benlehman

You can't sacrifice your character's validity for a story, like I said, because once you do it's not a story anymore, it's a collection of unrelated scenes. If your character acts inconsistent. But 'inconsistent' doesn't mean 'exactly as I've previously percieved him to act', it means 'so that all previous actions from this character maintain validity'.

I know that I have sometimes redefined what my character did on the fly - looking back at an action he took and saying 'Wow, I thought that meant X but now I want it to mean Y'. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as both explanations fit all the data that you can't change (the world, what other people have seen of your character, etc.)

I think that whether 'story' inevitably happens depends on your definition of the word. It doesn't fit mine - at least not my definition of 'good story'. Lots of people in the real world interact with other people and the world around them and don't make a story I'd want to tell. Maybe it is a story, but I wouldn't be satisfied roleplaying it. And whether you think that's true or not, I _think_ you'd agree that considering things from at least a somewhat meta-perspective will help to make a BETTER story.

I think we talked about this in the context of Covenant - setting up relationships beforehand in such a way as to cause interesting conflicts later. That's the same thing.