on Fiction University:

Making the wrong choice isn’t good in life, but it’s great for plotting a novel.

As people, we want to make the right choice, so it’s only natural that those are the choices that first come to us as we write a scene. The problem there, is that “doing the right thing” doesn’t usually cause the wonderful conflict we need to craft compelling stories. (But when it does it’s writing gold.)

Lifehack had a great post about how not to mess up your decisions. The writer in me instantly saw what a fantastic guide it was for crafting characters with bad decision-making skills, which of course makes for more interesting plots. Nobody likes a smarty pants who gets everything right all the time. We want characters with flaws, and issues, who make snap judgements and totally mess things up while trying to make things better.

You really don’t want your characters to act like they’ve three weeks to consider their options just because you took that long to write the scene (and probably had input from fellow writers and friends, too). A decision made in the heat of the moment isn’t the same as one made after weeks of considering.

And characters making “in the heat of the moment” decisions can make or break your plot.

Because they’re real, they’re human, and they let you take the story in all kinds of unpredictable ways. Anything can happen when someone makes a bad decision.

Here are some handy ways your character can make the wrong choice next time they’re faced with an all-important decision: