Mockery as Motivation

Characters reluctant to follow the plot? Insult them — no, really.

Are your characters unwilling to participate in the plot you so generously provided them with? Make fun of them. Relentlessly. No, really, that’s what Nikolai Gogol does to his protagonist in the short story “The Overcoat.”

In that 1842 story, a low-level government official, Akaky Akakievich, is on a quest to repair or purchase a new overcoat. But I wou…