Plot is the companion to the timeline, which I discussed here. As a brief reminder, I introduced timelines as the part of story which connects the temporal events of the story together. However, we also ran into some problems with timelines. In particular, we found that it was difficult to connect events together in ways other than direct temporal cause and effect. In addition, we found that it was difficult to create adequate suspense without introducing some element beyond events themselves. This element, is the plot.
In some ways, plot works directly against its counterpart. Whereas the timeline is attempting to put events into a temporal order, plot works to suspend that temporality, in order to connect events in other ways. A plot can generate many other types of relevance, in particular character driven cause and effect. While all types of cause and effect have to occur in a specific timeframe, there is no limit on how large that timeframe might be for those types which are dictated by plot. For example, I used as an example a timeline of the Civil War with an extra event tacked on, marking 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed. This event isn’t temporally relevant to the Civil War; however, there is no reason why it couldn’t be casually relevant within the story. Suppose that the story was tracing the path of a young black woman who had escaped from the South, and the Declaration of Independence inspired her to return in order to work for the Underground Railroad. Now the event is crucial for the plot of the story, if not the timeline. Read more…
When I discussed motivation here, I brought up the idea of pressure. I wanted to take a moment and expand on that, and in particular, what it means in terms of character development. There are two kinds of pressure. The first is internal pressure, and the second is external. This distinction is probably fairly obvious, but I’ll elaborate on it a little. Internal pressure arises from the character’s own desires. When a character wants something, and because of that want is motivated to pursue a goal, then they are feeling internal pressure, and are internally motivated. When a character is forced to take action because of outside forces, then they are feeling external pressure, and are externally motivated. The line that divides these is pretty clear, but that isn’t to say that a character can’t be motivated by both pressures at the same time. However, there isn’t really an example of pressure which is both internal and external in and of itself.
What, then, does this have to do with characters? Most of you have probably heard of active and passive characters before, with active characters being motivated actors, and passive characters being acted upon. A better way to define this distinction is to be aware that active characters always have internal motivation, while passive characters always have external motivation. This avoids some of the negativity that has been unfairly heaped on passive characters in the past, because passive characters are just as necessary in a good story as active characters. Read more…
I first want to distinguish between a character’s goals and a character’s motivation, because, while they are related, they are not the same thing. All characters have goals, in the same way that all people have desires. In fact, with some hesitance, I would equate the two. I hesitate really only because of a reluctance to carry the baggage the concept desires drags along with it, but that is beside the point. A character with a goal has some idea of how some aspect of the world should be, and they want to modify the world so that it reflects that ideal.
A character’s motivation is different, and requires two things. First, in order to be motivated, the character must have some sort of “pressure” being exerted upon them to act with a certain end in mind. However, this pressure alone is not enough. The character must also have a means by which they can accomplish that end, for the character to actually be motivated towards that end. Read more…
