How to Make Readers Care About Your Protagonist—and Your Plot

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If you’re struggling with a lagging story, a lack of character agency might be the reason why.

A helpful-yet-brutal piece of critique feedback is “Why should I care?” Why should readers care about the character, the conflict, or the story in general? Why should they read this novel you’ve worked so hard to create?

“Because it’s my novel and I love it” might be true, but sadly, no one outside our friends and family accept that as a reason. And sometimes, not even then if we have honest critique partners. Potential readers are lost every day to novels that might be good in every other aspect, but they just “didn’t care” what happened to the characters.

Often, this is due to a lack of agency.

4 Ways to Develop Character Agency

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Many novels fail because their protagonist lacks agency.

Early on in my writing career, I’d never heard the term “agency.” Then I started hearing it everywhere. I suspect I’d crossed a learning threshold and had begun reading more advanced blogs and books, and had stumbled into a higher level of writing advice than I had previously seen.

To paraphrase regular guest author, Rochelle Melander, I had leveled up as a writer.

These days, I hear folks talking about agency all the time, and the word has become part of my writing vocabulary. But I’d bet plenty of other writers still encounter it and have no idea what it is, or they get the general gist of it in context, but aren’t really sure what to do with it.

Imagine my shock when I realized I’d never once written about it here. 3,000 articles on this site, and not a single one on character agency.