To Believe or not to believe

I'd rather say that all characters have to be believable inside their own universe, Also, unless we're talking about the antagonist(s), they should to follow some common sense and basic norms for social behavior. To use your latest piece as an example: In the second chapter one of the characters suddenly took a swing at another character, and based on what we had seen previously it felt excessive and out of place. We humans tend to expect that the "good guys" follow the same rules as as a human society does, and having a character kneeing a presumed friend in the gut to keep him/her from telling a secret, will break all those rules and tend to make the reader go "WTF just happened!?"

If I, as a reader, had been given some prior warning I might be more willing to accept such action, but when I read that particular piece it just felt like something the writer had thrown in there at the last moment to spice up the story a bit.

 

My character, Vixena, is suppose to be a ruthless femimist warrior. She has a grudge against her comrade, Jaden, and she beats him sometime as her way of punishment to get him in line, but Jaden doesn't care.

 

Ah. But you never tell the reader this, so when she does it seems misplaced and can easily throw the reader off.

 

I wanted to show the reader instead of telling she is a tomboy bitch.

 

Her personality isn't the issue here, though. It's easy enough to gauge someone's personality. But you said that she specifically has a grudge against Jaden. Why? What caused the grudge? That's something you can't show the reader. You can only tell them through giving history or through dialog. Either one is fine, just so long as you make sure the readers understand why she's beating up someone that she views as a "comrade."

 

Her grudge will be explained in the later chapters. She hates him because he commited a lot pranks on her, which embarrassed her. Do you want me to post that part?

 

LMAO

 

Also the point of view is focused on Isla. How can she know Vixena's grudge against Jaden? She will learn that later.

 

That's all nice and dandy, but I believe there are more suitable ways to show that than have one character suddenly beat up another. Like "character X gave character Y an angry stare and punched him/her hard in the shoulder. Character X could tell that character X held a great deal of grudge against character Y, even though they appeared to be friends." I think that would suit the story better than suddenly going from "We're all friends" to "I'mma bitchslap yo' ass into next week, mother$&%#!!!" without giving the reader any kind of warning.

I can of course only speak for myself, but for me that just made me want to stop reading on the spot because it seemed like such an illogical choice. I had no clue about why she would suddenly go ballistic on her friend, and I couldn't help but wonder what on earth the writer was trying to tell me. Without any sort of explaination for her actions it didn't make any sense, and the whole thing felt like something you tacked on for no reason. In my opinion it's something to avoid, because you risk having the reader go "WTF was that? It didn't make any sense!" and throw the whole thing away.

 

I guess I was wrong about readers not caring about logics in stories.

Vixena could just yell at him instead of hurting him. For example:

"Or we are from the-"

"Jaden! Don't reveal our clans's name! Remember what our chief said!"

Then maybe she punches him when he ignores her.

"I told you!"

What do you think?