Choices

Hey guys!

This post is a bit dark because it encompasses something that is a very scary reality in life itself. It's the idea of the choice. That doesn't sound all too scary right? Bologna or Roast Beef isn't going to kill me, right?

Well, no. But I am talking about giving your character an impossible choice. Like the bad guy has the character's boyfriend and best friend dangled over a precipice and they can only save one of them. Or it could entail throwing a character into a moral catastrophe like the plot of the movie "The Belko Experiment." where a voice from the speakers forces people to murder each other or all die.

It's humanity at its core... It's survival instinct. You see this in so many places. Joey Graceffa's Escape the Night, Midnight (That episode of Doctor Who where people almost threw someone off a train), or that one M. Night Shyamalan movie I don't know the name of... in the elevator. In each situation there is a group of people trapped somewhere and there are some decisions that need to be made and people are so eager to make the decision that they don't even stop to think about what they are about to do.

The mechanic of the choice can do so much for your story. It doesn't even have to be extreme. Think about the Matrix... Neo had a choice between the red pill or the blue pill. If Neo had picked the other pill, he would have probably ended the movie right then and there. Choices always have reprecussions.

And most of the time when a choice is brought before a main character by an antagonist... it puts them in a moral dilemma. And how the character reacts determines who this person is.

Scenario: You're trapped in a room with five other people. There is a voice on the intercom that tells you if you want to get out alive you need to kill one of the other people in the room.

Now of course, no one is automatically willing to kill anyone. But what if there was a catch. Like, the room is slowly filling with carbon monoxide and if no one kills anyone, they will all die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Now there is a sudden push to survive. Kill or be killed. Suddenly the characters are sacrificing their clear conscience to live. That is called survival. And anyone if pushed hard enough can do what they need to do. Their mind however, ends up being permanently changed. It's almost insanity.


Choices make characters grow just like they make us as people grow. And how you respond makes you who you will become. If that makes sense.