Breaking Bad Storytelling Secrets 2: Crafting Impossible Situations To Create Believable Characters

The key to helping readers & viewers believe your story (and the people in it).

Dear Writer,

I received a lot of positive feedback around my previous post, Breaking Bad Storytelling Secrets. So thank you for that.

But something else occurred to me as I was doing my reading this morning—and I wanted to take a moment to a) crystallize it for myself, and b) share it with you.

Impossible Situations Create Believable Characters

Storytelling is often thought of as the combination of:

• Plot

• Setting

• Character

On paper, that’s correct. Those 3 mechanisms are at play when you’re crafting a story (of any kind).

However, this is what makes writing an Infinite Game: easy to learn, hard to master. Because the way you go about executing those 3 simple mechanisms is the difference between a late-night cheesy sitcom and an addictive, binge-worthy show like Breaking Bad.

And one of the mistakes I notice gets made the most is when writers try to “create characters.”

Character Creation is not something YOU (as the writer) do.

It is, but it’s not.

If we think about how our own character traits develop in real life, “we” aren’t really the ones creating ourselves. (Again: we are, but we’re not.) Instead, we are the ones who choose (or sometimes, we don’t get to choose) which SITUATIONS we put ourselves in… and then it’s in those situations that our character is formed:

• What we say Yes to

• What we say No to

• What we speak up about

• What we stay silent about

• What conflict we embrace

• What conflict we avoid

• What relationships we pursue

• What relationships we reject

• Etc.

We aren’t telling ourselves, “This is who you are,” before each and every situation—and even in the moments when we try, it’s fair to say we ALL have a bad habit of doing the opposite. (“I’m not going to fall in love with this person!” / “Welp, now we’re married.”) Instead, we figure out who we are, and decide on-the-fly who we are in each and every situation. For example: If you have never given a speech in front of a crowd before, and today is the day it finally has to happen, who you are after that speech is a) going to be different than who you were before that speech, and b) completely depends on how you choose (or are able to) handle yourself through that situation.

“You” aren’t the one deciding your character.

Your character gets decided based on the way you navigate the situation.

Very small nuance. Very big difference.

When writers sit down and go through the exercise of trying to create believable characters, what happens?

Those characters “seem great” or “seem evil” on paper. But then in the story they come off as artificial. Why? Because you didn’t give them LIFE. (That’s a broad word. Let me be more specific.) You didn’t give them an OPPORTUNITY to BECOME the character you had in mind for them to be. You just… “made them that way.” And therein lies the problem.

Quick story to show the difference:

When I was 19 years old, I took a semester off from college to canoe 320 miles through Florida (as part of a drug rehabilitation program).

All we did was wake up, canoe for 15-20 miles, stop, setup camp, cook dinner, go to sleep, repeat.

For 30 days in a row.

Well, as you can imagine, by about Day 6 we all wanted out. It was a group of 12 guys, half of whom were throwing up and actively going through some form of withdrawal. And the journey had only just begun!

So that night, while we were all sitting around the campfire eating whatever beans-and-rice meal we’d cooked for dinner, one of the counselors told us a story. He explained how, when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it goes through a process of breaking out of its cocoon. We all know this.

The part we didn’t know, and the part that has stuck with me since, is that when butterflies are made in butterfly farms, their keepers need to be very careful. Because what an inexperienced keeper does is see a caterpillar start to struggle in their cocoon and decide to help them out. They will take a small razor and make a few cuts in the cocoon to make it easier for the butterfly to emerge.

Well, guess what happens?

When the caterpillar no longer has to struggle out of their cocoon, the butterfly that emerges is weak… and almost always dies shortly thereafter.

In storytelling, think less “How do I create believable characters?” And think more, “How can I put them in believable but impossible situations?”

When you deprive your characters of the SITUATIONS required in order for them to BECOME the character you have in mind, you might “create the character” but they are weak.

They are the butterfly who didn’t have to struggle out of its cocoon.

But when you think less about “creating a character” and think more about “creating an impossible situation,” suddenly the character has to make choices and DECIDE whether he or she is capable of becoming who you have in mind. They have to earn it.

So, don’t worry about creating believable characters.

Just focus on creating believable, impossible situations… and then putting those characters through them, and seeing how they emerge.