For the previous parts in the story rules series:
Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego
Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel
The story, and its message, is revealed through character choices. The characters choices reveal who she is, her strengths and weaknesses and her weaknesses is what creates the struggle, what reveals the solution, the message.
Why a character does something is driven by who she is inside. Most of who we are is subconscious. We may give a reason behind why we do something, but that reason generally is a shallow explanation. What we see as our weaknesses generally are only symptoms to what the real problem is, its underlying cause. The underlying cause is what the characters needs to change to solve her problems. If we knew the underlying cause, the need, we would do something about it and it wouldn't be a problem anymore. What we see as a weakness is how the need shows up in our social context, how we behave. This behaviour often generates more conflict and external problems.
This is exactly how a character works in a story. Who a character internally, why she makes her choices, drives how she does things, who she is socially, which in turn is what creates what happens, the external conflict or plot. The plot forces a internal character change which changes how she behaves and treats others. This change is what reveals the theme or message.
Internal conflict (the characters need) triggers social conflict (how she behaves) triggers external conflict (what happens/plot) triggers character change triggers social change reveals theme.
The character is the metaphor that the message is communicated through, the vessel that brings the theme to the audience.
Here a question arises. What about stories with a character who doesn't change? Or what about multi-plot stories and stories without a clear character? The answer is simple. They work the same way as stories with character change.
Kill your ego. The most important character in every story is not created by you. The most important character is your audience. They are the ones who you want to take the path of character change, change in a way that you have convinced them of the message of the story.
Generally this change is made by letting the audience relive the story vicariously trough a character who also changes, but at times the simplest way to create the change is by having a passive character (a character who doesn't change) but having the world around the character change, or by having a multi-plot story that illustrates the message from different angles through different stories.
To write a good plot you need to know who the character really is, to know who the character really is you need to have the message. If only things always worked this linear and simple.
For me, a story generally starts from a rough idea for a plot that moves me in some way, even though I don't know exactly why it does this. That "why" is the message of the story and is what I need to find out to write the story.
Without knowing the message and knowing the character need it is impossible to write a good story, and the first rough guesses of what the message is are generally very shallow. Writing a story before you understand it is very inefficient since it demands several full rewrites (a full rewrite is when the previous draft pretty much is thrown in the garbage). A faster way is to reverse engineer the story.
Reverse engineering is a good way to learn how things work, the process involves taking something appart to learn how it works. Just as you can learn how a car works by picking it apart, you can learn how a story works by picking it a part. This works even if the story isn't yet complete.
For reverse engineering to work well, the most important thing is to always keep an open mind. All decisions are temporary until the story has reached the audience. Be prepared to throw things away. Also, think on paper and not just in your head as writing thoughts down makes them more concrete.
I first write down everything I know about the plot idea in a few lines as a rough outline. Then I look at this plot idea keeping in mind that the plot is created by character choices. I try to figure out how those choices were triggered, what social behaviour created them and who would have the stories darkest moment as her greatest fear. I write several short versions of the plot outline from the view-point of different character weaknesses and try to learn something new from each.
When I've found what I believe is the "right" characters weakness I start going deeper. Why is she behaving the way she does? I try to find the (for her) subconscious problems/need that controls her behaviour. Again, when I've found an underlying need or why I rewrite the outline from that point of view and I keep rewriting new outlines of the story until I find what I feel is a good enough for me to start fleshing out the story confidence.
I generally jump back and forth between the "Why? How? What?" of the story and characters in a way that for others probably seems very random, but in the back of my mind I always keep the rule that what happens to a character is triggered by how she behaves which is controlled by why she is who she is.
At times what I'm doing feels like total garbage, but I know that making a wrong choice is better than making no choice at all, that there is a lot to learn from my mistakes and that as long as I continue trying I can find the a story that moves not only me but also my audience.
I hope you have found this article helpful!
Peter Hertzberg
Story Rules Part 1: Kill Your Ego
Story Rules Part 2: Don't Reinvent the Wheel
The story, and its message, is revealed through character choices. The characters choices reveal who she is, her strengths and weaknesses and her weaknesses is what creates the struggle, what reveals the solution, the message.
Why a character does something is driven by who she is inside. Most of who we are is subconscious. We may give a reason behind why we do something, but that reason generally is a shallow explanation. What we see as our weaknesses generally are only symptoms to what the real problem is, its underlying cause. The underlying cause is what the characters needs to change to solve her problems. If we knew the underlying cause, the need, we would do something about it and it wouldn't be a problem anymore. What we see as a weakness is how the need shows up in our social context, how we behave. This behaviour often generates more conflict and external problems.
This is exactly how a character works in a story. Who a character internally, why she makes her choices, drives how she does things, who she is socially, which in turn is what creates what happens, the external conflict or plot. The plot forces a internal character change which changes how she behaves and treats others. This change is what reveals the theme or message.
Internal conflict (the characters need) triggers social conflict (how she behaves) triggers external conflict (what happens/plot) triggers character change triggers social change reveals theme.
The character is the metaphor that the message is communicated through, the vessel that brings the theme to the audience.
Here a question arises. What about stories with a character who doesn't change? Or what about multi-plot stories and stories without a clear character? The answer is simple. They work the same way as stories with character change.
Kill your ego. The most important character in every story is not created by you. The most important character is your audience. They are the ones who you want to take the path of character change, change in a way that you have convinced them of the message of the story.
Generally this change is made by letting the audience relive the story vicariously trough a character who also changes, but at times the simplest way to create the change is by having a passive character (a character who doesn't change) but having the world around the character change, or by having a multi-plot story that illustrates the message from different angles through different stories.
To write a good plot you need to know who the character really is, to know who the character really is you need to have the message. If only things always worked this linear and simple.
For me, a story generally starts from a rough idea for a plot that moves me in some way, even though I don't know exactly why it does this. That "why" is the message of the story and is what I need to find out to write the story.
Without knowing the message and knowing the character need it is impossible to write a good story, and the first rough guesses of what the message is are generally very shallow. Writing a story before you understand it is very inefficient since it demands several full rewrites (a full rewrite is when the previous draft pretty much is thrown in the garbage). A faster way is to reverse engineer the story.
Reverse engineering is a good way to learn how things work, the process involves taking something appart to learn how it works. Just as you can learn how a car works by picking it apart, you can learn how a story works by picking it a part. This works even if the story isn't yet complete.
For reverse engineering to work well, the most important thing is to always keep an open mind. All decisions are temporary until the story has reached the audience. Be prepared to throw things away. Also, think on paper and not just in your head as writing thoughts down makes them more concrete.
I first write down everything I know about the plot idea in a few lines as a rough outline. Then I look at this plot idea keeping in mind that the plot is created by character choices. I try to figure out how those choices were triggered, what social behaviour created them and who would have the stories darkest moment as her greatest fear. I write several short versions of the plot outline from the view-point of different character weaknesses and try to learn something new from each.
When I've found what I believe is the "right" characters weakness I start going deeper. Why is she behaving the way she does? I try to find the (for her) subconscious problems/need that controls her behaviour. Again, when I've found an underlying need or why I rewrite the outline from that point of view and I keep rewriting new outlines of the story until I find what I feel is a good enough for me to start fleshing out the story confidence.
I generally jump back and forth between the "Why? How? What?" of the story and characters in a way that for others probably seems very random, but in the back of my mind I always keep the rule that what happens to a character is triggered by how she behaves which is controlled by why she is who she is.
At times what I'm doing feels like total garbage, but I know that making a wrong choice is better than making no choice at all, that there is a lot to learn from my mistakes and that as long as I continue trying I can find the a story that moves not only me but also my audience.
I hope you have found this article helpful!
Peter Hertzberg
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