Plot

So I still don't really feel like writing this at this point in time (I mean, come on! It's a Monday for crying out loud.) but I'm going to anyway. I figured that if I screw up royally and say something dumb, it won't matter since there's no one reading this. Once I have finished discussing plot, I shall then reveal valuable CIA and FBI information that I'm actually making up off the top of my head. And no one will ever know...

Anyway. Plot.

First, let's clarify something: every novel has a plot. I know I made some comments when talking about characters about how some authors don't have a plot, but that's what we call hyperbole, to sound all fancy and literary. If you don't know what that means, here is a handy link to dictionary.com. Back to what I was saying, every novel, every story, has a plot, however simplistic it may be. Yes, this does include TWILIGHT. Poetry is a little bit different, but I won't get into that. To be honest, I'm not an expert on poetry so I probably won't ever talk about it here. Not that anyone will notice.

Let's use LORD OF THE RINGS as an example, since I have no shame when it comes to plugging. A very simplified version of the plot is as follows: dark lord Sauron creates Ring, Frodo gets Ring millennia later, Frodo and friends go to destroy Ring, thereby ridding the world of evil, Frodo and friends encounter countless hardships spanning many hundreds of pages, Frodo destroys Ring, everyone is happy. You get the idea. By the way, if any of you nonexistent people reading this have no idea what I was just talking about, you'd better spend some quality time at your local video store. The library would be preferable, but I can't expect too much of you seeing as how you don't even exist.

Do you notice anything about all those plot points I just mentioned? (The correct answer to this question is yes, by the way.) Every single one of those plot points mentions at least one character. *insert dumbfounded looks and head scratching followed by mutterings of "I thought you were talking about plot..."* Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I am talking about plot. The thing is that plot and characters are really inseparable. If you have characters at all, chances are extremely high that they will be involved in the plot. As in, I have no idea how you would have characters and not have them involved in the plot. That just baffles me. And, what's more, since we're talking about fiction here, it's pretty much a given that there will be characters. Even if you're writing about an inanimate object, chances are that you'll do something to personify it. I know, big words.

Now, I'm sure all of you know something about the structure of plot. At least I hope you do. You know, like rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, that type of deal? Yeah, well, I'm not really going to go into that at the moment. I might break it down more in the future, but I'm not making any promises. That's the beauty of such an informal medium. I can be as noncommittal as I want and no one will be able to do anything about it.

You probably also know something about plot-driven (also known as action-driven) stories vs. character-driven. But the difference is, in a few words, that plot-driven stories focus more on the action (see how the other term ties in now?), whereas character-driven stories tend to focus more on the characters and their emotions, reactions, reflections, etc. In a character-driven story, things still happen. In a plot-driven story, there will still be characters. That's because it's almost impossible to have one without the other. I'm probably beginning to sound like a broken record, but I can't stress that enough. The next time you read the most boring book of your life, like one of those books you had to read in English class before you wrote several essays on it in order to extrapolate every unimportant detail, just remember that there is actually a plot there. It may not be very exciting, but it's there.

But that's not what I'm getting at here. I can hear you all groaning now and wondering when this stinking blog post is going to end. You've read this far, you might as well actually get to what I'm trying to say here. The point is this: plot and characters together make up a ginormous portion of what we do as writers. Yes, I just used the word ginormous. Get over it. It's easy to think that an exciting story alone will sell the novel to those reading it. But you can't have a plot without characters. Don't sacrifice one for the other. It'll only hurt your writing.



Quote of the week: "The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical forms of literature." --George Orwell