But when you bring fate and free will into your story, they're not boring at all. In fact, these two elements can make a huge difference in your story. Here's how:
For instance, as a teenager, I really enjoyed reading Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd. The story is rather depressing, but the choices the characters make fit with who the character is. I could easily predict that Bathsheba Everdeen would never be happy married to Sergeant Troy, but then, she knew that too. She still married him, and I couldn't really blame her, because I felt like I would have too if I had been in her situation. It would have been hard to imagine the characters making choices other than the ones they made.
More recently I read another of Hardy's novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. This time as I read the book, I kept wanting to smack the characters. They kept making stupid decisions, when it would have been easy for them to make much better ones. By the end of the story, I didn't care what happened to any of them, because they thoroughly deserved whatever they had coming.
Now, it's been a long time since I read Far from the Madding Crowd, so that might be why I reacted differently to that story, but there is a good illustration here. If you're going to make your characters ruin their lives, at least make it seem like it's not their fault. Throw some whims of uncertain fate into the mix.
Shakespeare was a master of fate. He famously explores fate vs. free will in his play Macbeth, in which the titular character murders the king to fulfill a prophecy. Was the act due to fate or free will? Who knows? Or what about Hamlet, in which the young prince of Denmark feels he is being forced to avenge his father's death, even though it eventually costs him his own life? After all, what choice does he have?
There are so many good examples of using fate. In the ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus unwittingly fulfills a prophecy that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother. In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin's attempts to save Padme end with him killing her.
Okay, so what about free will?
If fate is great for making a story sad (and it is), then free will is the thing that makes a story happy. Or maybe I should say optimistic. (Gotta be realistic, after all; who's going to be writing a happy story?)
I love Oliver Twist because it's all doom and gloom and poor little Oliver until poor little Oliver finally has enough and gives the vile Noah Claypole a well-deserved pounding. Nicholas Nickleby is among my favourite of Dickens's novels because, despite the load of misfortunes Nicholas suffers under (an evil uncle among them), he manages to always come out on top through sheer pluck and several pardonable cases of assault.
Free will allows a character to change his circumstances, even when the circumstances seem hopeless. That's why giving your characters some amount of choice does two things:
1) It's often unexpected (and therefore interesting)
2) It generally turns the story in a positive direction
It's true that characters should make choices consistent with their personas, and that's why character choices should and often do feel inevitable, but people can change; which is why an element of free will--the sense that nothing's set in stone, and the characters have some amount of freedom--is such a strong positive force in a story.
Consider a character who has been knocked around the whole story long by poor choices or simply by circumstances. If at some point in the story, that character sits up and decides he's not going to take it anymore, it gives the readers a gleam of hope. They can hope that the story will now end well for the character, and they can believe that they too can be the heroes of their own stories.
That's why these two elements--fate and free will--are so powerful, especially when used together. We all understand fate; we all accept it, because often it's the reality we have to live in. But we all hope that sometimes it's not up to fate--it's up to us. We want to believe that we can make a difference in the story.
So how do you use fate and free will in your stories? What stories do you enjoy that have used these elements well?