What Is Plot?

November 18, 2008
I was considering this question because of a recent rejection letter apparently accusing me of being plot-driven rather than character-driven. It's said with an accusing tone, I think, and dogma in publishing circles seems to be that character-driven is desirable, whereas plot-driven is not.

I don't actually think those two things can be so neatly separated. In fact, my guess is that the editor's comment meant "I didn't really like the character" more than anything else. Or perhaps, "I really wanted them to stop chasing all over the southwest solving clues and sit down over a latte and discuss their feelings." Or maybe I'm just biased in that regard.

Anyway, the reason I think the two can't be separated is my own extremely broad definition of a good read:

Interesting people doing interesting things.

The "character" aspect is the "interesting people."

The "plot" aspect is the "doing interesting things" with particular emphasis on "doing."

It's entirely possible that this is a gender issue, that men are more interested in characters that actually do things, while women are more interested in characters who feel thing. That's such a gross stereotype I'm not comfortable with it, but there may be some truth to it.

So what is plot?

Let's take two books. 

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. My memory of the book is a little vague, but basically a professor of religious symbology, Robert Langdon, is called in by the police because a friend of his was murdered in a bizarre fashion in the Louvre. Robert then goes off on a wild chase all over Europe, deciphering religious symbols and clues that were being hidden by the Templars, trying to solve a mystery that will turn the world upside down. (Actually, my biggest problem with the book is that idea that anything like facts or logic would in any way harm religion, but that may just be me).

Anyway, the book's chock full of plot. Robert Langdon is probably not a fascinating character. He has a fascinating job (one that apparently no one in the world actually has) and he's very quick and very clever and and very smart and near-perfectly designed to solve the mystery he's involved in. It would have been a very different book indeed if the main character had been Jill Jones, a 2nd grade teacher from Des Moines on vacation in France who gets sucked up in the same story.

Clearly, despite editors desire to have a character-driven story, one of the most successful books of all time was plot-driven.

Let us compare this to:

Uh, wait. I'm looking over the hundreds of books on my shelf trying to find one that doesn't have a plot. Well, there's some nonfiction. But are there any on my shelf that have such weak plots that I would call them "character-driven?" Hmmm...

Let's take an imaginary novel, one about, say, Mary Smith, who works in the accounting department of a large retail store like, say, Macy's. She's divorced, no children, sort of plain, and nothing happens in her life. She wakes up in the morning, eats yogurt and drinks coffee, takes the subway into work, spends 4 hours on spreadsheets, eats a falafel for lunch at the nearest falafel shack, goes back to her spreadsheets, takes the subway home, does Tae-Bo to a video for an hour, vacuums her flat, has a salad for dinner, then reads for an hour, watches Comedy Central, then goes to bed. And the next day she does it all over again.

Mary may have a perfectly ordinary (though relentlessly uneventful) life and for all we know she's perfectly happy with her humdrum life. During this we can learn a hell of a lot about her, we can dissect her character. We can discover that she's a vegetarian because her father worked at a butchery where they slaughtered sheep and pigs and cows and she never got over it. We can find out that her ex-husband had an affair with her sister, so she has no contact with her family. We can find out that she likes the orderly, predictable nature of accounting because her mother was bipolar and their home life was crazy.

We can, in fact, learn all we want to known about Mary and go on for pages and pages and pages about her character.

But no one will read the damned book unless something happens. Preferably something interesting, as my earlier definition indicates.

Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say that Mary's sister and ex-husband are killed in a car accident and she is given custody of their two children, ages 7 and 9. Now, Mary's life is totally upside down, her routine is shredded. She has to adjust, they have to adjust, and while we're at it, let's throw in some guy that she's suddenly attracted to. A babysitter? Someone at work? Or, hey, maybe her ex-husband's lawyer who is overseeing the transition of the will? Or the sensitive social worker who's checking to make sure the children are adjusting.

Now, we have a plot. Interesting things are happening.

Is Mary interesting?

Well, to someone.

Are these interesting things?

To someone.

Not all books are for the same people, but if readers can identify with Mary, and you throw in enough conflict and, hopefully, enough incident, then you have both a character-driven and plot-driven story.

Would I like to read it?

Probably not, unless she was being stalked or someone had murdered the ex-husband, etc. That's the way I lean in my stories. I might be surprised though, if I can identify enough with Mary.

It's also important to note that people read for different reasons. I read for entertainment and escape. God help me, some people read to be "enlightened," whatever the hell that is. There are people who read "literature" because they want to... you know, I'm not entirely sure what their argument is. They want to be uplifted or depressed or perhaps to feel smugly self-righteous that what they're reading is "good for them" in some way. And I was just starting off on a tangent about this, but let's stop and recognize that all books have value to the readers and we shouldn't be arrogant about any of our reading material being better than anyone else's.

I don't think you can separate plot from character. Plot evolves out of character, out of how they would react in a particular situation. In my own novel, The Devil's Pitchfork, the main character is a troubleshooter for Homeland Security. He's a doer. His reactions to events are from training in microbiology and biochemistry and in Special Forces. So when he reacts to things, it comes about from his training, from his experiences, his job ... and his character. He's witnesses  biological and chemical and traditional warfare first hand. He slipped into Iraq under cover after Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. He's seen many things he wishes he hadn't and it's affected him.

If I were to write the same story with a main character who was an innocent bystander caught up in horrific events, the story would be different because of how that character responded, based on that character's traits and personality. Different characters, different stories.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Mark Terry