We’ve all heard as writers that character feeds, or drives plot. But how often does someone show us how this occurs?
As a psychotherapist, wife and mother of 3 along with being an author I’ve given a lot of thought to this.
Also my stories a heavily character driven.
I think an awful lot about my characters.
The character or personality of a character directs plot like this.
The plot of a story may consist of: Rabbit sees carrot. Carrot sits in the middle of a family of frogs. Rabbit needs carrot to feed her or his family. Rabbit goes after carrot.
Yet, plot does not a story make. People moving about and making decisions does not interest us.
Why they do and the crazy and interesting ways in which they move about to achieve their desires does.
And thus we look to character or personality, their emotional state, the limitations and strictures society places upon them.
Let’s say that along with needing to feed her or his family, our Rabbit was raised by a family of frogs. Very strange and different from what we’d expect, but interesting.
And let’s say that the family of frogs that raised Rabbit was not only kind to Rabbit, but actually saved Rabbit from being murdered by a band of rogue rabbits gone wild. And what if those rogue rabbits had actually killed Rabbit’s family?
Our characters Rabbit may very well go into the gathering of frogs and take the carrot, but Rabbit’s feelings and emotional state about doing that is going to be very different from say a Rabbit who has never met any frogs. Or what about a Rabbit who having never met any frogs, was raised to believe that frogs are stupid and lazy and scared?
This may sound a trite simple, but essentially this is what character and personality do for the bare skeleton of plot.
Of course stories don’t come to us in the simple form of say, plot leaving us to formulate character.
Sometimes we get an image, a theme, and idea or a character to whom we are drawn, ruminate upon, dream about. The character engrosses us, gains a hold on us.
And yet we have not story.
What to do then?
I’ll write about that tomorrow.
Until then, ponder the relationship between character and plot in your stories.
What is it?
How important is the personality of your major character to your story?
Where do you see the character’s personality leaving a stamp upon your story, making it unique and setting the plot apart from other stories with similar plot lines?
Considering that there is no story that has not already been told or rendered in some variation, how important is character and personality of characters important to you in crafting stories?