Let’s talk about something that, as a fantasy and science fiction developmental editor, I’ve seen in many recent stories, from rough client manuscripts to big bestsellers:

Authors are afraid to let their main characters make real mistakes, so they resort to manufacturing character guilt.

Often, this is a response to a genuine craft dilemma: For a character to have a change arc, they need to start out with a weakness that causes them to make mistakes. (Otherwise, why bother with the arc?) But because readers can judge characters harshly for their mistakes, and attachment to the protagonist is essential to keep readers reading, this feels like a risk.

In this article, we’ll take a look at (1) the ‘solution’ that many authors employ that can end up undermining the story and (2) how to let your characters make real mistakes without damaging readers’ opinion of them (and often make the character more sympathetic in the process).

We’ll do this through two main examples. To avoid spoilers, I won’t name any names, but both examples are from a recent, successful fantasy novel with multiple point-of-view characters. They seem to me representative of how our dilemma tends to be handled in the current fantasy publishing climate.

The ‘solution’ that doesn’t really work

The example

Point-of-view character and co-protagonist S is a teenage princess in a high fantasy world. Her beloved twin brother confides that he’s been secretly poisoning their father, the king, to death so he can take the throne for himself. While S doesn’t have much love for their father, she’s horrified.

Immediately, S wants to tell someone and help bring an end to her brother’s scheme. The narrative gives good reasons why she can’t do this, two of which are especially compelling. Firstly, she doesn’t know who to trust with this information – her brother must have accomplices in the court – and if she chooses the wrong person, she’ll probably be killed herself, and nothing will change. Secondly, based on the land’s history, revealing the treachery of the heir just as the old king dies would likely result in chaos and war, causing the deaths of many innocent people. She has reason to believe her brother will be a better king than their irresponsible father.

The author does a great job of binding S in a no-win situation. And that’s exactly the problem.

Because once S’s understandable decision to keep quiet leads to the death of not only her father but also an innocent child, and her newly coronated brother turns out to be a murderous tyrant, the narrative suddenly gets amnesia. S blames herself for how things turned out, and the story doesn’t challenge her belief. Those very good reasons S had for her choice have been forgotten so that the author can use her guilt as a stick to beat her with and force a quasi-redemption-arc setup for future books, when she’ll probably strike back against her brother.

The analysis

This is the ‘solution’ many stories try to use to let characters make mistakes without damaging likability. Their mistakes are not actually mistakes, so there’s no point where the character makes a choice that readers might dislike them for. This maintains the character’s likability but at the cost of the story’s logic and the character’s opportunities for authentic growth.

Authors can get away with this when they’re skilled at portraying character emotions. Readers who don’t think about it too hard won’t be able to put their finger on why the manufactured guilt – and any character ‘growth’ that results from it – feels unearned.

So, is this ‘solution’ clever? Yes. But it’s also hollow because it leaves the character with no lesson to learn from the experience. S’s first instinct was already to stop the killing; readers have every reason to believe she would have done it if the situation had been a little less impossible. As a result, it’s unclear what inner struggle readers should hope to see her overcome over the course of the series. It feels like she already knows what this story was supposed to teach her: that speaking the truth is better than staying silent.

The parable of S is far from the most egregious example. I’ve read many stories where the story blames characters for ‘mistakes’ as dubious as failing to protect their family from powerful attackers when they were small children.

But isn’t it realistic that a character might feel guilty for not preventing a tragedy even if they realistically couldn’t have? Sure. But in that case, their character arc should probably be about overcoming that misplaced guilt. The story would have to challenge the guilt by helping the character see that what happened wasn’t their fault.

And even then, if the bad thing was too obviously not their fault, like a child failing to protect their family, many readers will get tired of the character berating themself for it. It’s also harder to construct an impactful arc around a commonsensical lesson. All in all, it makes more sense to build your arcs around real weaknesses and mistakes instead of forced ones.

A much better solution

The example

S’s co-protagonist, K, is a thief. He breaks into a secret place, where he accidentally awakens a monster. The monster badly wounds a younger friend of his, and K, terrified, chooses to flee to save himself rather than try to rescue his friend, leaving him alone in the dark to die.

On the run from the monster and accusations of murdering his friend, he ends up in a temple where the priest knows about the lore surrounding the monster. K knows he should speak up about his experience with the monster before it hurts more people. But because the priest, though he seems trustworthy enough himself, is a member of the culture that has long oppressed K’s people, K chooses not to trust him. The monster, which has been following K, finds him at the temple and kills the priest. K now has these two deaths on his conscience, and the monster remains on the loose. He feels deeply guilty and spends the rest of the story struggling to uncover knowledge that will help stop the monster.

The analysis

Notice that, unlike S’s, K’s mistakes feel real because he had a clear alternative in the moment. He could have risked sacrificing himself to save his friend, especially since he got the younger boy into the deadly situation in the first place. But the monster is described in such terrifying terms that readers sympathise with his overpowering urge to run away.

He also could have confided in the priest, who would have had a chance to save himself from the monster if he knew about it. But we understand why K doesn’t tell him. He’s grown up believing that people of the priest’s culture are untrustworthy, so trusting one with a story about how he broke into a place, stole treasure, and abandoned his friend to die feels like too much.

At the end of the book, the author frames K’s weakness as running away from his problems. This makes sense – both of his mistakes involved fearful avoidance. This feels like a real, demonstrated inner problem that readers can root for him to overcome. He can learn to make more courageous choices instead of living with the guilty consequences of choosing fear.

Tips for letting your characters make mistakes

What can we learn from the differences in these two approaches?

(1) Give the character a sympathetic reason for their choice.

This is common writing advice for a reason. K’s mistakes are effective storytelling because we understand why he makes the choices he feels are wrong – terror and deep cultural biases are hard to overcome, particularly in dangerous moments that require quick thinking. Readers are unlikely to see K as foolish or immoral because his mistakes feel like ones anyone could have made in his position.

In other words, his mistakes probably won’t ruin his likability for most readers. In fact, they arguably add to it because he’s allowed to be a fallible, relatable human in a way that S, whose only mistake isn’t really a mistake, isn’t.

Use context setup and introspection to show readers your character’s thought process leading up to the mistake, and they’ll be much more forgiving.

(2) Ensure your character has an alternative option that they’re aware of at the moment of choice.

S’s choice is between being indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents by keeping quiet and… be indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents by speaking up. A decision doesn’t usually register as a mistake when there are no good options. Lose-lose situations realistically can produce feelings of guilt, but it will feel forced if the story implies that the guilt is deserved and pretends the character has something to learn from their ‘mistake.’

(3) In a no-win situation, use heroism instead of redemption.

If your character is genuinely caught between a rock and a hard place, that can still be compelling. Just avoid using the aftermath to set up a fake redemption arc. Instead of ‘I should have prevented the bad thing (even though I realistically couldn’t have), so now I have to atone however I can,’ try having the character think, ‘I couldn’t do anything differently back when I made the choice. But now, I have the chance to make things right, and I want to / have a responsibility to act on it, even at my own risk.’ This would have been a fairer approach to a dilemma like S’s.

A quick diagnostic test

When you’re thinking about a mistake your character makes, ask yourself:

‘If my friend told me they made the same choice my character does, would my reaction be to point out that it wasn’t their fault?’

If a reasonable person would say, ‘You couldn’t have known or done better,’ then it’s probably not a character mistake and shouldn’t be treated as one narratively.

If your reaction would be to tell your friend something like, ‘That wasn’t your finest moment, but I understand why you did it,’ you’re in genuine, storytelling-quality mistake territory.