Plot vs Character: My Motivation for Writing Speak with the Dead
There are two main components that drive my stories forward: characters and plot. Characters are who the reader (and writer!) connect with. Their motivations and emotion can move the story along and their narrative provides personal context to the world. The plot, on the other hand, are the events happening around the characters and move the story in that way. Both are integral to what I write and I’d like to talk about how they inspired me to write Speak with the Dead.
Wikipedia defines plot as “the mapping of events in which each one (except the final) affects at least one other through the principle of cause-and-effect.” It is a series of xxxx happened and so xxxx happened and so xxxx happened, etcetera, etcetera, until the story is complete. For example, in Spirited Away, the plot would look like this:
The family takes a shortcut to their new home, and so they find a seemingly abandoned resort, and so Chihiro’s parents find food and start eating, and so they turn into pigs, and so they can’t cross the river before sunset, and so they are stuck there, and so… You get the idea.
When I first came up with the idea for Speak with the Dead, I was focused on plot. I knew what I wanted to happen during the story and (mostly) how to get from A to B to C and onward. I had a clear idea of what the world was like and how things would happen. I had a general idea of the characters involved, but they weren’t completely fleshed out. And so, I made an outline and started writing.
Quickly, I began a path to discovering my characters. Throwing their skeletons into my world allowed me to put meat on their bones as I advanced the story. Looking back, I think I was coming to understand them similarly to the way a reader would, by learning about them as the plot progressed and they moved through it. So, while I was initially inspired by the plot of my story, I became motivated to uncover who these characters are and what they mean to each other. As things happened to and around them I asked myself, what if? What if Merry is the biggest and strongest of the group? What if Ben has a family? What if Captain Heiser knows the ship captain?
What if Anna hates the gods, even though she thinks she doesn’t believe in them? What if she needs them? What if the one she needs the most is the one she hates the most?
I added depth to the characters in this way, and by the end of the first act I was able to go back and weave that muscle and sinew into the beginning before carrying it through the rest of the book and adding more to it. I think this method was especially effective for me because I am a planner (I word-vomit outline pages of information before I begin an original story), but I also love to solve puzzles with my engineer’s brain. There were some small components within the plot I was able to work out as I wrote, but the main puzzles were the characters, and it was a joy to figure them out.
Overall, I highly recommend this method if you’re like me– you want a map, but you also want to problem solve. I liked my characters when I first started writing, but now that they’re fully realized I am so in love with them I have to hold myself back from commissioning infinite character art of them all. (That being said, if you’d like to fund my art commissions you can make a purchase in my store! 😉) I hope as you read the book, you’ll come to love them, too!