How to Write a Character-Driven Plot

Focus on Your Character’s Driven Struggles

“Focusing on a character’s driven struggle to obtain their desire will give you a more organic story. On its face, the first season of True Detective didn’t have many elements that really separated it from the typical buddy cop story. Two cops, riding around in a car, sometimes disagreeing and hunting down a mysterious serial killer certainly doesn’t qualify as re-inventing the game. So why exactly is the series so memorable?

In Daniel Netzel’s latest video essay for Film Radar, he argues that it’s the excellent character development which makes the season feel so fresh. It serves as a masterclass on how to write complex characters.” More…

How to Write a Character-Driven Plot in 4 Steps

“Literary fiction writers tend to avoid plot. We’re trained to be plot snobs, focused only on character development and description and point-of-view, amongst other things. But your story can’t be plotless. Plot is tension, plot is drama, plot IS story.

What makes this element even harder is that in most of the literary fiction novels we love, the plot seems invisible. As readers, we DO focus on the characters and how they change over the course of the novel. Their motivations and fears and desires are so strong that we ignore the events that are pushing them toward and away from their goals. We focus on their evolution and forget about plot completely.” More…

Tell everyone about your stories. Show them where they can buy your novel. Lure them in. More…

Need more help brainstorm the character traits in your story? More…

Don’t forget to edit your colorful character’s story. Do you use too many adverbs? Are you using the right words to describe them? More …

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