When a character does or says something (Action) and the other character reacts in a complex or illogical way (Reaction), the writer must explain it to readers.
— Fantasy Fiction Formula
The reason this matters is that readers can watch a strange reaction happen, but they can't watch the private history that makes it make sense. Fiction promises access to inner logic that real life withholds, and skipping that access breaks the implicit contract. Say a character laughs at a funeral. Left unexplained, readers assume sloppy writing. But drop in one earlier line, that she laughs when overwhelmed because her mother did too, and the same laugh becomes character depth. The caution: don't over-explain every twitch of behavior, or you'll drown scenes in justification and strip out mystery and subtext. Sometimes a slightly odd reaction should sit there, unexplained, because people really are inconsistent. Reserve explanation for reactions that would otherwise read as authorial error, not for every flicker of human contradiction.
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