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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44911
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You really have two questions here. First, how do you write a story with no free will? Second, what would make someone choose to become a monster?

For the first question, **your character needs agency.** It doesn't matter if the outcome is predetemined, the character still needs to do something to try to change the course of events. Oedipus was always going to kill his father and marry his mother, but he didn't sit at home waiting for that to happen. He left home and tried to avoid his fate. Characters who sit at home and accept their fate are boring and unrelatable.

For the second question, it does not matter how many tragedies the character suffers, but what he is thinking about **at the moment the decision occurs.** Your character needs to want something badly at that moment and believe that becoming a monster will accomplish it. Using DPT's Anakin example, Padme isn't even dead when Anakin accepts the dark side, but in that moment he is so convinced that the Dark Side will save her and so afraid to lose her that he does whatever will save her.

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