Combining Character and Plot driven prose.

Plot driven

For fiction, especially popular fiction, thrillers, mysteries, sci-fi, etc, a story's plot usually follows a causal chain of events. Life for the most part is not causal. Things that happen on any given day are unrelated, random, and unconnected.

Plot is, for all general purposes, a causal chain of events that follow Aristotle's beginning, middle, and end Dramatic Curve.

Usually what makes a "fiction story" is the components of Freytag's triangle above.

1.       Introduction of the problem

a.       The beginning of the story starts with some problem, some conflict, some event that is a dilemma in the lives of the characters.

b.      Some stories star In Medias Res (in the middle of things) or, put better, in the middle of the action.

                                                               i.      The enemy came from every side, every angle. Droplets of blood covered their bodies like sweat, their eyes spoke of vengeance.

2.       Rising action: complicating the problem

a.       This part takes up the greatest part of your story. It is where the problem and the protagonist's attempts to solve the problem gets complicated by numerous antagonistic interventions. The antagonist whomever or whatever it may be complicates the problems solution to greater and greater tension levels until things finally exploded. First it might be the guys in the black SUV's, secondly it might be the protagonists wife, thirdly the whole city against him, maybe even the military…the world. What odds are at stake, depends on the story itself, but that tension line spirals upward to full effulgence, to the climax or "final conflict."

3.       Final Conflict

a.       This is where the protagonist is at the highest jeopardy. He either defeats the antagonist or gets defeated. In some thrillers and mysteries, it is back to the place where the story began.

4.       Dénouement, resolution, or catastrophe

a.       All looses ends are then tied. Anything in the story that may have caused a question should be resolved either before or by the final conflict. You briefly show this resolution in the falling action and resolve part of the story. It is customary for the dénouement to be short

In the design of plot, the events are all related and causal. That stain in his shirt from breakfast causes an auto accident causes the intense argument causes the chase causes discovery causes the kidnapping causes the deception causes the exploding ending.

It is important to keep in mind that all of the great writers testify that they never start with plot but rather only with plot in mind. They start with character.

Character Driven

I use a technique I learned somewhere in a book on writing, to form a character driven prose. I forget what author came up with it. It may have been Orson Scott Card or one of the other writers from the Writer's Digest Series on the components of writing fiction. The technique involves five developmental steps. These are easy to identify in just about any character driven story. They are:

1. emotion (an emotional development motivating the character)

2. decision (Motivation then drives decision)

3. action (decision made leads character to action)

4. conflict (action on either the protagonist or the antagonist side leads to conflict) 

5. emotion (when conflict is resolved the character enters an new emotional state) 

Character driven prose must follow an emotional development, or knowledge development of the main protagonist and even the antagonist.

Combining the two 

 

 If we apply the logical emotional development normally found in character driven prose, E-D-A-C-E, to the plot driving design in Freytag's Triangle, within the the introduction and the rising action sections we get a story that is both character driven and plot driven at the same time. See diagram below.

I hope this article has been helpful, especially to those who have been frustrated by literary fiction teachers that claim that popular fiction is not character driven. I have heard such claims out of the mouths of professors. Yet for all their efforts to persuade, I have found that most of them have rarely picked up a Stephen King novel, or any other of the various brand name genre writers and seen for themselves how such genre stories are VERY driven by character and therfore just as literary as any other piece.