Plot Uber Characters?

This week I came across this post on David Farland's blog about the relative importance of characters. The point of the post was simple. Although many experts may harp on how characters are the most important part of a story, that’s not always true.

And I agree 100%.

I’ve always been a “plot over character” kind of guy. It’s not that I think character is unimportant, but I’ve generally found it’s the plot that allows the reader to understand and connect to that character in the first place. You can assign all sorts of eccentricities and habits and backstory to a character, but if the plot doesn’t make use of those traits, then who cares?

In other words, I believe that while you can have a great plot and a so-so character, you can’t have a great character without a great plot. It’s the plot that makes the character great in the first place.

Take Harry Potter, for example. In the first book of the series we learn that Harry, despite having lost his parents and being forced to live with the Dursleys, is a good guy. Yay! He’s also fiercely loyal to his friends. Yay again! And he’s also kind of a boring, stereotypical character. Er, yay?

But that last bit is okay, because it’s the plot that carries us along. When we watch him struggle his way through the story, dealing with the eccentricities of the wizardring world, trying to pass his courses, and working to foil Voldermort’s plans, we begin to root for him, despite the fact that he’s a stereotype. And let’s be honest about it; Harry’s character arc was about as flat as it’s possible to be for someone who’s just learned they’re a wizard. But by the time the book is over, we’re in love with him anyway. Why? Because of the plot and how he dealt with the situations thrown his way.

I’m not trying to convert any “character over plot” readers (and writers) out there. There are plenty of great character driven books on the shelves. I was just happy to see someone take the other side of the argument for once.

Can A Writer Have Too Many Ideas?

Five years ago, one of the reasons I thought I might be able to write fiction was that I was good at generating story ideas. Not necessarily the big stuff like plot points and midpoint reversals, but all the little stuff necessary for fleshing out a story and keeping the reader entertained. My ability to transfer these ideas to paper might be excruciatingly slow, but coming up with ideas has never been a problem. Unfortunately, focusing too much on the idea generation part of storytelling can get you into trouble.

When I first started writing fiction, I had no clue how many ideas were required to fill a three hundred page book. Back then, “three hundred pages” seemed staggeringly large, so I spent every spare moment dreaming up new stuff to put into my story. Turns out I overestimated the number of ideas I needed. So when my first manuscript blew past seven hundred and fifty pages, I had to dive in and rip out a ton of plot threads, subplots, and all sorts of miscellaneous events.

My problem stemmed from the way I approached writing. Instead of thinking of scenes as highly focused sequences of events that propelled a story forward, I thought of them as containers into which I could dump all my ideas, whether they fit together or not. After all, I had all these ideas just lying around and it seemed a shame not to use them. Besides, I also felt that by stuffing as many ideas into each chapter as possible, no one would notice my less than stellar prose.

Of course my chapters were sagging messes.

Eventually, after reading a great many blog posts and books on writing, I learned that a scene’s purpose should be narrow enough that it can be described in a single sentence. Maybe a couple of sentences for an entire chapter. My early chapter descriptions were little more than bullet lists. Once I learned to narrow a scene’s focus, my writing tightened up considerably, although this came at a cost. I had to remove lots of those “great little ideas” I spent so much time dreaming up and toss them into the maybe-I’ll-be-able-to-use-this-in-the-future pile.

Sometimes it’s tough to kill your darlings without shedding a tear or two. But my writing is better for it.

So tell me.  How hard it is for you to give up those little darlings you stuff into your manuscript?

Plot or Character? -- Or Is It Voice?

It’s the age old question. Which is more important? Character or plot? As far as I can tell, it depends on who you talk to.

For me, it’s all about the plot. Hands down. I’m not belittling the importance of having a great character, but in my opinion, it’s nearly impossible to have a great character without a great plot, or at least a good one. It’s the character’s struggle against the plot that makes us care about him in the first place. No matter how sympathetic you’ve made your character, no matter how many habits and peculiarities you lovingly lavished on your MC—unless those traits somehow interact with the plot in an interesting way, no one will care about them. You may think having your MC be afraid of snakes is funny, but if the plot doesn’t give him a compelling reason to fight his way through snakes, no one will even remember that phobia.

Think about Harry Potter. A kid who lost his parents when he was a baby. Someone we can sympathize with, no doubt. But other than that, he’s pretty much a generic nice guy, with about as flat a character arc as it’s possible to have in a fantasy adventure. (I’m just talking the first book here – not the series.) Yet we all love Harry. Why? Because of all the things that happened to him as a consequence of the plot.

But that’s not the real point of this post. Today I’m wondering where “voice” fits in alongside plot and character on the importance scale. Ever since I received my Kindle, I've been blasting my way through lots of books—mostly fantasy. And to be honest, many of the stories have the same basic plot. Oh, certain details may be different, but the plot is roughly the same. The middle school kid, teenager, vampire, mage, demon hunter, angel, etc, has to save the world by facing and defeating the bad guy. The names change, along with the rules of the world, but they’re all pretty similar. Nothing wrong with that, of course. The classic hero’s journey has been around a long time. It’s the world-building and other little details that make the stories different.

Still, as I peruse book descriptions on Amazon or back cover blurbs at the local bookstore, they all sound about the same. And the only way I can decide which to buy is by reading the first chapter and getting a feel for the author’s voice. Because the exact same story can be told by two different authors, and I can end up loving one of them and being bored to tears by the other. Does the author spend too much or too little time on descriptions and internal thoughts? Do the words flow like a hot knife through butter? Does the author have a sense of humor? These are the things that make or break a book for me these days.

There are plenty of books out there with good plots and good characters, but with all the competition these days, it may just be “voice” that wins out in the end.

So how do you go about making your voice unique?