How Schrödinger’s cat can help you develop a better protagonist
If you believe some of what’s peddled in the safe space inside creative writing workshops, how to write a protagonist sounds easy. You simply invent someone relatable, flawed, and compelling. A few quirks here, a tragic backstory there. And voilà, instant Booker Prize.
In practice, of course, creating a believable character can feel more like building a nuclear reactor out of leftover IKEA parts. And yet, it’s quantum physics, no less that can teach us a few surprising character development tips in the delicate business of character creation.
Yes, quantum physics. The one with cats, particles, and scientists who can’t find their car keys. Stick with me. Because it turns out the universe’s tiniest mysteries hold big truths for anyone trying to write believable characters for her story.
1. Superposition: Your Character Is Many Things at Once
How does superimposition help create a compelling protagonist? In quantum mechanics, a particle exists in multiple states simultaneously until observed. It’s not here or there. It’s here and there.
Likewise, your protagonist shouldn’t be pinned down too soon. They can be both brave and terrified, selfish and noble, sober and quietly eyeing the minibar. Until the story forces a choice, until you open Schrödinger’s box, they should remain a glorious tangle of contradictions.
Let them be messy. If your hero always does exactly what you expect, congratulations: you’ve created a toaster, not a person.
2. The Observer Effect: Characters Change When Watched
Observation alters reality. Just looking at a particle changes its behaviour.
Writers are the nosiest observers in the universe. We poke, prod, and demand our characters justify their choices. But perspective matters too. Who’s telling the story changes what’s seen.
The same protagonist might be a hero in one version, a villain in another. Gatsby through Nick Carraway’s eyes is tragic; Gatsby through his own Instagram stories would be unbearable. In that is a creative writing lesson: don’t settle for one perspective.
Let the act of observation shape the story. A character seen from multiple angles becomes more real. And, let’s be honest, far more interesting.
3. Entanglement: No Character Exists Alone
Two particles can become entangled so that their fates are linked, no matter how far apart they drift.
You can apply this to writing a protagonist. Their identity doesn’t form in isolation. It’s shaped by the people orbiting them. Friends, foes, lovers, rivals, the barista who keeps spelling their name wrong.
Character arc examples remind us: growth depends on connection. If your protagonist’s arc could unfold unchanged in a vacuum, that’s more a motivational quote than a character.
4. The Uncertainty Principle: Keep a Little Mystery
Writing advice for beginners: resist the urge to explain everything.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says you can’t know a particle’s position and momentum at the same time. Try to pin down one, and the other slips away. The same goes for your characters. The more you over-explain them (their motives, traumas, dietary intolerances) the less intriguing they become. Readers like mystery. They want to feel there’s more beneath the surface.
And so, more writing advice for the novice writer. Hint, suggest, and let readers fill the gaps. If they finish your book unsure whether your hero was a saint, a sociopath, or just very tired, that’s a win.
5. Quantum Tunnelling: Transformation Against the Odds
Sometimes particles break through barriers they shouldn’t be able to cross. It shouldn’t happen, yet it does. Make transformation hard won.
That’s how you can write a character arc that feels alive. Real transformation should feel impossible, until it happens. A miserly banker doesn’t become generous because someone asked nicely. He changes because the story compresses him until he tunnels through his own limitations.
When your protagonist does the unthinkable. When she admits fault, forgives an enemy, or chooses salad, that’s when readers lean forward.
6. Decoherence: Collapse the Wave at the Right Time
There’s another character development tip we can glean here. Time your turning point like a physicist. In physics, “decoherence” is when a wave of potential collapses into one definite outcome. This is your climax. The moment your protagonist stops being all things at once and becomes one thing in particular. The coward who runs, or the hero who stays.
Collapse the wave too early, and the story loses energy. Too late, and readers wander off to alphabetize their spice racks. The art lies in timing the collapse for maximum emotional yield.
7. Quantum Foam: The Messy Matter of Backstory
Physicists believe the universe’s fabric is frothy. It’s a seething mess of energy popping in and out of existence.
That’s your character’s backstory. Don’t over-polish it. Real people don’t emerge from tidy narrative conditions. They crawl out of the bubbling chaos of half-remembered decisions, family weirdness, and one regrettable haircut.
Great protagonists aren’t engineered. They coalesce.
8. The Multiverse of Motivation
If quantum physics is right, there are infinite universes, one where you’re reading this essay, and another where you’re reading something more useful. If you want to write believable characters, let them want more than one thing.
For writers, this means your character can hold conflicting motivations at once. They might want love and revenge, freedom and security. These contradictions don’t need resolving. They need exploring. Drama lies in the collision of motives, not the neatness of their alignment. Humans rarely know what they want. That’s why we read novels in the first place
9. Measurement Error: Let Them Fail Beautifully
This creative writing advice might seem counter-intuitive at first.
Science is full of experimental error. So is character writing. Perfection is boring; failure is character.
Let your protagonist make bad choices: wrong loves, ill-advised texts, questionable haircuts. Readers don’t fall for perfection; they fall for the human impulse to try, fail, and try again (preferably while holding a drink).
Every failure brings your character closer to coherence, to becoming the version of themselves the story demands.
10. The Big Bang: Endings That Feel Inevitable (But Weren’t)
All universes begin with a bang, but the best stories end with one. That final burst of meaning which feels both surprising and inevitable. When your protagonist’s many possible selves collapse into one resonant truth, it should feel like destiny disguised as discovery. That’s when you’ve created life—not biological, but emotional.
The Final Experiment
Every time you sit down to write a protagonist, you’re running an experiment. You don’t know how they’ll behave under pressure or which version of them will emerge. You only know that something extraordinary might happen if you keep watching.
That’s what physicists and writers share. We’re both staring into the void, hoping it stares back with meaning.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s just another cat.
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.