Breaking the rules

The Doctor:

"Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.”

That line above is why I love Doctor Who. Because it really is true. Good men don’t need rules. They simply do what is right.

The Doctor: "Didn't anyone ever tell you? There's one thing you never put in a trap — if you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow — there's one thing you never — ever put in a trap. Me."

The Doctor is a character that has an abundance of rules. He is a timelord and as such he can see all that is, all that was, all that could be and all that can never come to pass. He sees the fixed points in time and he sees what is in flux. He has to remind himself time and time again to not play god and alter the fixed points in time. He could. But the rules he has defined for himself doesn’t allow it.

All characters have a set of rules and what I love about writing stories is to push my character to break them.

Forcing my characters to reevaluate their own rules and assumptions about the world, pushing them outside of their comfort-zones, that is incremental to creating a great story.

The Doctor: "The universe is big, it's vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me."

Find out the one thing you're character would never ever do, and then test their resolve to refrain from breaking their own rules. Some say that rules are meant to be broken. I don't think that is true, but it certainly creates a more interesting story.