The three changes an amateur writer can make to most dramatically improve their fiction:
Focus on character over plot.
Edit out everything outside the story’s narrow focus.
Stop over-explaining.
A Character-Focused Outline
For an actionable tool, write a story outline but, instead of covering events that happen, focus only on your character’s arc. Hit all the important structural points but have all of them focused on your main character and her emotional reactions and motive-driven actions. How is she incrementally changed by each moment? Why is she propelled into her choice of action at the first plot point? Who was she at the beginning and who will she be at the end?
The midpoint is often a moment that asks a question the climax answers. What question does it ask about her character and how does the climax answer that question?
For immediate use:
Outline the scene(s) you’ll work on in the following assignments.
What is the character’s arc in this scene? What is her emotional journey? What do she want and why?
Each plot point in the three-act structure of her lunch at the diner becomes a part of her arc. She’s not just eating a cob salad, she’s confronted with obstacles, propelled by personal need, aiming for a desire goal, and headed straight into an emotional climax.
Edit Out Everything That’s Outside the Story’s Narrow Focus
I’m not giving this to you as a universal law, but it’s a good habit to develop.
Take an older story and highlight everything that doesn’t build character, develop the world, deepen theme, or move the story forward.
I know it sounds like I’m trying to turn you into a minimalist, but that’s not my intent. When you max out, you’ll max out better, because you’ll know to put your words where they count.
When people talk about “killing your darlings”, this is what they mean. Save it in an inspiration file to be used in a story where it’s relevant. Don’t waste it here.
Characters, scenes, subplots, and lines are all subject to sacrifice when they don’t serve a narrative point to the story you’re telling.
Don’t Over-Explain
Trust the reader.
If this is a difficulty for you, if you’re one to tell us a character’s emotion and tell us why she’s feeling that emotion, take one of your scenes and a rewrite to the bare minimum. Give us the least possible to understand who and where the people are and what they’re saying and doing. Then add the bits necessary, not for a mental understanding, but for an emotional response.
Build the scene back up to make the reader feel something.
When you’re done, give the scene to three beta-readers and ask them what they think the scene is lacking. Consider their responses. Save the meat. Discard the gristle, and then build the scene up with what you and your readers agreed it lacked.
You’ll be surprised at what your readers didn’t think was missing.
Most of the time, this error seems to come from a feeling readers need to understand something to fully grasp the character, and so the writer tells them. If what you’re saying is true of the character, it need not be told. The reader will see it in what the character does and says. If they don’t see it, then it’s not true.
That’s the heart of show, don’t tell.
I know that the previous exercise might accomplish this—but it might not. Your focus was different.
There you focused on irrelevant action and discussion. Here you focus only on what conveys the necessities of the scene and then on evoking an emotion from your reader.
It may well be that when you a) cut out everything that doesn’t build character, develop the world, or move the story forward; and then b) cut down a scene to the minimal required to show us who and where the people are and what is being said and done; you won’t have much of a scene left when you’re done. If that’s the case, it’s not an excuse to avoid the cut. You simply need to rewrite the scene so that those requirements are met.
Simply, he says.
— Thaddeus Thomas
P.S. -- You can “tell” points about side characters. Tell points. Show events, as someone once said.
These are generally points the main character believes to be true about other characters. That can be legitimate but should still be used with caution if showing is something you struggle with.
My Character-Driven Pet Peeve
I mention this only because it’s true, but I’m not fighting this fight. The battle is lost. I surrender.
Character-driven and plot-driven stories are a factor of how genre and literary fiction work. When you focus on character over plot, you haven’t automatically created a character-driven story. Genre fiction is plot-driven. You can improve the story by focusing on the motivations of the main character and allowing everything the grow from there—but you’ve still written a plot-driven story. That’s okay. I’m not saying that character-driven stories are better, only that your story should spring out of the needs of your character and not “what happens next”.
So, if focusing on character doesn’t create a character-driven story, what does?
Consider any story. Is the focus external or internal? By internal, I mean that the majority of the word count is given to rumbling around in the character’s head rather than to the actions taken in his world.
Is the climax a victory won in the outside world or is it an epiphany that takes place in the character’s head, focuses on values, and is an emotional climax rather than a physical one?
Today’s essay is about creating character-focused, plot-driven fiction. Character-driven fiction is internal and its climax is an epiphany rather than an external action.
If you disagree, that’s okay. Social media doesn’t use the terms this way. I’ve given up the fight, but I thought it should be said.
— Thaddeus Thomas
Welcome back, Professor.
excellent thoughts and advice as usual