Why Do Characters Do the Things They Do?

Image by Julie Marsh, via Unsplash

I let our two dogs into the potty pen, a fenced-in area off the deck, and then ran downstairs to throw some laundry in the dryer. When I came back a few minutes later, I spied a deer standing about five feet from the potty pen fence.

As I crept up to one of the windows overlooking the pen, I spotted a tiny fawn next to the deer. The fawn was so small it must have been less than a week old.

No one was making a sound. No barking. No growling. Just silent watching.

Joanie, who’s nearly 10, was seated on the deck, looking down at the deer. The deck is about 4 feet above the ground, so mama deer may not have noticed Joanie.

Chip, however, was seated on the ground near the foot of the deck stairs, looking directly at the deer. Mama deer seemed to be focusing her attention on him.

I stayed still, wondering what would happen next.

The doe leaned down to lick the fawn on its back. Then she stood up straight, looked right at Chip, and stamped her right front hoof once, twice.

Chip didn’t move. Joanie didn’t move.

I thought about opening the door to the deck and calling the dogs in, but I was still curious.

What was the doe trying to do? Scare Chip away? Teach her baby to avoid canines? Tell Chip that these are her woods, not his?

Then the deer did something I didn’t anticipate.

She charged at Chip. She hit the woven metal fence hard enough that two of the posts and the fence between them bent inward. I was afraid she was going to come right over the top (it’s about 4 feet high).

Chip scrambled up the steps toward the door. I opened it and both dogs scooted inside lickety split. Once they were safe inside, they started to bark.

Meanwhile Mama and baby bounded away into the woods.

Dig into your characters’ whys to enrich our fiction

If these animals were all characters in a book for kids, the one I’d be most curious about, in terms of her motivation, would be the mama deer. Why did she get so close to the dog?

Did she spot the dog in the pen and deliberately come into the yard to confront him? Or did she come around the corner of the house and his presence was a surprise? Or something else?

Did she notice him and immediately feel a THREAT?

It seems as though she went into fight or flight mode. And perhaps because she had such a small baby with her who couldn’t out run a 45-pound dog, mama deer chose to fight.

First she tried to scare the dog away, and when he didn’t move, she escalated the fight.

I suspect she didn’t even see the fence. There are few fences in rural northern Wisconsin, except fences around gardens to keep the deer out.

Even if deer can reason things out, like what a fence means, she was likely too upset to understand that the dog was not a threat to her or her baby (because he was on the other side of a fence).

Chip was likely scared by the deer’s charge at him. He just wanted to get away from that big deer. But initially, was he curious?

Joanie may have been scared too. Maybe she got up onto the deck when the deer first approached because she felt safer up there, behind a sturdy railing.

If I were to write an actual scene, it would be interesting to explore it from each character’s point of view to see which version was most compelling.

Why did each character behave the way they did? How do their past experiences guide their present actions?