Don’t Rescue your Characters
When we rescue our characters, we think we’re being kind to the characters, and to the audience, who we hope also love our characters. What we’re actually doing is protecting ourselves.
The problem?
For many writers, their characters are like their children. They gave them life, nurtured them, and gave them a journey and a purpose.
But unlike your actual children, failing to protect them or rescue them carries no actual risk. Even if a character dies in your story, they still live on as long as your story lives.
There’s no need for us to protect them. Au contraire, we need to test them, ultimately to their limits and beyond.
When you steal your character’s struggles from them, you rob them of more than their agency. You trade ninety minutes of deep connection with the character for a short moment of squishy sentiment.
How Rescuing Reveals Itself
Watch out for these signs that you’re rescuing your character:
- Problems solved by convenient coincidence rather than tough decisions. ‘Teenagers looking for a place to hold a party, one set of parents decides to visit out-of-state Grandma on the very night. ‘Will you be OK on your own, sweetheart?’
- Antagonists who soften, ‘It was all a misunderstanding – if only I’d known who you really were…’. Or vanish offstage.
- Last‑minute info or abilities appearing out of thin air after the dilemma arises.
- Mentors/allies swooping in so the protagonist doesn’t have to choose, act, or pay the price.
- Consequences deferred, diluted, or outsourced.
To map the teen party story against those possibilities:
- Parents decide to visit Grandma out-of-state (i.e. an overnight trip).
- Neighbours get suspicious, but talk themselves out of checking out what’s happening.
- They have trouble getting alcohol, turns out one character has miraculous abilities to forge driving licences.
- They wake up the next morning hungover, with the house trashed. But Grandma has taken a turn for the worse, so the parents are staying an extra night.
Each of these ‘rescues’ could be easily fixed, as long as you realise what you’ve done.
Instead of having the neighbours decide not to check the situation out, have them come knocking, and have the protagonist persuade them that all is well. We know it isn’t, but we can see why the neighbours are persuaded. The problem arrives, the character digs themselves out of the hole.
Instead of one of the people at the party suddenly revealing hitherto unknown skills, have a character who already has the skills, but is excluded from the party because they’re uncool. Now somebody has to persuade them that their exclusion was an oversight, without triggering suspicion that they’re just being used.
And so on.
Next time your character faces an impossible situation, resist the urge to intervene on their behalf. Let them struggle. And then let them surprise you and impress you. And your audience.
It may seem that by stepping in you are being kind to your character and helping the story flow, but in truth, you are denying the character full agency, and throwing away the meat of your story.
And, let it be said, you are also rescuing yourself.
And though they may not consciously notice you doing that, the audience’s story instinct will pick it up. And when they do, they will withdraw a little of their trust in you as a storyteller.
Don’t just avoid Rescuing…
Don’t just avoid rescuing your characters. Actively send them into danger. Let them risk catastrophic failure, learn and grow up. Don’t go for easy solutions. Have the courage to challenge yourself by challenging your characters.
Your characters might not thank you for it, but your audience will.
The audience lives in a world of real consequences. Taking a chance and getting it wrong can have fatal consequences for them – literally, emotionally, financially, morally, psychologically and socially.
Your gift to them is a fictional character who will take those chances and test those limits on their behalf. Perhaps even discover solutions, or at least a new way of looking at the problem.
Let’s see those Consequences
When you feel your story losing tension, run this check. If none of these consequences land, you’ve probably unconsciously intervened.
1. Physical/literal: Do they suffer physical injury, loss or damage to something treasured, loss of time?
2. Emotional: Are they exposed to shame, grief, guilt, or dread?
3. Financial: Do they experience debt, bankruptcy, financial loss, burnt resources?
4. Moral: Is their sense of personal integrity damaged? Do they (or others) see moral flaws that have been hidden till now?
5. Psychological: Are they pressured by doubts, obsessions, or fears? Do they fear for their sense of self?
6. Social: Do they experience, or feel threatened by: loss of status, loss of friendships, loss or damage to core relationships; exclusion from groups; damage to reputation – moral, or professional?
Reinsert them and feel the dramatic tension rise again.
Who are you really rescuing?
Often, rescuing characters isn’t about kindness to the characters at all.
It’s about our own writer’s fear—of judgment, exposure, or moral discomfort.
That fear deserves its own examination. See ‘But what if my Mother Found Out?’ essay below.
