It’s become an old adage of writing advice that, in a great story, character and plot are inextricable from one another. Character doesn’t dominate, and the plot doesn’t dominate. Rather, the seeds of conflict lie in the character, and the chain of events that unfolds couldn’t possibly exist in the exact same way, or have the same repercussions, for someone else.
In his recent essay for Glimmer Train, novelist and writing teacher Joshua Henkin comments on the how the roots of character grow the branches of plot. He says:
My graduate students often tell me they have trouble with plot, but what they’re really telling me is they have trouble with character. I remind my students to ask themselves a hundred questions about their characters. Better yet, they should ask themselves a thousand questions, because in the answers to those questions lie the seeds of a narrative.
Read the full piece from Henkin.
Also this month from Glimmer Train:
- On Dialogue by Rowena Macdonald
- All of Old. Nothing Else Ever. Ever Tried. Ever Failed. by Silas Dent Zobal
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
[…] view post at https://janefriedman.com/trouble-with-plot-or-character/ […]
Quite right. I start by spending a bunch of time creating my characters and the initial conflict, and getting chapter one just right. Then I spend a roughly equal amount of time writing the rest of the first draft, because my characters tell me what they’re gonna do. If I hit a so-called block, it’s usually because I wasn’t listening.