When I was rewriting The Six Hands of Fate for an agent, I struggled to get the plot right. I had a 28,000 word plot I had to expand into a 80,000 word book.
To increase the length, I thought about the world and what obstacles being on a prison island with a community of convicts could throw at her.
The first draft was awful, and I knew it was. But I wasn’t sure why. Then I re-read The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry in that 8 week gap between drafts 1 and 2. It contained a chapter about Character and Characterization by Malcolm Bradbury, which talks about how plot should be character driven and not plot driven.
DING! A light went on in my head and I realised what was wrong with my first draft. Plot was happening for plot’s sake and not because it would help Nadir in anyway. Her character wasn’t driving the plot, and she wasn’t growing as a character because of it.
Stories should be about character. Everything that happens in a book should be centred around them. Plot should not be in the driving seat taking your readers for a ride – your characters should be.
A example of a book that falls into a plot trap is Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa.
The filler
Now, I loved this book. So much so that I immediately ordered the sequel, probably because it was so anime-like. The setting and the occasional drop of a Japanese word in the English text spoke to my otaku-half.
If you are familiar with anime, you will know about the infamous filler episodes. For those of you who don’t know, filler episodes are episodes in anime animators slot into the story when the anime is catching up too quickly with the source material. It gives the manga a few more weeks to get ahead before the animators go back to animating the canon content. Filler doesn’t do anything to the main story – it’s usually a side-quest that will involve the main characters and some new ones that are never mentioned again. It’s literally plot for plot’s sake.
Julie Kagawa falls into this filler trap. There is a side-quest when the trio go into the mountains to get to their next destination and enter a village haunted by ghosts. Spoiler alert – they defeat the ghosts and reveal how the owner of the village has been feeding guests to the ghosts to appease the vengeful monk spirit.
It was a fun adventure that added to the atmosphere of the world, but it made that section of the book feel very flat. Why? Because there was no character development. It would have worked if one of the characters had a connection to the village and it revealed something juicy from their backstory (a new character had just joined their party, so it would have been a good opportunity to do this), or if one of the characters had learnt a new power, or if the characters had walked away from that adventure changed in someway. But they didn’t, because it was just a series of event. And it will likely not be mentioned in the story again.
For an example of a book where the character sits firmly in the driving seat is On The Come Up by Angie Thomas.
Driven by character
The main character of Angie’s second book is Bri. Bri has a dream to become a famous rapper, not just for herself, but to also help her family’s financial situation. All the plot points that happen either propel Bri towards that goal, or are obstacles in her way.
Bri’s performance at the rap battle at the start of the book is plot, but it sparks the series of events that happen later, such as Bri’s interaction with her dad’s old manager and interactions with characters who re-appear and develop later in the book.
During the book, Bri’s mum loses her job. Again, plot, but it pushes Bri to do more to achieve her dream. It makes her want to ‘make it’ faster because her family’s financial situation becomes more dire. It affects the choices she makes, which leads to further complications.
A side plot of the book is Bri’s battle with her school over her treatment by two security guards. Refusing to allow them to search her school bag when it doesn’t set off the metal detector, Bri is assaulted by the two security guards. From that plot device spins a side plot of Bri and the minorities in her school speaking up about the injustice they have faced at the hands of the security guards.
Angie neatly links that incident back to the main plot as it sparks Bri to write her first rap which voices her frustration about the incident. Her lyrics, which are raw and full of anger, are then read in a negative way by the media and sparks conversations about the misconception of rap in the main media – or perhaps black rappers among the white media. Bri’s assault causes other parts of the plot to move forward – it allows her song to gain more attention, her mum is able to get a job because of the incident, and it causes shifts in Bri’s relationships with her friends.
All the plot devices that Angie includes in On the Come Up cause developments among the character. Each one causes a change, whether its to the main story or to the side plots.
Plot is important, but it has to cause your characters to change. If they walk out the other side of an incident the same person as they walked into it, or the incident is forgotten by the end of the book, then scrap that plot point. It’s not relevant.
Bookworm Scribe 