PRIEST: Novelist | Powerful Plots

"Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first."

--Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

If you thought working with the Characters was a bit of work, I've got a surprise for you! You see, there are many writers who argue that Plot is more important than Character. A great character in a story with a bad plot sometimes works out well. A great plot with poorly-constructed characters usually does poorly. This is because we identify with the characters. That's one opinion from the Character-Driven writers, and it is a valid one indeed. But there is something to be said for the Plot-Driven story, because you can care about the characters' situation just as much as you can about characters. Further, if the plot is poor, the writer risks losing the interest of the readers in those great characters anyway.

So, who wins this argument? No one, everyone. I would prefer to make great characters and great plots, thankyouverymuch. Cover all your bases, that's what I say. I tend to write faster when I have the characters interacting with a good plot. That's just me. Stephen King, some years ago, stated that he didn't believe in plot. Still, he's never written a novel without one. So plots can arise naturally from the actions and conflicts of the characters. We have proof of this. But the beginner should know what a plot is, if only to notice his/her story has a plot!

I can't give so much attention to Character and not address plot with the same passion and conviction. That wouldn't be right. Those Plot-Driven writers like myself would feel cheated. But a friend of mine put me in my place almost a decade ago, when he said that I created characters to support the plot. While I disagreed, I still decided to try it the other way around. Now I see a balance that must be struck between the two aspects of narrative. Here, I will do with Plot what I did with Character -- in the Character Section, I told you how valuable certain things were to the Plot. Well, now I'm going to tell you what Plot points are valuable to Characterization.

It won't end there, either. We'll look at plot devices, plot vouchers and coupons, exposition, structure, plot types, MacGuffins, info dumps, and the rest of the dirty particulars of Plot preparation and presentation.

We talked about films that have “no plot”. Often the scenes aren’t constructed well, thus failing to illustrate the plot, thus leading to the audience wondering if there ever truly was one. One more thing: We tend to remember the bad ones equally as well as we remember the good ones.

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