Consider these sentences from Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher: “I thought long and hard about Isobel telling me to be tactful. But Isobel was what she was, and I was what I was, and if thirty-odd years and a lot of poison hadn’t changed that, I might as well embrace it. Tact is overrated anyway. And if I started being tactful now, he’d probably die of shock.” The italics are in the original.
I think decisions characterize, but in addition to their actions, what a character refuses to do can characterize them. Melville’s Bartleby is one example of this. In the paragraph above, the main character makes a decision and refuses to change. On one level, they reject their arc. On another, they remain true to themselves against social and familial pressure and perhaps at odds with gender norms.
So, what will your character decide not to do? How might that put them at odds with larger social forces around them? In what ways might it encourage conformity? (See Frank Lentricchia’s Criticism and Social Change, pages 102-107 espeically, for more.)
Writing Fiction 