Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.  Ray Bradbury said this in support of the crucial role characters play in our stories. But, I wonder; to play devil’s advocate, is this claim entirely accurate?  Is one more important to begin the story with than the other?   And like the good old chicken and the egg question, which should come first, character or plot?

We know every great story must contain a well developed transformational character arc in which the protagonist changes as a result of overcoming a weakness or fear, or her failure to do so. She begins the story with an unfulfilled yearning, a dream, a hope, a goal or a quest and her struggle to either achieve it, ignore it or dismiss it.  Though, if she fails to achieve it, it will tug at her like a bothersome shadow pinned to her backside all through the pages of her story.  Through the external forces she confronts, and the internal forces pressing upon the inner parallel road she simultaneously travels along her plot line, she may change directions often, but in the end the reader hopes to see her ultimately change, or become a stronger person as a result of her determination, persistence or effort.  Or at least our readers will hope for that.

In The Writer magazine 2020 article “Change of Heart”, Contributor Jack smith quotes author Jessica Keener as he describes the lack of change as a tragedy, “ Isn’t that what tragedy is: a character who is unable to change or adapt or find a different solution to a problem?”  In fact, a lack of change, if constructed correctly, can elicit the same emotional reaction by the reader as a change itself.  Missed opportunity, the relinquishing of one’s ability to fight for what she wants, acceptance of status quo because it’s safer, the fear of failure or risk, all present as a tragedy, and that also allows for a strong emotional response , all of which  contributes to the  idea that it is character that comprises the scaffolding to hold up our stories, rather than the plot.

After all, isn’t it the character’s motivations that prompt her actions and isn’t it her reactions to the events in her world that matter to the reader, not the events themselves?  In the March/April 2024 Writers Digest article on this subject, Sarah J Sover says it’s the characters and their interactions with the world that are primary drivers of any believable plot. ”Focusing too much on the action rather than on how the events impact the characters, or on what their reactions are and what makes them tick, robs your story of the dimensions it needs to engage your readers”

Similarly, keeping this idea in mind that it is the character’s reaction to events  that drive the story, David Corbett, Author and Contributing Writers Digest Editor, discusses the exploration of back-story  to uncover the raw experiences that lead to the character’s view of the world and her attitude toward life.  It is her reaction to events in her life that form her perception and beliefs, that her “yearning is not fulfilled yet because of the various forces of resistance that hold her back.  These forces take the form of weakness, wounds, limitations, demanding obligations, external opposition, or moral flaws.  The forces of resistance are developed by the individual’s needs to protect herself from the pain of life.  Yearning and resistance do not spring from thin air but instead are molded through experience. Specifically, they quicken to life in moments of helplessness, when emotion or action arise from within the individual but outside her conscious control, revealing a deeper stratum of her character.”

Character and plot, actions and reactions, events and character development.   Round and round it goes.

While plot is undoubtedly important to the story, there would be no emotional impact or connection between the story and the reader without the characters.  The reader must care about what happens to the characters being impacted by the events in the story, as she observes the character change over time through the trials of pain and suffering she endures . This change does not happen overnight, however. It may happen quickly in a short story or poem, but it takes time in a longer novel, similar to our own lives where it takes months, years and decades for us to change (if we change at all).  Realizing some uncovered truth we couldn’t see before is the epiphany that changes us, or even some part of us.  It may be a subtle difference that grows over time or a major transformation that provides the courage to alter the direction of our life in some huge way.

 In Jack Smith’s June 2020 Writer’s Digest article, Change of Heart, he quotes writer Robert Garner McBrearty when he claims;  “ Life comes at us sometimes that way. There’s a sudden curious scent in the air or a ray of light breaking through a cloud, and we experience some sense of sharpening or altered reality”, while Heraclitus, the Greek Philosopher said “ The only constant in life is change.”  This applies to our fictional characters as well as in real life.  As the characters face weakness and fears, they grow stronger, or become better people, the same way we hope to in our real lives. 

American Writer James Baldwin said” Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” and likewise, Benjamin Franklin  said “When you are finished changing, you are finished.”  And what makes us change?  The situations we come up against, the adversities hidden within the events impacting us, the hills we climb along our plot-lines.

Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of every difficulty, lies opportunity. “ That opportunity is change. Some way to learn, move forward, change direction, make things better.  One event at a time. one reaction at a time.   Author Orson Scott Card said it this way in his book” character and viewpoint,  “People are what they have done, and what has been done to them.” .  Plot- line and character- development going round and round

If a character remains flat, the story remains flat.  To have a story we need a problem.  It is the characters who face the problem, change the problem and become changed because of the problem, that makes the story.  No problem, no change= no story.

In plot’s defense, on the other side of the debate,  however,  Aristotle said “everything in a narrative, from changes of fortune to characterization must be demonstrated through action as far as possible, therefore plot”, he believed,  “is the most important part of telling stories, not character”.

But characters thoughts become their actions and that becomes the plot.  And round and round it goes.

Heraclitis said one’s inner life manifests in one’s outer life, thus it is what is inside the character that drives what is happening outside.  It is not what happens to us that matters but how we react to what happens that matters.  This is so in our stories, both fictional and real life.  If the story is only about a giant tidal wave set on course to destroy a village, the reader won’t care about the event, unless she has come to care about the individuals living in that village and how they manage to survive through it.  Only then will she care.

And so, we have established the important role of the character and how character development drives the story, but what really of plot? In essence, plot is the process of your characters experiencing and bringing about change. We already know how important plot is to the story and we agree that characters reactions to actions lead to who the individual will become as a person, but what of those actions in which she engages that lead to becoming that person.

There must be a journey in life to take filled with events that will alter and affect our characters and us in our real life stories.  We must climb those hills we discussed in last month’s plot blog.  In our lives we follow a plot line every day, from waking in the morning to driving to work, to cleaning and cooking and everything else before, between and after. As we follow that line we react to the external forces we face each day, from malfunctioning alarm clocks, to traffic jams, unexpected emergencies that throw us off our schedules, all to which we react.  Without events to inspire reactions , we would be nothing more than  a blank slate, a blob of nothingness, empty, shallow, boring, uneventful. Its, as Orson Scott Card said, the things that happen to us that make us who we are; “ Every story is an event story in the sense that from time to time something happens that has cause and results.”  The plot is essentially the sequence of main events in a story, but, as Card continues, “ the story in which the events are the central concern follows a particular pattern:  the world is somehow out of order- call it imbalance, injustice, breakdown, evil, decay, disease- and the story is about the effort to restore the old order or establish a new one. The even story structure begins when the main characters become involved in the effort to heal the world’s disease, and ends when they either accomplish their goal or utterly fail to do so.”

Therefore, yes, the story hinges on action – a plotline of events, but then we come back around to what makes the story matter or resonate with the reader. Is it the events or how the events affect the characters that suffer and live through them that provide the heaviest weight to the story?

And so, round and round it goes. We come back to the question; which one really drives our story forward, the plot -line we climb each day or the way those events affect us. Our actions or our reactions to the actions? And which, like the good old chicken and egg question, should come first?