Characters, we’ve been led to believe, are supposed to behave believably, to have a reason for their actions. Even if they act ‘out of character’ they are supposed to do so in a way that we can accept as a product of the stress they are under. Perhaps it is their ‘dark side’ coming out. Or in the case of some irredeemably evil guy behaving well for a change, it’s because behaving like a jerk isn’t getting him what he wants.

But at least you understand why he’s doing what he’s doing.

And then there is Alias.

I don’t watch a lot of television. And frankly, the only reason I started watching Alias was because during football season two years ago, they had previews on that made me notice Michael Vartan. I thought he would be worth a look — doing a bit of ‘hero research’ (see Hugh-Jackman-in-a-towel).

And I stayed to watch because I found the characters interesting. They had moral dilemmas. And as much as Alias was entertaining in a gadgety sort of way, and in an admiring Sydney Bristow as she yet again donned another disguise and outran and outsmarted the bad guys way, and, of course, in a Michael Vartan watching way, it was the character interplay that made me come back.

And then it just got weird. It was like the later writers didn’t read what JJ Abrams had written in the earlier episodes, like they didn’t know who these people were. They were just cartoons with some sort of character trait (Marshall is the techno-geek, etc) and if they ran into a blind alley, well, you could just pull out a trick (reminding me of Mark Twain’s lampooning James Fennimore Cooper’s ‘gentle art of the forest’) and, poof, your problem would be solved.

No. It doesn’t work.

At the end of last season (sorry, spoiler ahead, but since it’s been around for a year, if you haven’t seen it by now, you deserve to have it spoiled), when they had Vaughn tell Sydney he wasn’t who she thought he was, right when they were on the verge of getting things straightened out between them, it didn’t work.

It didn’t work because on Alias almost no one is who you think he is. Except Vaughn. Vaughn was the one sane straight shooter in the whole bunch. The one Sydney — and we — could count on. He was the guy we trusted not to be ambiguous, not to live a lie, not to have a hidden agenda.

And giving him one undercut his credibility at the same time it weakened everyone else’s too, because after you’ve seen people shape-shift a dozen times, it ceases to be interesting and just becomes annoying. It also makes the characters all more alike, not distinct.

Then, of course, they ostensibly killed him in a car crash before he could say any more. Except they didn’t really kill him (another plot device sadly overworked in Alias) so they could kill him again (can you say overkill, anyone?) in the first episode this season.

How many times are we going to watch Vaughn die?

The last one seemed pretty definitive, annoying though it was. But apparently even a barrage of bullets wasn’t enough, and now — after weeks on hold — he turns up in Bhutan, reports of his death obviously exaggerated.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted Vaughn’s not dead. For the last year he was the only reason I stuck around watching. But I’m annoyed that the writers are playing fast and loose with his character because they are also betraying the audience’s trust.

I’m not saying characters can’t change. They should change. But they shouldn’t flip-flop just to provide a twist or a cliff-hanger ending. They should have an integrity that allows them to act like real people would act. Even in a universe as convoluted as Alias’s, they need to have an inner logic.

It isn’t easy. But I think it’s essential. If we can’t believe in characters acting with some sort of congruence, we lose interest. We don’t know who to cheer for. We feel betrayed, let down. And just because it’s easier to use a trick we’ve used before, we as writers shouldn’t always take the easy way out.

We should try to understand our characters beyond the gimmicks. We need to be faithful to who they are. Then, when they do something unexpected, our readers might be surprised, but they will believe it.

They’ll say, “Wow, yes, it caught me by surprise, but you know, it makes sense.”

You’ve got four weeks left to redeem things, Alias. Don’t let me down.

I have, fortunately, other personas within besides the dreaded “inner editor” I mentioned last time.

There is, for example, my inner aunt. She’s cheerful and upbeat and optimistic. She always buys great gifts that are sure to please because she knows exactly what you want. She’s always willing to listen without offering to tell you what you should do because, let’s face it, she’s not your mother. She’s got wonderful stories to tell that make you wish you’d known her when she was doing wild and crazy things. She makes your life a better place.

I try to be that kind of aunt. I don’t get much of a chance, to be honest, because The Siblings live in California, so the Niece and Nephews did, too. Now two of the Nephews have seen the light and have moved to Idaho with their wives and families, which doesn’t make them much more accessible, but does bode well for their future happiness and well-being.

But I digress.

Aunts. Inner aunts are, I think, the result of having such a variety of wonderful “outer” aunts — real ones, that is, not virtual ones inside me. My grandfather had nine sisters. They were an astonishing bunch of women.

There was the farmer’s wife who raised her brothers and sisters before she married and had her own brood. She was strong and capable and nothing ever seemed to be too tough for her to accomplish. There was the minister’s wife who made Goody Two Shoes look like A Wild Child. There were the lawyer with the silver hip flask and Opinions About Everything, the schoolteacher, the Can’t-Hold-A-Job-And-Wouldn’t-Want-To-If-She-Could, the flirt, the other flirt, the pie baker who worked in a lumber yard and has never been found on any census anywhere, the professional student, and Poor Mary, whom no one ever talked about (except to say, “Poor Mary,” in whispers).

They were alternately upheld as pillars of virtue or as cautionary tales. Good girls and Bad girls. Whichever way my Inner Aunt wanted to go, she certainly had a role model who’d gone before.

Which brings me to Aunt Billie. My mother’s older sister passed away last year at the age of 89. She never seemed 89. She always seemed about 19. Vivacious, bubbly, funny, that was Billie. She would have been a hard act to follow, which I’m sure my mother could tell you more about than I could. Doubtless she gave her parents plenty of sleepless nights when she was young and crazy about a boy named Billy Green. Billy had a car, which most boys his age didn’t in Butte, Montana in the 30s. He and Billie — and his car — went everywhere. One of their favorite places was the Red Rooster on ‘the flat’ where they used to be able to buy Hershey Bar sandwiches.

“Hershey Bar sandwiches?” I remember saying incredulously. “In bread?”

“Yep. Grilled. The chocolate melted.” She got this wonderful far-away look on her face and grinned. “With almonds. Best sandwiches I ever ate.”

I think you must have had to be there. Or maybe you just had to be with Billy.

No one loved life like Aunt Billie did. No one had more fun. She moved in with my cousin about seven years ago and less than a month later so did one of his daughters and her three young children. It was, he says, a mad house. Aunt Billie loved it. She relished the noise, the confusion, the kids. She relished life, even when it was slipping away from her.

She read all my books, right up until she couldn’t read anymore. And I think she made my cousin read her the last McGillivray book because her vision was going. (I can just imagine him reading the sex scenes to his mother).

“That’s it then,” she said to me after Molly’s book. “The three of them?”

And I said yes, I was starting on a new series beginning with Elias.

“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” she said. “I wasn’t going to go without finishing the last one.”

She didn’t. She finished them all. I told my cousin I should have kept writing them forever and we’d still have her with us.

But she’s probably got her vision back now. And she has probably read Elias and Theo (even before he’s been published). And maybe with luck she’ll have some influence on Spence. She would love the fact that he’s a Presents hero from Butte.

“No place better on earth,” she would have said.

Certainly not for her.

I finished the revisions on Elias’s book right before she passed away. It was a no-brainer to dedicate it to her. She was a terrific person, a spectacular aunt. There will never be another like her. Almost everything my inner aunt is, it owes to her.

A long time ago in a galaxy that seems very far away now, I got a master’s degree in theology. One of my courses was called Addiction and the Dependent Personality. What that had to do with theology, I’m still not entirely certain, but it was a good course and I read a book for it about “my inner child.”

I remember my own inner child pretty well. After all, I grew up with her and I liked her a lot. We played in the mud together, rode horses together, read books together, dreamed about Jess Harper together. The person I don’t remember ever having been introduced to before was my “inner editor.”

Sadly, she exists.

She’s the one who is picking apart Spence and the scotch bottle and the park bench right now. She is the one who is going back and adding labels to the scotch bottle and litter to the park. She’s letting Spence gaze, then she’s telling him gazes aren’t right, he should be glancing instead. She makes his cell phone ring. Then she sticks it back in his pocket and deletes entire conversations.

I don’t like her very much. Neither does Spence. I want to shut her in a box and tell her I’ll let her out, say, about 45000 words from now. What Spence wants to do with her involves the box, some cement and the Hudson River. I’m tempted to let him.

That’s the thing about writing. You write — and the minute you do, some demon living inside your left brain starts to edit.

“You can’t say that,” she says.

“I just did,” you reply, but not with a great deal of confidence because, hey, these people are new to you and you don’t know for sure what they’re going to do yet.

“Well, it’s not a good idea,” she tells you with that lofty know-it-all tone in her voice. “You should change it.”

So you do. You shouldn’t. You know you shouldn’t. But you do. And you go on. And then you stop. And then you change it back.

Because the fact is, you can say that. You can say any damn thing you please. This is a sh*tty first draft, remember? So anything goes.

Who knows what any of these characters are going to do yet? You’re just getting to know them. They’re telling you their story. You’re learning who they are and what they’ve done and what they’re capable of doing. And you — and they — aren’t necessarily going to get it right the first time. Or the tenth. Or, God help you, even the thirtieth.

You just have to write (unless you’re Elizabeth George and you’ve figured it all out and you’re writing because you know what’s going to happen. Oh, God, I want to be Elizabeth George when I grow up!)

But for now, I just have to write, discover, learn. Muddle. But just try telling that to the “inner editor.”

Well, I am trying. I’ve told her to get lost. I’ve told her that Spence and his scotch bottle stay — for now — and if I find out later that they don’t do more for the book than they’re doing now, they’re history. But for the moment, they stick around. She’s not editing them out. I might need them — especially the scotch bottle — later on. So there.

And if she doesn’t like it, well, too bad. I know a hero with a box and a bag of cement I can introduce her to.

Spence is smiling at the thought. So am I.