Looking at character-driven plot

I got quite a few requests in the last Open Mic, and I’m going to start working through them, beginning with this:

Note the problem is not character story lacking, but putting together a single coherent plot that doesn’t consist of a character’s entire life story. I lean hard on theme and structure for easy (also short) stories but work on plotting stories takes so long, most of them I never finish.

This problem is a hallmark of writers who are deeply character-centered. They know their character’s whole life (sometimes going back to grandparents and forward to grandchildren). They see events leading directly to other events in endless chains, so that telling a story about the character inevitably becomes a complete birth-to-death biography. Events overlap; one plot-arc finishes up at the mid-point of another, kicking off a new set of problems that will be at their peak when the first plot-arc finishes. This can cause both problems with plotting (it can seem impossible to find a place where things actually end), and problems with pacing and tension (because the high point and fast action in Arc #1 overlaps the slow start of Arc #2, and then Arc #2 reaches its peak just as #1 slows down and kicks off Arc #3’s slow rise).

Everyone’s life goes through a series of overlapping stages/events/seasons: biological, emotional, cultural, internal, external. Some are entirely predictable (children grow and become adults); others are less so (pandemics, wars). Fiction-worthy trouble can and does occur in every one of these stages/seasons/events, but the overlap means that at any given moment in a character’s life, they have multiple layers of stuff going on, and each layer is at a different point in the cycle of development and resolution.

To make all this into a story that makes sense, one has to separate the layers a little and then pick one to be the main focus of the story. Then … it’s a bit like focusing the zoom lens on a camera, or a pair of binoculars. As the writer tightens their focus on the layer or plot arc they’ve chosen, the other layers get a bit fuzzy, depending on how much they contribute to the central focus. It can also help to think of the character’s life story as divided into chapters or as a multi-volume series.

For instance, the writer wants to write about the character Colonel Martinez, whose determination got him into West Point and into a stellar 30-year military career in spite of his family’s wishes. There are all sorts of possible plot-arcs: the week he spent lost in the woods at the age of ten (the military search team that rescued him sparked his initial desire); the long family drama in which parents, aunts, uncles, try to talk him out of his chosen career; his miserable high school years when his classmates think he’s odd; his battles with his own doubts and guilt over the effect his choices have had on his family; his struggle to prove himself in the army over various assignments; etc.

The author has a couple of possible approaches. They can look for break points in time: the rescue; high school graduation; leaving home for university; graduation; first assignment; wedding date; the point when his family finally accepts (or permanently rejects) his choice; promotions or medals earned – anything with a date attached. Or, the author can look at which layer of the story they want to focus on: Martinez’s obsession with getting into the military; the family drama this causes; his emotional ups and downs, doubts, pride, guilt, bitterness etc.; the determination and hard work that get him into West Point; meeting and marrying his wife; and so on.

Each piece of this character’s life has a beginning, middle, and end, even though the beginnings and endings may seem arbitrary divisions. Every ending is the beginning of a new stage; every beginning is the end of the last stage. There’s usually a bit of wiggle room in terms of the exact moment of the ending – if the author’s chosen end point is “Martinez gets to go to West Point,” the last page of the story could be him holding his acceptance letter in exultant disbelief, or announcing his success to someone, or it could be him walking out of his parents’ home for the last time. If the author is writing a love story, the end point will probably be either the proposal or the wedding.

Character-driven life-plots can be like walking from one mountain to another. There’s a point where you are definitely walking down a mountain, and a point where you are probably at the bottom but it could still be a bit farther along this flattish bit, and then a point where you are definitely walking up another mountain. Exactly where you crossed from one mountain to the next is seldom clear. It is very easy to overwrite the ending of a character-driven story, because their life just keeps on going.

This means that sometimes the author has to be ruthless. If Martinez has finally graduated and is about to receive his first assignment, it is perilously easy to follow him into the office and allow him to get the worst posting he could ever have gotten stuck with, which instantly starts the next plot-arc. Unless one is deliberately going for a Series Of Unfortunate Events, it is usually better to end the story with the new graduate reaching for the doorknob, all excited about future possibilities…and then start the next story with him receiving the bad news. From an authorial point of view, this can be an excellent way of keeping one’s writing momentum going in a series.

Once the author has picked a main story-focus, the rest of the plot arcs fade into the background a bit. They affect the character, but they don’t show up much in the story except where they intersect with and affect the main storyline. Parts of the family drama over Martinez’s determination to attend West Point will definitely be relevant to “Martinez gets to go to West Point,” but family drama will be far, far in the background if the author has chosen to write “Martinez’s first assignment in Afghanistan.” Similarly, if the author is writing the story of the huge family drama, Martinez’s obsession with West Point is relevant motivation, but his specific experiences at school will be background.

The point is that, as the saying goes, “You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything-all-at-the-same-time.”