Now that we’ve discussed characters and their need for a plot…
How do you get a plot or conflict idea?
The easiest way to get a conflict for your piece is to pick something your character doesn’t like and build off of that. He doesn’t like country music? The new student your character has to show around the school is from Texas. She hates math? The extra credit she has to work on requires her to be part of the math team for the school.
That’s the easiest way to come up with a conflict: make your character face something they don’t want to deal with.
As you work on your writing, ask yourself
WHAT is the problem in the story? (if there isn’t one, you have a problem, refer to the above paragraph)
WHY is it happening?
IS it already happening? (Did it start before your piece started? If so, what caused it–tell us about how it started)
HOW does your character deal with this?
HOW does the character develop throughout this conflict?
WHAT happens after the problem has been solved?
HOW have your characters changed during your piece?
ARE your characters better or worse off than before?
DID they learn anything?
(*This was Activity: Plot Development*)
The plot conflict is an integral part of developing your character through your piece. The audience does not need to know every detail about the character during the first paragraph; in fact, trying to tell too much about your character too fast will begin to sound like listing out character traits. Instead, through your story as your characters have to face different problems, reveal parts of their personality that pertain to the situation at hand.
Ex: The story begins outside on a summer day. Not the time for the author to introduce the main character’s fear of the dark- it doesn’t fit in with the story line here! Instead, wait for a part in the piece where the fear of the dark comes into play…maybe the character gets locked in a windowless room. Here you can talk about the character’s fear through showing it, not telling the reader ’she was afraid of the dark’. Instead, “The door slammed shut, and the sound of the lock in the bolt was a rasping cackle. Trapped, she began to hyperventilate; she couldn’t see past her fingertips.”
This integrates the concept of showing, not telling into your plot line. In this way, you can show how your character will deal with different situations and show their character while developing the plot line at the same time.
Next: Point of View
Point of view actually plays a major part in how your writing comes across to your audience no matter what kind of piece you’re working on. Many people blow this off without thinking, but there are several different choices when dealing with point of view.
First Person: “I”
—> The reader will know your character very well and the character will become very well developed because the reader will be inside of this character’s head; it is appropriate for the character’s thoughts to be voiced while using this perspective, but sparingly in order to cut down the ‘telling’ of the character to the reader through their thoughts. However, with this perspective there is the dilemma of character absence, because once the main character is not in a scene between other characters, they and consequently the reader are not ‘present’ in the scene and will not know what happened unless the character and reader are told by another character later on in the story.
Ex.: Main character, Dan, leaves the room. “I left the room.” However, inside the room are Dan’s best friends still, and they decide to help Dan out. The reader can’t know this though, because Dan is narrating the story, and he doesn’t know what his friends have decided. Later on, something like this will have to occur: “I talked with my best friends, who have decided to help me.”
Second Person: “You”
—> This perspective is a very confusing point of view to use, mainly because if the narrator keeps telling the story in such a way as, “You were scared and confused, and left the room,” ‘you’ should already know what the story is. It also makes the piece hard to follow, and is usually used in only song lyrics, poetry, or ‘choose your own adventure’ pieces. Personally, I don’t like to use this point of view, and I don’t like to read longer pieces in this perspective. It is difficult to use effectively.
Third Person: “He/She”
—> There are two options for writers who want to use the third person. The first is the ‘God’ perspective. From this point of view, the audience does not necessarily follow any one person throughout the story, but looks at the event in the book from an ‘eagle’s perspective’, seeing everything that happens, which allows them to put the pieces together faster than the characters in the piece, and solve the problem faster. This perspective is used most commonly in mystery and crime novels where the reader is challenged to put together clues and solve the mystery alongside the characters.
The second option is the ‘over the shoulder’ third person perspective, which allows the writer to write in the third person but to develop the characters easier than in the ‘God’ perspective because the reader sticks with the main character throughout the story and follows them around, like in the first person, but without any ‘thoughts’ from the character. Again, there is the dilemma of character absence, but the third person is one of the more common ways of writing, and the ‘over the shoulder’ perspective is used in most novels, including Harry Potter, (follows Harry through the plot), the DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons (follows Robert Langdon through the plot) and the Artemis Fowl books (follow Artemis Fowl, and alternately, some of the other characters too. They’re a mix of the ‘God’ and ‘Over the shoulder’ perspectives.)
Activity: Character as a Baby
—> Take a character from a piece you’re working on, and make them a baby. The exact age is up to you, but they should be about the age of a toddler. (Note: They should not be themselves stuck in the body of a toddler, they should be themselves as a baby.) Now, choose a point of view, and tie in plot conflict and character development that we discussed previously. What happens to your character next? What do they think of: naptime, diapers, high chairs, car seats, older siblings, baby food, etc? Be creative!
Now for the end of your piece: the Resolution.
The resolution is the final chapter or pages of your story, during which your conflict should be solved and all loose ends should be tied up. Here is where you discuss how your characters have changed and what happens next. The most important thing to keep in mind as you tie up your piece is
DOES it all make sense?
There shouldn’t be anything that seems out of place; if there was just a huge natural disaster, the character’s home probably will not be untouched and there will probably not be a ‘happy ending party’ for all the characters. Likewise, if the princess was saved and the dragon was vanquished and the evil magician was disposed of, it would be very weird for everyone to just ‘disappear’ and go home- you, the reader, are expecting the knight to win the princess’s hand and heart and rule beside her as king, etc etc typical Disney ending.
In the same way, your ending should fit your piece in a logical way, but in a way that we know that this is the end, and we’re not still wondering what happens next because something wasn’t cleared up.
Not all writing has to be a novel- other options include, but aren’t limited to short stories, poems, and song lyrics. Creative Writing is about being creative- there is no WRONG way to go about it. There are definitely ways to improve and to grow as a writer, because there are always things to learn and experience and things other people can tell and show you, but you can never be wrong.
(End Workshop 1)
