Not sure what a character should do?
Ask him or her. That’s the advice I picked up from an “Art of Fiction” interview with Israeli novelist David Grossman in Paris Review #182. Here’s the exchange:
Q: Do you have any strategies you employ when you get stuck?
A: Sometimes I write a letter to my protagonist, as if he were a real human being. I ask, What’s the difficulty? Why can’t you make it? What is preventing me from understanding you. It’s always helped.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to write someone a letter.
