Which came first the character or the plot?

Usually when I get an idea for a book, it’s a situation: racial discrimination in British India, falling off a balcony, a family where the seventh child is always a girl. They’re plots. And very quickly my imagination begins to fill in the story that creates and results from the situation.

I then move to who would people the situation. Who would suffer, how and why? How did they get into that situation, what is it about that person that brings the situation to life? And, because I write romance, who would save them from the situation and be exactly the one right person for the protagonist, to complete their life (and it is always that there is really one protagonist and the love interest is the one who saves them)?

In Magic in the Storm, Morgan is the protagonist. It is his story. He is the boy who should have been a girl. The heroine, Adriana is there because she is the only one who can make him strong enough to overcome being the wrong sex. She is the ying to his yang.

In An Exotic Heir, Julian Ritchie is only half English. But that’s not how he’s known. He’s know for being half Indian and because of that he is considered “not good enough and never will be”. Until he is pulled kicking and screaming from his plot of taking his revenge on all those who discriminated against him by his love for the one person who accepts him as he is. Julian is the protagonist even though the book begins with the heroine, Cassandra leaving London, thinking that she’s been made the laughing stock of society.

So, while I quickly start my book ideas with a situation, I very quickly move into the people, the characters who will bring it to life. There is no plot without deep, complicated people. They are who we read for. So while my kernel idea is always plot, the plotting quickly moves to the characters.

But now I’m facing a conundrum. The story I’ve just begun working on has no plot. It is nothing but characters. My kernel idea started with a woman going mad (Tatiana) and a man who has been alive for so long that he’s done everything except have a home and love, and is looking to that to complete his life (Dagonet). I have people. Living, breathing, flawed and lovable people. And NO PLOT!

I’ve never faced this problem before. As I said at the beginning, I’ve always started out with a plot and then figured out who it would happen to. Here I’ve got people who need to grow and develop. I know how they need to grow and develop, and now I’ve got to find situations which will try them. Test them. Push them to where I want them go. What is it that will turn Tatiana from the sweet woman we know in Storm on the Horizon into the scarily crazy, controlling woman we know and hate in Magic in the Storm? How will Dagonet survive living in one place after spending the last 900 years traveling the world? Can he? Is it in his nature to be able to do that?

These are the questions I’m grappling with right now. This is what I’m working on, building toward. These are the building blocks of the story I’m mapping out right now. Will they form a beautiful finished home/story when I’m done? I sure hope so. But right now I’m floundering because I’ve started in a place I’ve never been before. It’s fun. It’s frustrating. It’s scary. Let’s see how it works out.

So, where do you begin your stories? Do you start first with character? A situation? A plot? A place? Do all of your stories start the same way?