I said my character was cruel. You said you understood. Now you’re upset they aren’t nice to yours.

We talked about it before we started. I told you he was selfish. That he used people. That trusting him would be a mistake.

You said, “Yes! I love complicated characters.”

Apparently, you meant complicated with everyone except yours.

Say we’re writing two criminals planning a robbery. Mine gets caught. To save himself, he gives the guards your character’s name.

It’s a betrayal. It’s ugly. And suddenly we have something to write.

Does yours escape? Come after him? Pretend to forgive him while planning something worse?

But instead, I get an out-of-character message.

“Why would he do that? Mine trusted him.”

I know. That’s why it hurts.

“I thought they were getting close.”

They were. He still chose himself.

Now you want me to rewrite it. Maybe he gave them a fake name. Maybe it was secretly part of a rescue plan. Anything except him actually being the person I told you he was.

And I’m sitting there looking at a scene I was excited about, trying to work out how much of my character I have to remove so you’ll want to keep writing.

You can hate what he did. Your character can hate him. I’d love to write the consequences.

But I need to be able to trust you with an ugly scene without immediately having to make it harmless.

Of course we should agree on major betrayals and respect each other’s boundaries. “It’s what my character would do” doesn’t give me permission to ruin your experience.

But if we agreed to write a betrayal, please let it be a betrayal.

Don’t ask me for a cruel character when what you want is someone who’s cruel to the whole world but would never, ever hurt yours. That’s a different story. Tell me you want that one.

Tell me what you think in the comments: if we’ve agreed to write cruel characters, should a betrayal still need a separate conversation first?

Have you ever had to rewrite a scene because your partner took your character’s actions personally? What happened?

I want to hear the other side too. If a partner used “that’s what my character would do” to ruin a story for you, where did they cross the line?