What’s the real problem?

Every story has a central problem that the protagonist needs to deal with. Sometimes, the protagonist deals with it successfully; sometimes they fail. The problem may be something the protagonist doesn’t have but wants, something they need to do, something they need to realize, something they need to learn…almost anything, really, from saving the world to finding their lost library book to reconciling with an estranged sibling to marrying the ruler of the land.

Practically all of the writing advice these days assures writers that they must know what this problem is before they start, either because the writer must know what the protagonist’s goal is and/or what that protagonist really needs/deeply wants (regardless of whether the character is aware of this) in order to move things forward in the proper direction, or because the writer must know the end of the story before beginning to write (and since the plot ends when the central problem is dealt with, knowing the end means you know the central story problem).

This all sounds very reasonable and logical, but it’s baloney.

For starters, at least half the writers I know write their way into their characters – that is, they start out with characters (including the protagonist) who are rather sketchy stick-figures, and it takes a fair bit of writing before the writer gets to know them. This is often true even of writers whose work is ultimately and obviously character-centered.

Stick figures do not usually have important goals and deeply felt wants or needs; if they did, they wouldn’t be stick figures. What a story ends up being is not necessarily where it started, and most emphatically does not reflect the process the writer went through to get to it.

Other writers start with a plot (“saving the world” is a perennial favorite), which then shapes the characters, especially the protagonist, into the sort of people who would do the things that the plot requires. This author knows what the characters will do, but not necessarily why, or how it fits with the characters’ needs, wants, and goals. Of course, some characters rebel partway into the story and take everything in a new direction, but for purposes of this post, that is simply a special case of “writing one’s way into the characters.”

It is also quite common for writers to start with a situation and a bunch of characters and write their way into the plot – that is, the writer emphatically does not know what the ending is going to be, or even what the central problem is, when they begin working, and it is many chapters before they figure it out. (And I am not talking about pantsers here, though this is similar to their process.)

When one is trying to figure out what the central story problem is by writing for a while, the first thing a lot of writers look at are the external factors, i.e., “In this situation, under these circumstances, what can go wrong?” If there doesn’t seem to be anything obvious, the writer may be tempted to throw in a random disaster (car crashes, earthquakes, asteroid impacts), random encounter (with an old flame, a mysterious possible-con-artist, a creepy stalker), or random unconnected action (a bank robbery, ninjas jumping through the window, a cattle stampede through Times Square).

While this can sometimes jump-start the plot, especially if the random event happens very early or can be connected to the protagonist’s backstory in some way, it can also be too much coincidence for all but the most blatant parodies.

The other main option is to look at internal factors – the main character’s emotions, wishes, attitude, etc. This usually takes longer, especially since in this sort of situation the writer is usually writing their way into the character. Personally, I need to write quite a lot of pages without worrying about where the story is going or whether there will end up being a logical plot, before I can go back and deduce what the plot should/could/will be from the ways the characters are thinking and acting. I find this exceedingly difficult to do, especially as I usually start with a (wrongheaded) idea of what the plot will be. I’m used to being wrong; I’m not used to having no idea what is going on or why until half to three-quarters of the way through a book.

In point of fact, however, all that my starting plot outline does is disguise the fact that when I start writing I do not know where the story is really going. I may think that the central plot problem is for the protagonist to save the kingdom from invaders, but by halfway through the manuscript it is clear that the real problem is that the kingdom is a mess and needs major fixing even after the invaders are dealt with. Or the real problem is the protagonist’s relationship with her aunt, which no amount of kingdom-saving will solve. I figure this out by observing what my characters are doing and thinking and, especially, worrying about.

For instance, “the protagonist is nervous about his upcoming dinner party” is a situation, not a plot. But if, when I start writing, the protagonist is worrying about whether Aunt Maya is going to cause a scene when Uncle Gerald turns up, I may have a family drama on my hands. If he’s worrying because the boss called at the last minute to say he’s bringing a big client, I may have a corporate intrigue going on. Or I may find out why he’s so nervous when he sticks the engagement ring in the ice cream and then serves it to the wrong person, who is insulted because it’s a fake.

I didn’t start with any of those plot ideas; they cropped up as I wrote and realized what the protagonist was worrying about. And if I’m only a chapter or two in, the actual story problem may be something else entirely that I don’t find out until I know why Maya and Gerald are at odds, who the mysterious client is, or where the protagonist got that fake diamond (and whether he knew it was fake when he stuck it in the ice cream).