the MC want and what stands in his/her way? My exploration has taken me from that macro level to the micro level of individual scenes and character actions or decisions. I've concluded that there are two types of motivation to consider at this level. I'm sure someone out there has more technical names for them, but this is how it's worked out in my mind.

Front-End Motivation
This is what triggers a character's actions. Why does she do this? Why does he react that way? It stems from preceding events as well as the character's personality and values. The trick here is to make sure our characters act and react in realistic and consistent ways, keeping them imperfect yet still believably human. If a character's going to make an obviously poor choice, the reader should be able to buy into the reason. Show the doubts or the willful rebellion, whatever it is that drives the decision.

Back-End Motivation
This is why an event/decision/development is worth including in the story. A few random details for flavor are fine, but anything more substantial should have a reason for happening. It may be the resolution of an earlier mini-conflict or the catalyst for something to happen later. In essence, it's what keeps individual scenes connected.

Both types are necessary, and different scenes will have a different balance of front- and back-end. I imagine few could be described as 50/50, but 5/95 (or 95/5) should be likewise rare. What happens when the balance is weighted too far to one side—or worse, when one side of the motivation is missing?

Back-End with No Front:
This dilemma inspires the "Well, that's convenient" reaction in readers and seems to be at the root of my instigating experience—the MC who "just does stuff." As authors, we know what we want to happen, so sometimes we force our characters to jump through hoops, just for the sake of making something work in the plot.

Front-End with No Back:
Scenes with this problem may come across as feeling random, tangential, or even indulgent. I suspect it occurs more when a writer is trying to pad the word count, or perhaps when the plot isn't yet fully formed. The characters do things that make sense given their personalities and prior events, but it doesn't really go anywhere. I'd say it's nothing to be too afraid of in a first draft if you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantser rather than a planner, but definitely something to watch out for in editing.

Neither Front Nor Back:
Sound the alarm and get thee a reality check, pronto! Characters are reacting inconsistently and randomly, and the story is going nowhere. At its most extreme, this isn't a story—it's words spewed onto a page. Might be okay for a free-write to play with dialogue or characterization, but once you're in story mode, these things need to be reined in ... at least to a degree.

So, let your characters be human (even if they aren't human, SF/F writers). People rarely do anything truly random. At the same time, be judicious in choosing which human moments to include in your story, and be mindful of why you've chosen them.

What motivational pitfalls have you encountered? More importantly, how have you avoided them?