Plotting a novel

It looks easy when you read a novel with a great plot, but it's a lot harder when you're in the driving seat. It's the same when you hear a great song; easy to pick up and repeat, but you could spend your whole life trying to come up with anything better, or even comparable.

You don't always need a plot, mind; at least, nothing that is too obviously a plot. And this is where novels fall into two broad camps; character-driven stories, or plot-driven stories.

There's an important difference between the two.

Character-driven novels are pretty much as they sound; tales about character and how that character develops through the pages of your book.

Plot-driven novels are less about character development, and more about what happens beyond the character, ideally with all kinds of twists and turns.

Best of all, arguably, are novels that have great character development and a great plot. But these books are rare, and are hard to contrive. In fact, the act of contriving these kind of novels often results in a book that feels contrived, albeit very cleverly.

What's really needed is a contrived book with great plot and character that moves seamlessly through the pages with events and personality changes unfolding naturally and fluidly.

Character-driven stories, meanwhile, begin with (or at least are centred upon) a flawed character. Not necessarily weak. Just flawed. Or "human" if you prefer. Your character needs to have a goal, but is prevented from achieving that goal because of his or her internal conflicts.

Internal and inner conflicts

You might have a lead character (a white man) who needs a blood transfusion to save his life, but refuses to accept the only blood available, which happens to have come from a black man. There can be any number of reasons why the white man doesn't want black blood (or is can be vice versa, of course). It might be pure bigotry, or due to a murder in the family in which a black man (or white man) was the suspect, or because of racial tensions in a small town, or for religious reasons, or anything at all.

The important thing is to show an inner conflict, and then work to resolve that conflict in the narrative. There doesn't have to be a lot "happening". The drama might play out on a small "stage". Or the stage might be much larger. But unless your hero's character changes significantly throughout the story, it's not really a character-driven tale.

It may be that many characters change. Think of the film Twelve Angry Men (the original film with Henry Fonda). Here we have a jury charged with deciding the fate of a Puerto Rican boy accused of killing his father. Each of the 12 jurors brings his personal baggage into the jury room, and each character is skilfully disrobed—which changes some, but not all, of the characters as the story progresses.

There is plot too including some very clever twists and turns. But essentially it's a character-driven tale set on a small stage. Theatre plays are usually (by necessity) character driven, whereas blockbuster movies are generally plot driven.

Developing inner conflicts

Where a writer will encounter problems is when he starts with a character-driven story and ends up with a plot-driven tale (or vice versa). It invariably leaves the reader feeling unsatisfied and wondering what happened.

Good examples of character-driven films include Groundhog Day where the obnoxious, superior weatherman— Bill Murray as Phil Connors—slowly learns to engage with his peers on equal terms and thereby become a part of the community and so redeems himself, etc; and Falling Down—with Michael Douglas as William Foster—which explores the angry white male syndrome and attempts to show how doing the "right thing" doesn't necessarily mean that the right things get done. It also shows that "doing the right thing" can be taken to extremes and end up as the wrong thing.

As a "bonus", the movie counterpoints this by exploring the character of Robert Duval (as Detective Prendergast) who needs to do a few "right things" of his own. It's a flawed movie with various other confused themes, but the best films usually are exactly that; flawed and (to a greater or lesser extent) confused.

Character-driven novels

Good character-driven novels include John Braine's, Room at the Top; Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: Herman Melville's Moby Dick; Joseph Heller's Catch-22; Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. You can probably come up of dozens of others.

The simple way to think of it is that character-driven novels explore character, while plot-driven novels explore plots. The only real question for a writer to resolve is how much of one to include, and how much of the other.

Plot-driven novels

Plot-driven novels include almost anything by Frederick Forsyth, Clive Cussler, Andy McNab, Dick Francis, Jeffrey Deaver and Dan Brown.

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels are all plot-driven too. In each story we have a strong, action hero, but one who never really changes his personality from one book to another. Yes, we learn more about Jack Reacher with each new saga. But that isn't the same as character development. That's simply character revelation.

Would Jack Reacher be stronger were the novels more character-driven? The answer is yes, they probably would. Only, Lee Child knows what he's doing, which is providing edge-of-seat thrills with wonderful twists. And you can only do so much with your 140,000 words (or whatever). So there has to be compromises.

John Grisham, meanwhile, often has as much to say about plot as character, which is why he's such a good writer. Ditto for Ruth Rendell who explores character in a deeper, darker way.

With a Ruth Rendell novel, the plots are generally convenient vehicles to move a character along.

Neither Child or Grisham or Rendell is necessarily better. It's merely that each plays to his or her strengths and knows where the limits of their skills are.

Write with your instincts

There isn't always a hard line between character-driven novels and plot-driven novels. There's only a grey area, and sometimes not even that. You may read a given novel on a "character-driven level" that someone else reads on a "plot-driven level". Some of Stephen King's books work that way, particularly when writing as Richard Bachman.

The trick, perhaps, is not to worry too much about it and simply write your story and let the reader figure it out—assuming that he or she cares to do so. Which means creating interesting characters with personal "issues" that need to be resolved, who also find themselves in a tricky or dangerous situation that also needs a resolution. If you bring both resolutions together at the end of the book with a satisfying payoff, then so much the better.

So just write with your instincts, but try and ensure that there's an underlying framework that keeps the narrative within reasonable literary conventions. See Writing tips for more advice.

Plot is character, and character is plot

This is said a lot. It took me a long time to fully understand this. It really means that people are what people do. If your character is, for instance, a miner, he'll do things that miner's generally do. He'll think like a miner. His actions will most likely be shaped by his experiences, and vice versa. If you put your miner (but hopefully not minor) character into a given situation, how will he or she behave? How will he or she react?

This doesn't mean that your characters have to follow rigorous stereotypes. They can be flexible. Pliable. But you need to always keep that stereotype in the corner of your eye. And if your character breaks away from that stereotype, tell us why.

And make it convincing.

Broadly speaking, reckless men do reckless things. Cautious men do cautious things. Angry men do angry things. When you have a confused character, you risk confusing the plot.

The plot, meanwhile, will constantly impact on a character and leave its mark. A traumatic event might strengthen a character or might weaken a character. It might galvanise your hero, or leave your hero stunned. But ideally, it has to do something. There has to be continuous interaction, albeit in a low-key way.

Plots change, characters develop.

Make your characters work for their goals

Nothing comes easy. The best thrillers are the ones where the hero has to really struggle. He or she should leap from one disaster to another, always just staying ahead, whilst seemingly falling behind. The same is true of your villains. Make them work hard. Give them problems. Obstacles. Conundrums.

If you hero jumps from an aircraft on a parachute, you might set the parachute on fire. Or you might have him land in a minefield. The same principles apply in a more low-key way. If the girl has just got the man of her dreams, give him cancer or something. If your child has been given a dog for Christmas, see if you can rustle up a band of vivisectionists looking for fresh mutt.

Also, make your characters fallible. Of course they're going to succeed in the end. But convince us that they could fail. Or, at least, could partly fail. Or might succeed only at huge cost.

Superman without green kryptonite is boring.

Your characters don't have to be likeable

At least, they don't have to be likeable in the ordinary sense of the word. They only need to be understandable. You can have a bad guy as your hero; a kid brought up on the wrong side of town, for instance. He's been brutalised since he first learned to waddle. His mother is a whore. His father is a pimp. The kid has had to fight for everything he has. So he forms a street gang and begins a reign of terror. You know he's wrong and bad, etc. But there's a "rightness" in there somewhere. There's a morality at work. Not everyman's morality, perhaps. Just a coherent morality.

Your hero may survive or may not survive. He may meet a beautiful girl, during a robbery, and fall in love. She may refuse to have anything to do with such a cold, heartless man. She works for a charity that looks after educationally sub-normal kids. The gangster, desperate for love, decides to throw down his gun and help her. For a while, anyway. But the old ways keeping drawing him back and he's torn between two worlds and needs to change.

And so we're back to character is plot, and plot is character.

Where do I start?

You need to have something to say. An idea. A theme. Or a question. Some of my ideas come from playing the "what if?" game. What if the world was going to end tomorrow? (see Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach for a chilling account of this scenario).

Or what if there was a global plot to assassinate the world's leaders on the same day (perhaps at the signing of a new treaty)?

Or what if a murder victim was killed by a man from another book?

Weird.

You shouldn't force ideas. The best ones, for me, usually happen when I'm washing the car or brushing my teeth (for some reason). Just learn to wonder. But if you really want to write a novel, you're probably already playing this game naturally.

Use the newspapers for novel ideas

Often, I find interesting little snippets tucked away in newspapers that could make a great novel. A man might be killed in an odd industrial accident, for instance. But what if the oddness was staged to help cover up the murder. Most murders, after all, aren't very bizarre. The motives might be. But people are generally strangled, bludgeoned, shot or run over. So look for the bizarre. You might try snipping out these oddities and pinning them to the wall where you'll see them often. Maybe you'll put a couple of stories together and make an interesting connection.

Study existing novels

There's no shame in looking at an old plot and updating it. There are only so many stories, and language dates, and modern readers generally want modern voices. You might look at, say, Hitchcock's Vertigo and relocate it to Shanghai, or outer space, or a prison. Your hero doesn't have to suffer from vertigo, as James Stewart's character did. He might suffer from agoraphobia. Or dog-ophobia (or whatever that's really called; I'll look it up sometime). Of course you should make significant changes to an updated/borrowed storyline. Chances are that as you progress, your storyline and themes will alter, anyway. Just build on good stuff and make it your own. Stephen King did this with Salem's Lot, which is just Dracula in New England, updated.

Get in at the last moment, get out at the first opportunity

This is old advice. But good advice. Don't labour a scene leading up to, say, a murder. Generally, start your piece as close to the essential action as possible, and get your character out of the action at the first opportunity. If your character is walking along aimlessly (or time wasting), readers won't like it. Take your hero from scene to scene with the minimum possible drag. Yes, you can describe essential background elements (location, weather, furniture, etc). Just keep it short and focussed. Do I let my scenes drag? Of course. Just try and fix it before you send yours off.

Show don't tell

This is also old but good advice. Don't have your character pick up a phone and say, "What's that? A million Martians just landed and are eating people and firing ray-guns and demolishing a small town in Kansas!" Instead, take the reader to Kansas and show him or her exactly what happens.

If you're writing in the first person tense, that might be hard to stage. So use your imagination. Be inventive. If you can arrange it, have your hero see directly or indirectly what happened.  Maybe he switches on the TV (weak, but acceptable if handled right). Or maybe he sees it in a dream (hard to make convincing, but can also work). Better still if you simply take your character to Kansas where he sees it first hand. This is strong and will satisfy the reader.

But avoid having your hero simply tell someone what he did. Try and show the reader firsthand. There isn't enough room in a novel to always do this. Just don't push your luck.

But show-don't-tell means more than this. If your hero is angry, avoid saying: "Jack gazed at Louise. He was angry". Better to say something like; "The cup exploded in Jack's hand as he gazed at Louise". Or words to that effect. The point is, the reader will work out for himself was Jack's emotional state was from the action you describe.

This is a very common "mistake" in fiction and one that I get wrong constantly. All you can do is try and keep refining your technique.

What is your hero actually doing?

Sounds simple, but it's easy to lose track of this. Give him or her a clear goal between chapters, or between scenes. Give the reader a sense of continuous movement. That doesn't mean your hero can't sit and reflect on something. Just try and close the scene with a feeling that this reflection is leading to something else. A resolution to do something. Or a plan.

Coincidences in fiction novels

Charles Dickens used them all the time. But you should treat them like a notifiable disease. Coincidences happen in life. In fiction they simply come across as lazy plotting. But you can still sometimes get away with it as long as the coincidence isn't too profound or crucial. You can sometimes get away with starting a scene by clearly pointing out the coincidence. Such as:

It was purely a coincidence that John found himself on the morning train with Emma. He hadn't planned it. It just happened.

That might work. But if you write something like; She saw the gun on the floor. It had jammed. But by a lucky coincidence she'd recently completed a weapons training course using that exact pistol... readers are going to howl. And rightly so.

Good story development

Usually the reader will follow wherever you lead—as long as you don't make too big a jump between the plausible and the implausible. Just nudge the story along with all its doubts and questions. Then exercise those doubts and those questions until you've built up enough muscle to say; She realised then that this was Satan's child. Alternately, get the doubts out of the way from the start. It was a child of Satan.

Good story development moves the reader along as if he or she is on a conveyor, or escalator, but isn't really aware of it. To push that analogy, imagine that your reader really is on an upward escalator. Imagine that your chapters are the consumer adverts fixed to the walls of the escalator. Imagine your characters reading each advert and being unaware that the escalator is moving upward and taking them to their destination. The conclusion.

This is good story development. The events move along at a natural pace. Even more than that, the events move along as if it was inevitable; as if there was no other way for the tale to unfold. Which doesn't rule out surprises. On the contrary, the surprises, once they've happened, should seem fitting.

It's a tall order for a writer, but developing a story is something many authors ignore. They know that they want to take their characters somewhere. But that's not the same as developing the story in the wider sense. To develop a story, you need to show how one event led directly (or indirectly) to the next—as opposed to simply having an unconnected series of events.

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Creative writing

● Writing tips

● Plotting a novel

● Finding a literary agent

● Choosing a literary agent

● Agent query letters

● Inspiration for writers

● Rejection letters

● Manuscript critique

● 5 minute fiction fix

● Proof reading

● Writer's block

● Creative writing school

● How to get published

● Active & passive voice

Sample writing

Like to read a few examples of my style of writing? Check out the links below. If you like what you read, and have a manuscript of your own that needs a little help, email me. I'll do what I can.

Sample 1

Dirty Business

Murder and mayhem following an industrial pollution cover-up.

Sample 2

Cruising

A light hearted tale about a holiday venture, with a difference.

Sample 3

Exit Point

An aviator becomes embroiled in a terrorist murder plot.

Sample 4

The Grace of God

A tale of blackmail following a hit-and-run incident.

Sample 5

Exclusion Zone

A middle-aged man takes a couple of suitcase bombs onto a London underground train.

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Darley Anderson, top UK literary agent, on books,
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Zoë Sharp, creator of the

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Jeff Kleinman, New York literary agent, talks shop

Crème de la Crime:

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publisher and managing editor of a smaller—but

essential—British

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