The Confabulator Cafe

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  • Which is more important to you: plot or character?

    I can barely separate and prioritize plot/character when I write, as they are so closely intertwined in fiction. Nevertheless, I consider the prime purpose of writing fiction to be storytelling, so “plot” gets the nod, followed by character and then setting, also vitally important to fiction.

    By definition, a piece of fiction (novel or short story) moves one or more characters through settings. Ideally, the character undergoes conflicts at various points in the plot until s/he must conform to the various pressures – i. e., change – and then move on through life. This process is essentially the same in a novel or short story, although by definition (again) a short story revolves around only one main character who learns one truth about life (at the climax), whereas a novel involves several major characters who may experience a number of “a-HA!” moments when learning various truths about life.

    A character’s personality, therefore, depends up on what happens to him/her and how he reacts as the plot progresses, although a character can certainly influence the progression of the story.

    Nevertheless, without plot a story is not a story; without character it is a description of setting; and in essence character and plot must combine to produce a story which takes place in a setting.

    Complicated, yes – but so is life, and since Poe allegedly invented the short story, the process has worked, and the two fictional forms of novel and short story have entertained readers well.

  • Plot vs. Character: Save the eggs; torch my metaphor

    “If your story was a house on fire, what would you run in and save?”

    Brad Bird ~ Writer/Director

    (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Mission Impossible – Ghost Patrol)

    Plot vs. Character? No doubt in my mind, I’d save the characters.  Here’s why:  character drives plot.  The “stuff” of story, the desire that drives choices and actions made under the pressure of dilemma, are all expressed through character.  If you don’t have them, you don’t have plot, and ultimately, no story.  Characters are the eggs, if you will; plots are the chickens they hatch. (Which came first is another post, but it’s the egg per my high school zoology teacher, Mr. Highfill, an amazing character in his own right, so I’m going with egg.)

    But I digress.  Yes, I’m giving the edge to the egg, but what about that chicken? Is it just crowing in the morning, pecking at the ground, taking a nap, running around the barnyard, going to sleep, and doing it all over again the next day?   This is not plot, this is not story.  This is activity not action.  The chicken that comes out of that egg has got to be top notch, too, or no one is going to hang out in the barnyard to see what happens.

    To put it all together, your eggs need to have Grade A burning desires, inner and outer conflicts that create dilemmas, through which they make choices to try to reach their goal, and thus, advance the story.  These choices and their results create the chicken, which in turn acts on the characters (eggs) and so on to the last action in the series, the end of the road.  Perhaps just before Sunday dinner when the horse, who, against all odds, has fallen in love with the chicken, kicks the axe out of the farmer’s hands, and, together, horse and chicken ride off into the sunset.

    So, to take this horrible pun to the end: go lay some fresh eggs; the chickens will be tasty.

     

  • A Comfortable Blend (Except When It’s Not)

    I think that when we first conceive a story we all probably start with one or the other: a plot or a character. It doesn’t really matter so much as blending the two by the time you hit your final draft. I usually have a character, and sometimes a vague concept. Almost never a detailed plot. My examples:

    When I wrote my first novel, I wanted to write about a punk stuck with a blind kid while trying to find the kid’s foster mother. The plot from there just happened as I interconnected the other characters. That novel is awful.

    When I started my second novel I had a concept: a cyberpunk retelling of Sleeping Beauty, as told from the perspective of a character who wasn’t the Prince Charming analog. I followed that pretty strictly even when my characters started to deviate. By the second draft I had to pull back on that concept as the characters took the forefront. The undertones are still there, but it’s a lot less overt.

    From this I gather that for me, crafting a novel has to be a balance of the character and plot or it just sort of falls apart.

    What I find interesting is that not all stories and writers need that balance to rock an amazing story. There are stories where the characters are just a means for exploring the world and moving the plot, and stories where the plot is just a means of moving the characters together and solving their nonsense. The difference seems to be largely a matter a genre.

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  • Interwoven

    You can just look at the picture to see what I was trying to say. Click on the picture for another point of view.

    Whisky and water. Water into wine. Wine and song. Song and Dance. One thing follows another, all interconnected.

    Okay, that was a bit of a stretch but I think it works well enough. At least enough to illustrate a point. Character and plot are interconnected, one feeds the other and vice versa.

    I’m aware that one can tell a story without developing characters to the point where they are actual people. I’m also aware that writers can conceive ‘character studies’ that are not really stories, but more like scenes and vignettes. I don’t write that way. I’m not sure that I can write that way. Either way. I prefer stories about people doing things for a reason. I like motivations into actions and reactions that muddle things up a bit more when it’s necessary.

    I tend to focus more on character and hope that informs the plot than the other way ‘round. That’s not to say that I don’t come up with a plot before I develop characters, but once I’ve got the characters outlined, I start putting them through their paces.

    This goes back a little bit to how I develop my characters, I suppose, but I don’t want to get into all that again. (Click this link if you’re interested.) Rather, let’s take the opportunity to debate a little which is more important: plot or character?

    Pretty sure I’ve already told you what I think about that up above, but for clarity’s sake I’ll be blunt: a good story has both and that’s all there is to it. I don’t think a good writer will sacrifice one for the other because as a reader that’s boring. A ‘story’ that’s all character doesn’t move me. Oh, the characters themselves may be interesting but if there’s no story to go with them, what’s the point?

    Conversely, a story without any characters is unusual and painstaking to write and difficult to read.

    There’s a chemistry between the people – whether fictional or not – involved in how things happen one after another. One person is responsible for the bad things, one for the good things and several are somewhere in the middle. Where they are and what they’re doing there are the essential bits, the things that readers remember. Characters are made memorable by the things they do in reaction what other characters are doing.

    So it’s important to me that both work together and work together well. Characters who surprise me are engaged in the plot, advancing the story with their actions which are dictated by their makeup. Which is dictated by me, who supposedly knows the plot and that makes me the god of the story.

    That must be the whiskey taking over. Next thing you know I’ll be dancing and that’s something none of you want to see.

     

  • Characters occupy plot

    Last fall, when thousands of protesters descended on town squares and public spaces, was it the zeitgeist? Were we all zombies, drawn into this massive, not-well-publicized-enough plot? Or did each character individually have her own motives for participating?  Did the arc towards justice  articulate each of us within the plot of the year, or did we each sit down and say, hey, today is the day that I’m going to participate in an international movement for economic equality?  What’s more interesting–the fact that a big movement happened and is happening, or each individual’s motivations for participating in it, each person’s story, each soul’s hope for results?

    A relative focus on character or plot leads not only to quite different fictional stories, but also vastly different reporting and non-fiction writing.  As I move my writing more in the direction of non-fiction, I realize that the concerns are not so very different.  Will a vicious new law outrage people in its very existence, or is it better to vocalize the law’s effects through a sympathetic person of interest in the case?  Which is more accurate, more moral?  When it comes to something like Occupy Wall Street, does a focus on the individual add to or detract from the overall plot?  What about something more sinister, like horrific shootings–better to parse the reasons for a violent society, or consider the motives and mental imbalances of the individual with the gun?

    As a writer I emphasize plot.  After all, each character is just one of many affected characters, and appropriating another’s life feels exploitative, taking someone else’ story and using it to communicate my ends.  It’s also an appeal to pathos instead of logos, which is not my nature.  Worse, I do see a focus on character as upholding a more individualistic view of society as opposed to the collective, solidarity-building approaches towards which I work.

    And yet…

    Nobody ever made me cry more than Tess Durbeyfield.  And not so much because of the plot surrounding her, but because of her bravery, her fidelity, her perseverance in hopeless circumstances, all without having a conniving bone in her body. I remember characters; she has become part of me, in a way that Neal Stephenson’s gloriously plot-driven fellows have not.  Plot convinces, plot recollects experience and provides a new experience to the reader, but finely etched characters stick in the mind and the bones.

  • Plot > Character (But both matter. A lot.)

    Plot is more important to me than character. Without a plot, there is no story. Without a story, what the heck are we doing? Character sketches are well and good, but I’m more interested in the voyage, not the people traveling with me.

    That said, terrible characters can ruin a good plot, while interesting characters can totally save a horrible plot. You definitely need a good mix of both to have a successful story.

    As a SF guy, I’m probably more tolerant of plot-driven, character-poor stories. If the story uses lots of
    whiz-bang technology that bends (or breaks) the laws of physics, and those plot points are illustrated to me, the reader, via wooden, two-dimensional characters…I’ll still probably dig it. I’m in it for the pseudo-science as much as anything else. Other genres may not allow for the level of forgiveness I sometimes mete out to the books I read.

    That said, the truly memorable, interesting, recommend-to-everyone-you-know stories are the ones
    with whiz-bang technology wielded by kick-ass characters. So, Permutation City by Greg Egan manages to bend my noodle with its technology, but its characters are only “meh.” On the other hand, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan manages to wed far-future tech with a hard-as-nails detective Takeshi Kovacs, and the combination results in a story I’ve shared with anyone that’ll listen. Likewise, John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War combines neato tech with a fascinating set of characters, and the final product is nearly perfect.

    So, Plot comes first for me. But Character is almost as important, especially when you want to elevate a good story into a great story.

  • Character vs. Plot: The Chicken or the Egg?

    The simple answer to whether plot or character is more important is that it depends on what genre you’re talking about. If you write literary fiction, character is king. The plot is secondary.

    But I don’t write literary fiction. In genre fiction, specifically urban fantasy for me, both are of equal importance. A great plot with lousy characters is just as bad as great characters walking around with nothing to do.

    Characters drive the story. And the story herds the characters into becoming richer and more fully formed.

    So, the question becomes, which comes first?

    Usually, a “what if” strikes me first. A premise hits out of nowhere, asking a question or giving me a weird scenario. Looking at it that way, you might say plot comes first.

    You’d be mistaken.

    For Monster in My Closet, it began as a vision of a closet monster sitting at someone’s kitchen table, reading the newspaper. From there, I knew that monsters came to the kitchen owner’s house for help. Hijinks and danger would ensue.

    That’s not a plot. That’s a premise. The plot came later. Much later.

    The most important thing for me from that point on was to find out who these things would happen to. I didn’t care about the what until the characters were in place. I could see the monster at the table. Who was standing there in shock, looking at him with me?

    I knew all about Zoey and her back story long before I’d mapped out what was going to happen to her. Her personality and her reactions informed the plot. If I don’t know who my main characters are before I write the actual story, it’s going to veer off in the wrong direction and dead end.

    I know this because it happened last year.

    I’m working on a second series about a djinn. Kam is completely different from Zoey, but I started writing her story before I’d really nailed down who Kam is. The first 3000 words or so went really well. The next 20,000 words went so off course, I have to start from scratch. That first scene can stay, but the rest is complete nonsense. She was too nice. She was too helpful.

    She was too Zoey.

    So, which is more important, plot or character? I guess I’ll have to change my original answer and say character. In genre fiction, if the character isn’t good, the plot’s going to suck. But if the character shines, she’ll take the plot right where it needs to go.

  • Who’s Driving this Plot?

    A plot without characters

    If you want to start an argument between writers, just ask what is more important to a story: characters or plot. It’s the politics or religion debate of the writing world. It’s a subject in which you will never be able to change a writer’s mind once he or she has decided, and what is at the core of our writing styles.

    The safe answer – the one that most of us commit to – is that both are important. It’s true. For a good story you need both plot and characters. But as for which is more important, I will side with characters every time.

    If you look at the craft of storytelling, I think it’s important to focus on your characters in such a way that readers don’t think about the plot. The concept of plot is a technical aspect of writing. It’s not something I want my readers focusing on. All I want my readers worrying about what is going to happen next and how the characters that they have hopefully become attached are going to deal with whatever horrible things I do to them (or at least despise to the point where they want to make sure the character gets what he or she deserves) .

    My other argument for characters over plot is that if you have strong, interesting characters, eventually they will insist that something happen, or they will go looking for trouble. Plots are driven by what the characters want, and the obstacles they encounter as they try to reach their goals. I could throw the same drastic obstacles at any set of characters, and the plot of the story would be different based on the character’s personality. If you have boring, flat characters – even if you throw the most interesting conflicts at them – readers won’t care how they react if they don’t like them or can’t relate to them.

    There is an extreme side of characters vs. plot. If you have interesting characters that just sit around having witty conversation, but they don’t actually ever do anything or change in any significant way, you don’t have a story. Things need to happen.

    However, if all you do is have things happen to your characters, and all they do is react, it doesn’t make a good story. Plots must be character driven. If I’ve learned anything in my several years of writing, it is that characters must be proactive. They must do things, not just react to what is happening to them.

  • Jack Shephard vs the plot monster

    Jack Shephard (played by Matthew Fox) on ABC's drama series LOST.
    Is your character more important than your plot? Jack Shephard (played by Matthew Fox) on ABC's series Lost.

    As I mentioned in a previous post (“Lying on the couch: A conversation with myself“), I usually talk to my main characters quite a bit before beginning the writing process.

    It’s not easy for me to put aside character building in favor of story building. The main character has always been my stepping off point for building a new short story or novel. I like setting down the backstory on my character before I begin.

    For this reason, I really loved the ABC television series Lost. Each week, we were able to delve into the backstory of a new character, further fleshing out the survivors of Oceanic flight 815.

    You might think the writers of the hit television show had a good understanding of all their characters, certainly their main ones, before they started filming the pilot episode. You’d be wrong.

    As you may know, the handsome doctor Jack (played by Matthew Fox) became the de facto leader of the survivors on the show. What you may not know is that when the show was in its infancy, the writers had killed Jack during the pilot episode. But Fox’s portrayal of the likable character convinced the executives (and in turn the writers) to keep him alive. They knew they had a good character that the audience could root for.

    The decision to keep Jack ended up driving many changes in the series. First and foremost, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) was no longer going to be the leader. Jack was. Second of all, it created the often-bemoaned love triangle between Jack, Kate, and Sawyer (Josh Holloway). By the end of the series, we realize the show was really about Jack’s journey.

    When I started writing my latest story, I knew very little about my main character. This was — if you’ll pardon the expression — “out of character” for me. I needed to put plot first, because I was writing for an upcoming anthology and the story’s idea seemed more important than the main character.

    So this time, I decided to let the story drive my character. The result gave me three good pieces of insight.

    1. Your main character can be defined to the reader by how he/she reacts to elements (e.g. characters, events) in the story. As with Jack, sometimes it just takes one heroic action to make a character likable.
    2. The actions of the character are equally important in progressing the story. If the character isn’t willful enough to move the story forward, he/she shouldn’t be your main character.
    3. The story must drive change in your main character. If your character doesn’t grow as a result of his/her experience, then it wasn’t a good story.

    I’m pleased with the story that I wrote (and the fact that I cranked out a 4,000-word story over the course of a weekend). More importantly, I’m pleased that a great character emerged from the story, where none had originally been.

    So, the lesson here is to listen to your characters carefully, but don’t be afraid to let your story change them. The best character you create might be a minor character you had intended to kill off.

  • Character and Plot: A Healthy Codependence

    Hypothetical: Someone walks up to you on the street and says, “Character or plot driven?”

    Let’s go ahead and assume they’re not wearing their favorite shade of inmate orange.  Oh, and they don’t have on one of those snazzy jackets with the sleeves that latch together at the back.  Aside from slowly backing away while using your peripheral vision to scan for cops, what do you do?

    For my money, the only correct way to answer that question is “yes.”

    Like most things in life, the discussion of plot versus character driven fiction is a slippery one.  It’s not black and white, and anyone who says otherwise is either too inexperienced or too myopic to realize that all the fun debates are taking place in the gray areas.

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