Since there’s interest, here’s another post on writing stories.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One perennial question (less here than elsewhere) is “Which came first, plot or character?”\u00a0 It also emerges as “Is this plot-driven or character-driven?”\u00a0 Another variation is “Do you get the idea first, or a character?”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, “We know you can’t get a chicken from an omelet, but did this omelet start with the egg or the chicken that laid it?\u00a0 And what part does the heat play, and\u00a0 the frying pan?”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let’s start with ideas.\u00a0\u00a0 Most writers find it easy to get “ideas”–that is, story-related thoughts resulting from accidental encounters with life-stuff: sights, sounds, situations, people, animals…anything.\u00a0 Usually (for me, anyway) it’s two to five such encounters that begin to form a cluster that sometimes, not always, suggests a story might come out of it.\u00a0\u00a0 A striking face–a strip of cloth–a piece of jewelry–the smell of baking bread–a conversation overheard–the taste of a waffle with butter and maple syrup—the softness of fur–a favorite (or unfavorite) book….anything can spark an idea, as that sensory input interacts with others already stored in memory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Combining these bits and pieces with “What if?”\u00a0 can begin the process of arriving at “Yes, I have an idea for a story about this man\/woman\/child\/alien who is [in a situation] and [does something.]<\/p>\n
Ideas enter into storymaking throughout the process.\u00a0\u00a0 You might, like Shakespeare,\u00a0 think of two young people from families who are enemies but fall in love and…then what?\u00a0 You need more ideas–not just the words, but the ideas behind the words.\u00a0\u00a0 The young lovers have parents–what are they like?\u00a0 Will they appear in the story?\u00a0\u00a0 What about the Nurse?\u00a0 What about the young man’s friends?\u00a0 What about the young woman’s brothers and cousins?\u00a0\u00a0 The ideas don’t come all in a nice package…they’re coughed up (often with difficulty) along the way, to solve both the story’s problems and the writer’s.<\/p>\n
So then… the ideas suggest something about the story.\u00a0\u00a0 In the case of commercial writers who have a contract, the contract will state some parameters: “Military SF with female protagonist” for instance.\u00a0\u00a0 So the writer says “Hmm, OK, female protagonist…military…has to have some basic qualifications for that occupation…” and starts feeling around in her head for someone who will fit.\u00a0 And someone interesting enough to carry multiple volumes…and someone complicated enough to generate plot for those volumes.\u00a0\u00a0 (The writer knows by then that if she’s going to live with the character in her head for years, she doesn’t want a boring,\u00a0 simplistic, passive, nasty, or depressed person in there: she is already living with herself.)<\/p>\n
As the character comes into focus, so does the character’s backstory–the chicken behind the egg.\u00a0\u00a0 Except for the very rare novel about someone with amnesia (Gene Wolfe’s Soldier in the Mist<\/em>, for instance,\u00a0 protagonists need backstory, far more than is shown directly to the reader.\u00a0\u00a0 What kind of family did the protagonist come from?\u00a0\u00a0 How does the character feel about that family and its place in society and its effect on the character?\u00a0\u00a0 About other individuals in the family…and others that affected the character.\u00a0 How do the other family members perceive the protagonist?\u00a0 Natural hero?\u00a0 Born to go bad?\u00a0\u00a0 Beautiful but dumb?\u00a0\u00a0 Too passive?\u00a0\u00a0 Annoying hyperactive know-it-all?\u00a0 What did the character succeed at before the story starts?\u00a0\u00a0 Fail at?\u00a0\u00a0 Do ordinary-OK at ?<\/p>\n Plot begins with a destabilizing event.\u00a0 That event can be a character’s sudden realization that something’s wrong (“I have to get out of my hometown or I’ll be trapped here waiting tables in the diner forever”)\u00a0 or an external force, the classic one rock that starts the avalanche when kicked off the trail, the avalanche that destroys the character’s home and family.\u00a0\u00a0 But once it starts, the protagonist should have “agency”–should be actively doing things that advance the plot…although not all<\/em> the things that advance the plot.\u00a0 If this is the protagonist’s story, and it should be, then the protagonist must have agency: must make decisions and perform actions that have a direct effect on the story.<\/p>\n Why?\u00a0\u00a0 Because that’s the nature of plot…it is the “heat” that tries to make an omelet of the egg,\u00a0 that causes the egg to transform, and also the frying pan that contains it–the limitations of plot contain the character in contact with the first and subsequent destabilizations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Plot is, in one sense, the lens that enables the reader to examine the character…by revealing, in the character’s decisions and actions, what that character really is.\u00a0\u00a0 No matter how carefully described, a character who does nothing–does not show volition–cannot be known as well as one who decides and acts.\u00a0\u00a0 Without a character (an egg who doesn’t want to be an omelet, for example)\u00a0 plot isn’t Story.\u00a0\u00a0 Without a plot (that destabilizing event, and those that follow)\u00a0 the character is a picture on a wall, motionless…again, not Story.<\/p>\n The challenge–and fun–of running a multi-viewpoint story with a suite of major characters through a long group of books is the need to provide them all with sufficient background,\u00a0 sufficient depth of character, and sufficient freedom to all exercise agency and all be moving the plot, each in his or her own way.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Minor characters may seem to have agency, but you supply that when the need arises:\u00a0 if, say, you need someone to find a particular sword and bring it to the protagonist’s attention, you can invent the kind of person who would be carrying a mixed lot of swords in his wagon. \u00a0 But protagonists have it from the start, because the writer provided it.\u00a0\u00a0 And since they do, a group of them will take the plot into more complicated and (to me) interesting directions than just one.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet it must still be a plot, to be satisfying as Story, and that means the “frying pan” must function as the shape and the boundary that holds the plot together, without violating the characters’ own nature and agency.<\/p>\n Fortunately, it’s not necessary to understand all this to write the story.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s the advantage of reading stories, and listening to stories, as early as possible and as much as possible.\u00a0\u00a0 The fundamental structure of Story becomes natural long before someone can write one.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Reading widely–across genres, across defined age ranges, across (if possible) nationalities–allows you to know, without conscious analysis, the wide variety of ways writers approach Story.\u00a0\u00a0 A frying pan has one familiar shape, but you can cook many things in it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Omelets alone come in great variety.\u00a0\u00a0 Any given writer may prefer to enter Story with a plot, or with a character or with an idea formed of a cluster of impressions…but in the end, Story requires both character and plot…and enough impressions to make the story feel alive, real, present in the reader’s mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since there’s interest, here’s another post on writing stories.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One perennial question (less here than elsewhere) is “Which came first, plot or character?”\u00a0 It also emerges as “Is this plot-driven or character-driven?”\u00a0 Another variation is “Do you get the idea first, or a character?”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, “We know you can’t get a chicken from 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