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Sir Isaac Newton’s famous laws of motion dictate, amongst other observations, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is why rockets work as they do, burning fuel that is focused to “push” in one direction and by doing so propel it in the other. It’s why guns have recoil. There are other factors like mass and inertia that can alter the final result–such as a big gun with a low-powered bullet being much easier to control than say, the finger-busting buck of a derringer magnum–but in the end it’s all pretty much mathematical and predictable.
I’m not a mathematician or physicist, though, I’m a writer, and writers deal in the peculiar alchemy of human behavior. I use the term alchemy instead of, say, psychology, because I think by and large we’re operating on instinct and what “feels right” rather than any predictive formal models. Also I don’t have to throw my hat into the long-standing fray where some mathematicians and physicists will derisively refer to fields like psychology as “soft sciences“, or even argue they’re not scientific disciplines at all. I don’t have time for that argument, I have stories to tell; and while there are certain guidelines and expectations of what makes a good story, there is no infallible, repeatable equation for crafting one.
For one thing, human behavior tends to involve a lot of unequal actions and reactions. It’s one thing to predict than moving a 300 pound man will take more effort, all other things being equivalent, than moving a man weighing half of that. It’s quite another to predict how they’ll react as human beings to you pushing them. Given identical triplets of the same weight, one might try to ignore you shoving them, one might pointedly ask what you think you’re doing, and one might stab you in the eye with a knife. Which one of these reactions is equal to the action?
Crafting a good story and good characters depends a lot on figuring out an answer to that impossible question. Well, impossible from a scientific standpoint, anyhow. Writers can cheat to an extent, because we get access to both sides of the equation; we get to script both the action and reaction. The alchemical magic comes, I think, in making it have the appearance of some science behind it, or at least some reasoned thought. How would character A respond to a stranger intentionally shoving them? There are any number of answers to this question, but with that character as a starting point, the field of acceptable answers starts to narrow down, and by acceptable I more or less mean that the average audience member would see this play out and respond, “Well of course he stabbed that guy in the eye for shoving him; that’s what Franky does.” Conversely, Frank of Zombie Ranch is not going to stab a man just for shoving him. If he did, the average audience member would be justified in reacting with, “What the hell is going on?”. Unless I as the creator have a good explanation (which should at some point be shared since it flies so far outside the norm), I just screwed up my alchemy and took people out of my story. I showed the wires. I, in point of metaphorical fact, broke the spell.
So even though you might be playing with nothing truly scientific in the course of fiction writing, be wary: the ingredients and reagents of your trade are still both powerful and volatile. Handle ’em with care.