When a character makes a decision in fiction the consequences can land at plot level;
Ripley tells Hicks to wait for her as she arms up and goes back to find Newt. That’s the decision. The plot level consequence is having to fight the alien Queen.
But there are often consequences in fiction deeper than the plot. Consequences that cost the character something that doesn’t land directly in the immediate plot.
I wanted to throw this quick article together to remind you of this and give one of my classic handy-dandy reference lists:
Material:
Personal resources, time, physical capacity. This is the most visible surface level stuff. When the playboy son’s latest stunt goes bad, Daddy goes into his wallet and bails him out. Putting out a chunk of cash is easy to see and understand, but it’s also the least impersonal or meaningful–so while the actual cash price may be high, the cost of the character to spend it isn’t really.
Positional:
Standing, authority, membership, credibility. Hinges on other elements, usually elements that have been developed over time, perhaps a life-time, which makes it a particularly potent cost.
Relational:
Access to a specific person; their trust, admiration, respect. Hinges on the length of the relationship and quality of what the relationship ultimately provides the character. Individual relationships might have little actual cost to a player who sleeps around, while the one he actually falls in love with, may be invaluable.
Liberties:
Personal ability to choose. Free will. This is a less visible on the page cost because of its nature, but also because the consequence hasn’t arrived yet. The character simply has fewer doors to open. Supports dread, suspense and tension.
Self-assessment:
The cost is an action incompatible with the character’s own view of themselves. Extremely potent internal cost, because who we are fundamentally is inescapable. Paying here means either revising one’s self-image (potentially painful or emotionally taxing) or digging deeper with another layer of rationalization, leading to one of the greatest cost of all, our sanity or mental health.
It’s worth noting here that all costs associated with a character’s decision have to come from clear context.
The reader needs to see the breadth and depth of what the character’s holding in any of these areas they plan to withdraw from. Availability or finitude, define value. Otherwise the cost is irrelevant.
Just like the example earlier, with the playboy’s dad bailing his son out of jail. If the father has unlimited funds, the cost is actually trivial and the father is simply going through the motions. If the father has been indicted for fraud and all his assets seized, and he’s pulling from the last pool of funds, which just barely covers the son’s bail, now suddenly the cost is incredibly impactful.
Or finally, if we never know how much money the father has, then the cost of paying the bail lands almost invisibly.
Bonus Cost:
Welfare of Others:
The cost paid is the welfare of someone else. Of course, this only works if the character whose fate hangs in the balance is bound to the character spending it. Otherwise the welfare of a stranger becomes a character trait not a cost of consequences.
There’s a number of movies that throw various people in a confined space and have them mentally/physically battle each other, like the Movie Exam. So if you’re trying to get the ultimate corporate job, and a psycho boss asks you to kill the guy next to you, to get it. If you shoot him in the chest, it makes you a murderer, with a self-assessment cost, but no welfare to others cost.
But if that person you’re tasked to kill is your sister, whom you love, now a true cost of Welfare of Others exists.
Not an exhaustive list, but a useful one the next time you’re considering what the costs of a characters decision are… and what they should be. ▪
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Nick Macari is a full-time freelance story consultant, developmental editor and writer, working primarily in the independent gaming and comic markets. His first published comic appeared on shelves via Diamond in the late 90’s. Today you can find his comic work on comixology, Amazon, and in select stores around the U.S.