Having Trouble With Plot? Look at Your Characters.

It’s become an old adage of writing advice that, in a great story, character and plot are inextricable from one another. Character doesn’t dominate, and the plot doesn’t dominate. Rather, the seeds of conflict lie in the character, and the chain of events that unfolds couldn’t possibly exist in the exact same way, or have the same repercussions, for someone else.

In his recent essay for Glimmer Train, novelist and writing teacher Joshua Henkin comments on the how the roots of character grow the branches of plot. He says:

My graduate students often tell me they have trouble with plot, but what they’re really telling me is they have trouble with character. I remind my students to ask themselves a hundred questions about their characters. Better yet, they should ask themselves a thousand questions, because in the answers to those questions lie the seeds of a narrative.

Read the full piece from Henkin.

Also this month from Glimmer Train:

On Dialogue by Rowena Macdonald

 All of Old. Nothing Else Ever. Ever Tried. Ever Failed. by Silas Dent Zobal