Sometimes your characters need a break – sometimes you need to let your characters win. This is a companion piece to the blog post I wrote a little while ago: Defeat is More Interesting Than Victory. I stand by that – I think in most good books the balance of victories should be against your protagonist. But that doesn’t mean your characters should never win! There are definitely moments where they need to come out on top, or get what they want. But how do you do that while keeping up your story momentum? How do you let your characters win without things getting boring? That’s what we’re going to cover today!

Defeat and victory don’t have to be straightforward opposites

Put another way: let your characters win, but. A win doesn’t have to be a straightforward, uncomplicated good. And mixing in some downsides to a victory can do a lot to make it more narratively interesting.

What could this look like? For example, your protagonist having to sacrifice something to win. Whether that’s their own morals, a prized possession or someone else’s respect. Giving victory a price adds dimension to a win. It also prevents that frustrating thing that can happen in stories where characters seem to overcome obstacles and waltz effortlessly to victory. Readers tend to get more satisfaction from stories where characters struggle to get what they want rather than those where victory comes easy.

Another option for this is giving the victory an unexpected consequence. Your character wins, things are looking great, but then they realise that they’ve created a whole new problem for themselves. Have they turned a casual rival into a true enemy? Have they painted a target on themselves more broadly by winning this one battle? This tactic can use a victory to actually raise the stakes of your story in a natural and compelling way.

Make sure to fully explore the moment of victory

Give the readers time to appreciate the impact of a victory. This means paying attention to consequences, both good and bad. Even a straightforward and relatively easy victory can be made more interesting by paying attention to what it means to your characters.

How does your protagonist feel about the victory, and is it the way they expected to feel? If it seemed too easy, that might leave your character feeling a sense of anticlimax that you can explore. Maybe it leaves them feeling paranoid that there’s more to the situation than they thought. Or perhaps they realise that this goal was only the start of a much larger journey.

Have their goals changed over the course of the story? If so, the moment of victory might give them a chance to reflect on what they thought they wanted. This can be a great chance to contrast where your character started to where they are now.

Let your characters win when they’ve really earned it

Readers are much more likely to root for a victory that your character has really earned! This can mean that they’ve been working towards it diligently, or it can be more of a karmic earning. Just ask yourself, does your character deserve a win? What have you shown readers to evidence that?

A great way to earn a victory for your character is to have it be the culmination of a character arc. They’ve learned the lessons they needed to learn from the beginning, and that learning has brought them to victory here.

Given that it takes time for characters to earn a win, this raises another question. Are you going to finish your story on a victory? This will depend a little on the nature and tone of your story. Bleak dystopian fiction probably isn’t going to end on a satisfying victory for your characters, no matter how much they might have earned it by that point! But if you’re going for a happily ever after for your characters, you still might want to reconsider ending the whole story on the moment of victory.

While that might work great, it can be a little disappointing for readers to get that success and then turn the page and run out of story. You may need some time afterwards to let your characters enjoy the win, or consider what it means for them. This comes back to our second point!

How do you feel about letting your characters win?

Do you tend to let your characters win a few times throughout the story, or do you prefer to really punish them? Let me know in the comments!

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• Having Your Characters Make Bad Decisions Without Annoying Readers
• What Is the Three-Act Structure?
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