Drawing from the Well
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 110
Yesterday was all over the place, BUT I was able to figure out a major plot thread that’s going to weave through at least three books (including the current) as well as a major characterization point and how THAT weaves into a major plotline. So I’m taking all of that as a win. When even thinking is writing (and it is, don’t question me!), figuring out big stuff like I did yesterday totally qualifies.
Now today I just need to figure out how to place my First Plot Points so this will all make sense.
Filling the Well
Perelandra: 67%
The Only Harmless Great Thing: 10%
There’s an updated image of my reading for the year. On the left is what I’ve already read and on the right the books that are next in my TBR queue. If you think that’s a lot, you should see the whole TBR towering at over 1300 books. It’s kind of daunting, but I hope to live a long time.
I started a new book somewhat unexpectedly yesterday, but it’s one I got for free from Tor a couple months back and so I started it yesterday just in case something happens with my Kindle/Phone and I lose the book. At least it will have been read at this point.
The Only Harmless Great Thing is about radioactivity and elephants. That’s all I’ve got so far. It’s told from the points of view of elephants and humans so I’m struggling to wrap my brain around it just yet, but I’ve got another 80-ish pages to figure it out. I’ll let you know what I think of it.
Polishing the Well
Yesterday, my wife and I went and saw Isn’t It Romantic? I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but it was funny and cute and even a little ACTUALLY romantic. We laughed and cooed and had a great time. Hooray date night!
Well Chat
Why Character and Plot are Inextricably Tied
Some writers (and I used to be in this camp) think that characters and plot are two different things. I totally get how this happens. Your characters are people and the plot is the story. They SOUND like two different things.
But they aren’t.
The missing link in this thinking is that the characters DO things and the things they do ARE the plot. That is why the two are basically the same thing. Realizing that has been a revelation for me because I’ve been able to take my mind off plot crafting and focus on my characters.
That’s probably why my first couple of drafts of Book 1 were not as great, now that I think about it.
This is why I’ve been so bent about motivation lately. Character motivation is what drives them to do things. Now that we’ve connected that the things they do, driven by their motivations, are the plot, that makes the motivation the heart. And every author knows, even subconsciously, that to sell good books (especially a lot of them), you have to get at readers hearts. The only real way to do that is by showing them your character’s hearts.
So why does this matter? When laid out like this, I’m sure it seems simple. I’ll give you an example from my own experience. I’ve got an iced story right now set in the same Stratum as the current series I’m working on. The series was intended to be called the Road to Lenore, so for conversation’s sake, we’ll call it Lenore here. When I was crafting the Lenore trilogy, planning out how the PLOT would play out, I focused on big moments and cool stuff, but I didn’t think about my characters as anything but tools. Then I started writing the story and characters did things, but their motivations were not laid out on the page as anything beyond convenient plot devices and far-off MacGuffins. I plowed through a lot of the writing (believe it or not), but because I was reading at the same time, I was reading better stories than I was writing.
And then I dug into The Wheel of Time series and EVERYTHING changed for me. The characterization was so strong in that book that it blew me away. And I wanted that for my book. On some deep level, I realized that the book I had, as written, wasn’t salvageable. It would take scrapping the whole thing and starting again. And this realization actually turned me off of the entire world. I had turned a world into a theme park of biomes and peoples with extreme, obvious magical powers. I was ashamed of my work.
By the way, don’t EVER feel this way. If you wrote something and you’re not pleased with how it came out, as long as it’s not published, feel free to fix it, but be proud you created something. You can’t even imagine how many people don’t make it that far.
As a response, I jumped to another planet in the same system (assuming it’s in the Goldilocks habitable zone but is far enough away that the two planets would never collide and OH YEAH there’s no space travel) and started The Tidestone Cycle.
And here we are. Now, knowing what I know now, will I go back and start over with Lenore? Maybe. I’ve got a lot of stories in the hopper and I’m a slow writer so anything could happen. But my point in this extended anecdote is that when I didn’t have the motivations from my characters, my plot felt flat and uninteresting. Now that I’m including that and having that drive the story, I’m excited about what I’m writing. And I hope readers will be too.
That is why characters are inextricably tied to plot: because good stories unite them to create an enthralling, unstoppable narrative that is as addictive to write as it is to read.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG