Agency and emotional engagement - finding the right viewpoint

During this week I wrote a new short story.  I knew It needed the viewpoint of the humans who are just about to land on a new planet, and of one of the aliens who lived there.

For the humans, I settled on the ship's captain, who is moral and observes all the non-interference protocols.  He rapidly discovers that his second in command has a different agenda, and the conflict between those two characters drives the human side of the narrative.

I knew a native would stand up to the humans, using telekinetic power to drive them away.  But instead of starting to write about the character with that agency, I started to write about a nobody.  Her only function was to see the ship landing, and go tell the person with the power to do something about it.

That useless character had to go, replaced by the Sky-Weaver, the woman with telepathy and telekinesis skills.  The woman with agency in this situation.  I haven't finished the story, but I know she'll  frighten the natives away by attacking their mining craft with her telekinetic powers,

This week I've also started to write a chapter plan for Soulship, the second book of the Auroradawn trilogy.  The story is told in two viewpoints, Arrien's, and her brother Baak's.  And I'm finding that I'm having to do a bit of viewpoint shuffling to tell the story in the most effective way. 

In my existing rough draft, one key scene is in Baak's viewpoint and I planned to move that Arrien's narrative.  Then I read the scene and realised why I'd put it in Baak's head.  It involves looking at a painting and decoding clues hidden in it.  Baak wanted to be an artist when he was young, but his military father refused to accept his son's talent and mocked him.  As Baak is searching for the painting it brings up memories of the way his father tried to crush his talent.  It was obvious that the scene needed to be in Baak's viewpoint.  There was the emotional depth to enrich the story.

The right viewpoint has a lot to do with showing and not telling key scenes.  And showing these key scenes allows me to show the reader why my characters think as they do, why they've done the things they did in the past, and what is going to drive their future actions.