I’ve mentioned fridging (or the trope of woman in a refrigerator) as a concept that I’m not super fond of, but what’s the difference between that and a (usually) female character dying (or enduring violence) without becoming the trope?
In a word, agency.
Understood in a variety of ways, agency can be seen as giving a character choices. Then, as they decide among those options, there’s the possibility of seeing them take control of their own fate. They’re not victims of their circumstances because of the decisions of others; instead, they have their own path, and their choices also affect the plot.
And while these characters may still die in the end (or get seriously hurt), they go down with a fight and, if possible, somehow, lead to the perpetrator getting caught.
Avoiding the trope doesn’t mean that female characters can’t die—I’ve included a death or two in some of my books. But the point is, the character is the one who makes the choice to face a villain or seek out the adventure that eventually lands them in trouble. And their death can be heroic and definitely not with unnecessary violence.
Agency ties in with making characters more than one-dimensional creations. While working into a story the whole biography that you may have for a character can be complicated and forced, there are a few ways of including information about, for example, choices the characters have made and how they feel about them, their likes and dislikes, and anything, really. From dropping hints on outfits of choice, referring to their favorite playlists, or even complaining about a food that they will never eat again (and why), there are more than a handful of options that can help readers get a clearer sense about the characters and why they make the choices that they make.
And it’s important not to turn one characteristic into the character’s whole personality. Yes, people can get super into a sport and have everything from clothes to cushions to season tickets—but they still have a job, a family, friends, and maybe an additional hobby or two.
The character’s agency will depend on their abilities as well as their motivation, and obviously not all characters will have the same degree of agency because the main ones should simply have more (unless the story is about a character to whom things happen).
When a character has a high degree of agency, the plot would be heavily affected if they were removed or replaced with another one. Say you’re replacing Katniss with Hermione—they’ve both got agency but to varying degrees and they deal with problems differently—so the plot of The Hunger Games and its sequels would be altered (as would the Harry Potter books with the opposite replacement).
So let’s move on from fridging and give characters agency!
