As a Certified TVWriter™ minion, I spend most of my time looking for helpful articles about writing and then snatching them into my big net in the hope that they’ll be the kind of thing TVWriter™ visitors need and like. The other day I discovered this one, which certainly passes the test. Read and learn, as a certain LB might say. Read and learn:
by Mette Ivie Harrison
There is no formula to plot. The more I talk to writers I admire about writing, the more suspicious I am about books or formulas about how to plot anything “the right way.” As a reader/viewer myself, I can smell formula a mile away. Plot that feels imposed on characters can never satisfy. Let me give some examples of problems that I’ve seen in plot and I think you will agree. From there, I’ll talk about how to plot outside of the box in ways that will really surprise you and the most savvy consumers out there.
One of the most common plot devices is to kill a character near the end of a story in order to raise the final stakes at the climax of the book. The villain chooses a character to kill who is “really” important to the main character. This is also a character we consumers have fallen in love with. The writer(s) have done everything possible to make us care about the character in question, giving this character strengths and vulnerabilities, and even showing us a character arc in development. Often this is the “best” character, the one who is the kindest, the smartest, the cleanest (in terms of the consequences of the story arc that clings to the main character in particular). So when this character dies, we consumers feel really angry. We want to throw things at the screen or shout out loud. Yet this is all pre-determined. The writer(s) intend this very response and bank on it. And yet, precisely because it is so effective, it has become a shtick, predictable and, to me, annoying.