How I develop my plots and characters
In an effort to take more steps to put my writing (and ultimately myself) out there, I’ve decided to post a few little ditties in case anyone wants to know more info about my approach to writing. Today we’ll be diving into plot and characters since that’s one of the most common questions writers find themselves answering.
How do you develop your plot and characters?
I actually see those as two very different questions. For me, especially in a book like The Turncoat in Carrington Park, developing the plot required more initial work than developing the characters. I think this was due to the nature of historical fiction, where a certain amount of accuracy is expected. There’s definitely an accuracy scale, with one end being just a step removed from a history textbook, and historical fantasy at the other. My goal was to make the plot as plausible as I could, while still creating a clearly fictional story. This meant aligning fictional events with things that did actually happen in history. Then the character development required creating characters whose motives and actions fit within that world, and how they responded to the events in the plot. The plot requires more work upfront, before the actual writing begins, and the characters don’t take on real flesh until I actually start working on the book.
There are loads of great resources out there for creating character outlines. They range from questions about basic biographical details to the extreme minutia. How deep down the rabbit hole you decide to dive with this is entirely up to you. My advice is to only go the level that is most helpful to you. Your characters - yes, even your main characters - do not need ten unique physical features that you then must describe to your readers. They don’t have to have anything unique about their appearance at all! Decide what’s important and let the reader fill in the gaps. Trust your reader is one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever read. Yes, there are people who love to have every single detail laid out for them regarding a character’s appearance, but for other people it can get very tedious, very fast, especially if all those descriptions slow down a well-paced plot. Also, be careful not to let mission creep set in, turning the character outline process into a form of procrastination (I can’t get started yet, I haven’t figured out if the love interest has freckles or not!).
Character outlines also include areas like family history, employment, strengths and weaknesses, and so on. Again, my advice is to tread lightly here. If creating an entire family tree for your protagonist before you start writing a single paragraph, go for it! Maybe that information is vital to your plot. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that everything you, the writer need to know is exactly the same as what the reader needs to know. The level of explanation/background info in each book tends to fall on a scale between over- and under-explaining. I tend to fall closer to the under-explaining side (I know this about myself, and it has been confirmed by readers), because I prefer to let the context do the explaining whenever possible, even if that means the reader has to wait a little before they can fully understand a certain event or scene. I think it keeps engagement up and increases motivation to find out what’s going on in the story. Of course, there is a balance, as too much tantalizing can be annoying, and even backfire if you’re not careful. That balance is something I’m very aware of, and do my best to get it right and improve whenever possible. (This is a long and convoluted way of once again saying trust your reader.)
What are your strategies for getting started with plots and characters? Is one more difficult to nail down than the other, or does it totally depend on the book? Let me know!