What is Agency?

Okay, so let’s talk about damsels. Wait, I can hear you think, didn’t she title this “What is Agency?” Yes. Yes, she did. Agency, as it were, does make the difference between the classic damsel and someone close to the hero who just happened to get kidnapped.

When does a main character not have agency? There’s actually three main reasons why your character might feel like they’re missing something in that area.

1)      Your character is only reacting.

2)      Your character is only following orders.

3)      Your character is not able to make decisions.

Those are three ways to write your story where the main character doesn’t have an agency, even if it might look like they have. So, let’s look at those three ways.

Your character is only reacting. From what I’ve heard (I haven’t seen the movie yet), “Rise of Skywalker” has that problem. There’s always something happening, always a lot of action, chases, fights, etc. The characters have to react to what is happening around them, so they have no real choice about what to do. Choice is important for agency, because a character who is only doing what is necessary to survive isn’t developing. Characters should evolve during a story (but even if they don’t, they should make their own choices) and a character only reacting can’t evolve.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have situations in which the character has to react, but that shouldn’t be the whole story. Even a character on the run will, once the immediate danger has passed, get a chance to make choices, to decide where to go, whether to hide, run, or fight back. Choice matters, even if it’s the wrong one. Heck, a lot of character development is connected to people making wrong choices, so sometimes the wrong choice is the right one, speaking from a writer’s perspective.

Your character is only following orders. In addition to being the go-to excuse for people who did bad things, ‘only following orders’ is also a nice way not to have an agency. It’s again about choices. A character only following orders (whether they’re military or just following their parents’, spouse’s, or boss’s orders) doesn’t make decisions, but follows the agency of whoever gives the orders. That doesn’t mean that your character, being a soldier, for instance, can’t sometimes follow an order. To have agency, though, they also have to make decisions for themselves. In the heat of the battle, a soldier, to stay with that example, does have to make their own choices, even if it’s only whether to attack this enemy or that one.

Again, you can have a character who has to follow orders, but at some point, they also need to make their own decision. The daughter who has to get married, but can choose her fiancé. The employee who has to decide not to do something their boss wants them to do. The moment your character makes choices, even if it’s within a frame given by orders, they are developing an agency.

Your character is not able to make decisions. That’s quite often where the damsel comes in. When a character is either physically incapable of making choices (being unconscious, for instance) or mentally incapable of making choices (because they’re under the influence of a drug or a spell or suchlike), they don’t have an agency. Where would the agency come from? Quite often, the damsel falls into that trap. She (men are rarely damselled) is simply locked away and all ways of making decisions are seemingly taken from her. Because of that, she has no agency and just sits and waits for the hero to rescue her.

Your character can be in a situation short-term where they’re not capable of making decisions. They can be severely injured, unconscious, or in a mental state in which they can’t make a decision. But that state must end and at some point, they have to make their own decisions again.

Does my distaste for damsels mean that there can never be a situation in which someone close to the hero can be kidnapped to put pressure on them? No. The problem with the classic damsel isn’t that she gets kidnapped. That can also happen to the hero’s sidekick or mentor. The problem is that the damsel has no agency of her own. Even when you’re kidnapped, you can try to make life harder for those who caught you, you can try to escape (even if you fail), or you can try to gather intel which may be of use to the hero later. You can still be active, make decisions, try to take control of your fate, even if you fail. Making choices isn’t the same as always making the right choices, but from a storyteller’s perspective, a wrong choice is still better than no choice. A wrong choice can be much better, because they can cause a development in a character.

Another big problem with agency is when one character’s agency is merely to serve another character. This can often happen with love interests in non-romance stories. They are only there so the hero has someone to rescue and later on bed/marry/spend a night with. They are, to put it short, a prize. They are a fancy vase which the hero can put on the mantle of their fireplace or a medal to hang on the hero’s chest. That is the true problem with characters which only serve the hero. The same which goes for the damsel also goes for the fridged girlfriend or wife, for the rape victim which has a relationship with the hero. They have no existence outside of the hero’s and thus are not given any agency or development of their own. Admittedly, once you’re dead, there’s not much agency to be had (unless it’s a very special case and you come back as a vampire or something similar).

Agency is making choices and decisions. A character with agency has a plan of their own, wants to achieve something and is working towards that. They don’t just react to what happens around them, they don’t just take orders, and they need to be able to choose in some way. Choices don’t need to be good, but they need to be made. For a character’s development, a bad choice can be much more useful than a good one. Give your main characters agency and see how that plays out in a story.