Writer Unleashed is a weekly podcast for fiction and memoir writers. It's a deep dive into story techniques, writing craft, and the mindsets that help you write with unstoppable momentum and create stories readers can't put down.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
18:55
Most writers can describe their plot in detail: what happens, in what order, how it ends. Far fewer can describe what their character actually gains, loses, or finally understands by the time the story's over.
In this episode, I walk through how plot and character work together: what to ask about a plot event before you decide it belongs, how to tell if your character has changed, and how to find your next plot step by following your character's response, instead of inventing one out of thin air.
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your support helps more writers find the show, strengthen their craft, and finish the stories they want to tell.
Thanks for tuning in to Writer Unleashed. See you next week!
Stuck in your draft? Join my free live masterclass, From Stuck to Story, and find the structure that's already in what you've written.
If I asked you to tell me what happens in your story, you could probably do it. You know the opening, you know how it starts, you know the big plot turns, you may know how it ends, you might even have it outlined chapter by chapter. Now, let me ask you a different question. Who is your character at the end of your story that she wasn't at the beginning? What can she see, face, or do that she couldn't before? If that's harder to answer, it may be because you've spent more time figuring out what happens to your character than what it changes for her. And that's often where a story that is plenty happening still doesn't feel like it holds together. In last week's episode, we talked about how one clear event gives your first chapter its shape. So today I want to zoom out to the whole story and to the person at the center of it. Think of your story as two lines. There's the plot line, the external events, everything that happens. That's the horizontal line. Then there's the vertical line running through all those plot events. That's your character's inner story, how she understands what's happening, how she responds to it, what she believes about herself and other people, and what she isn't ready to face yet. It's the emotional structure. Those two lines are bound together like brick and mortar. The external events are the bricks. Your character's inner story is the mortar that holds them together. Without the mortar, you've got a pile of bricks. Without the bricks, the mortar has nothing to hold. But here's the part I want to focus on today. Your plot serves your character, not the other way around. And many writers focus more on what happens than who it happens to. They create all these dramatic events in the plot, and the characters are just reacting, and they're often reacting in predictable ways. No surprises there. Now, that doesn't mean you have to figure out your character's entire character arc before you start writing. You might discover it through the scenes you write. You might get halfway through a draft before you begin to understand what this story is asking your character to face. But whether you're drafting or revising, the question is the same. What do these plot events mean for the person living through them? And how do her responses, her choices, shape what happens next? How do her choices affect other characters? How do their responses change the trajectory of the plot? Okay, so let's get into it. Here's a question I want you to think about as you write. What hangs in the balance for your character? There may be something very concrete she could gain or lose: a job, a marriage, her home, her safety, or something less tangible, like her identity. But what does that mean to her? Losing the job might mean losing the one place where she feels competent. A marriage ending might force her to question a version of herself she's held on to for years. Falling in love could mean getting hurt again. That's where an event begins to matter beyond the fact that it happened. Two characters could experience the same event and respond in completely different ways, because different things hang in the balance for each of them. One character hears criticism from her mother and thinks, I need to try harder. Another thinks, I knew I couldn't trust you. And those interpretations lead to different choices. So when you're deciding what happens next, don't stop at whether the plot event is interesting. Ask what it puts at risk for this particular character. What does it challenge? What does it make harder for her to avoid? When you know that, even a quiet scene can carry enormous tension. Change is movement, not a mood. A character's inner story isn't just a record of how she feels. She can be lonely in chapter one, lonelier in chapter 10, and devastated in chapter 20. You've intensified the feeling, but has her understanding changed? Has she made a choice that creates a new problem? Has she tried something she wouldn't have tried before? Has she risked something? That's the movement we're looking for. If your character starts out lonely and wants to do something to solve that problem, what decision does she make despite being scared? What risks does she take? And what complications come out of those risks to challenge her? She might still be alone at the end of the story, but perhaps she's not lonely anymore. What being alone means to her has changed. And change doesn't have to mean becoming happier or wiser. A character can become more guarded. She can recognize something and refuse to act on it. She can make a choice that costs her more than she expected. What matters is the experiences of the story have consequences inside her, and those consequences affect what she does. For example, in Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. When we meet Eleanor, her life runs on routine. Work, the same meals, vodka on the weekends, Wednesday phone calls with her mother. She keeps other people at a distance, and she will tell you she's completely fine. But as readers, we begin to see the loneliness she herself doesn't acknowledge. So we have the circumstances of her life, and we have the way she understands those circumstances. Those aren't quite the same thing. Then Eleanor decides she's fallen in love with a musician she's never met. She builds a fantasy around him and begins preparing for their future together. New clothes, new hair, a plan for becoming the woman she thinks he'll want. There's movement there. She wants connection. But look at the form that connection takes. She's imagining a relationship with someone she doesn't know. She can give him all the qualities she needs him to have without the uncertainty of getting close to a real person. Meanwhile, she and Raymond, a colleague from work, come across an older man who has collapsed on the street. They help him, and helping Sammy brings Eleanor into contact with his family, their warmth, their invitations. Now she's encountering something she can't control through fantasy. Real people who include her, who notice her, who might come to matter to her. And that creates its own discomfort. Wanting connection doesn't mean she knows how to accept it. Then her fantasy about the musician collapses. When she sees him perform, the man in front of her doesn't match the man she's invented. That disappointment is devastating because of what she's invested in it. This was supposed to be her way into a different life. And when Eleanor reaches her lowest point, Raymond shows up. She begins accepting help. She starts counseling. Slowly, she begins facing the past and questioning things she's treated as true. By the end, her life isn't neatly resolved, but her relationship to other people and to her own experience has changed. She's beginning to let herself be known. Now here's how the plot serves Eleanor. Look at how these events work. The musician gives Eleanor somewhere to place her longing without having to navigate an actual relationship. Helping Sammy brings her into contact with people she can't simply invent. The collapse of her fantasy exposes how much she's been depending on it. And Raymond's presence gives her an opportunity to accept the kind of help she spent so much of her life resisting. Each plot event puts pressure on something inside her. But Eleanor also shapes the plot. She pursues the musician, she participates in helping Sammy, she responds to invitations, she accepts help. What happens affects her. What she does in response affects what happens next. That's how the two lines move together. If we knew nothing about Eleanor's loneliness or the hopes she's placed in the musician, his disappointing performance wouldn't be that impactful. It would just be another thing happening. It matters because we understand what it means to her. Choices are where change becomes visible. This is how readers experience a character's change. We can learn a great deal through her thoughts, through what she remembers, notices, judges, or realizes. But we also need to see what she does with that understanding. Does she answer the phone this time, tell someone the truth, stay when she would usually leave, ask for help, then wish she hadn't? Those choices don't have to be dramatic to be significant. And they won't necessarily move in one direction. Your character can take a risk, feel exposed, and retreat. She can recognize an old pattern and repeat it anyway. That doesn't erase the movement, it gives you something to work with. Now she knows something she didn't know before. What will it take for her to act on it? Sometimes your character doesn't change. The frustrating truth is that sometimes people can't change, sometimes they won't, sometimes they refuse to change. For example, Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road is scared to change. He holds on to the life he's claimed he wants to escape, and the outcome is tragic. His refusal has consequences, and by the end, we understand something about him that we couldn't see at the beginning. So when you sit down to write and you're not sure what comes next, return to your character. In last week's episode, I asked you to think about what your character wants when we first meet her. Now follow that want through the whole story. What does she want right now? What is she trying to protect? What isn't she ready to face? Then consider an event that puts pressure on one of those things. It might force her to choose between what she wants and what feels safe. It might give her exactly what she's been pursuing, only to reveal that it doesn't solve the problem she thought it would. Or it might offer her something she needs but isn't ready to accept. And once that plot event happens, stay with her response. What does she think it means? What fear or resistance does it kick up? What does she do because of that? What consequence follows? You don't need to know every turn before you write, but these questions can help you find the next plot event that grows out of the story you're already telling. So let's recap. Here are three things to take with you. One, your story has an external line and an internal line, the horizontal plot line and the vertical line running through those events. The events and what those events mean to your character work together like brick and mortar. Two, ask what hangs in the balance. What could she gain or lose and why does that matter to her? 3. Follow her response. How she interprets an event shapes her choices, and those choices help create what happens next. Your character's inner story gives you a way to decide which events belong and to understand why a scene with plenty happening might still feel empty. And if you're struggling to see how the pieces of your draft fit together, I'm hosting a free live masterclass on Tuesday, October 13th, 7 p.m. Eastern. I'll help you see the structure already taking shape in what you've written, the frame your story hangs on, so you can return to your pages with a clearer sense of where you're going. Now I only have 50 spots open, so go to mylivemasterclass.com to hold your spot. Mylivemasterclass.com. So when you're looking at your draft, don't just ask, does enough happen? Ask why does what happens matter to this person? What does it ask her to face? What does she do in response? And what happens because of that choice? We keep reading because we want to know what happens next, but we also want to know why it all matters to your character, what it will mean for her. That's how your plot begins to hold together.
