Consistency of outcome or variation?

[Deadman]

I’m working on a story and trying to figure out how consistent I should be in how the chapters play out.

As an example, I’ve written two chapters so far and working on the third. The first two involve one character seducing different characters per chapter. In the third chapter, there’s a third person who is being seduced. In the previous two chapters, the seduction had basically the same outcome. However in the third chapter it feels like I’m writing a somewhat different ending. At least in terms of how the characters end up compared to the third being seduced.

So I’m not sure if this makes sense story wise because this third character will be involved in future chapters. Probably doing the same things as the first two characters will be doing. But I might be messing with the story consistency. It feels like the main character and the third character are leaving with a different relationship to each other than the first two.

Would something like that bother you? Why or why not?

 

[WarrenTheConey]

It doesn't sound like a problem to me.

In my experience, people care about the consistency of characters, more than anything else.

As long as you retain the consistency of your characters, there should be few, if any, objections about the path they follow and it's outcome.

Of course, people would have a problem with a path or ending, that seems out of line with what is considered reasonable for the world in which your story takes place. But that really goes without saying, usually.

So, if the ending is one that you believe your characters would naturally arrive at, then that ending should be fine.

[Deadman]

17 hours ago, WarrenTheConey said:

It doesn't sound like a problem to me.

In my experience, people care about the consistency of characters, more than anything else.

As long as you retain the consistency of your characters, there should be few, if any, objections about the path they follow and it's outcome.

Of course, people would have a problem with a path or ending, that seems out of line with what is considered reasonable for the world in which your story takes place. But that really goes without saying, usually.

So, if the ending is one that you believe your characters would naturally arrive at, then that ending should be fine.

I definitely think there’s a consistency of characters to some extent. However, I do worry if the outcome isn’t quite what makes sense.

The main character definitely has a specific outcome in mind for where they’re trying to end up. Which I think is consistent across all 3 of the chapters so far. That isn’t necessarily going to change. But I have seen stories on here that tend to follow a specific pattern. So I worry that this third character seems somewhat inconsistent in the pattern. To use an example non-specific to the story. Suppose you have a character casting a spell and the spell has the same effect on the first two characters and probably a fourth character. But the third character has the same spell cast on them and it doesn’t have the same effect, though somewhat similar outcome. The spell caster still ultimately gets what they want in the end.

It feels like that’s what I’m doing. I’ve set up a magic spell being cast but don’t have an explanation for why it works differently on the third character. Perhaps it does because within the original canon, the main character has a different history with the third character to the first two.