There have been a bunch of excellent postings lately touching on the topic of how plot and character combine to form a story, and on how one finds that mysterious “something” that turns a bunch of plot-points and character traits into a living story. I highly recommend checking them out if you like pondering such questions.
Shannon Hale (author of Goose Girl, Princess Academy, and more) talks about some of this here and here.
Laini Taylor (author of Blackbringer) talks about some of this here.
And finally, Sherwood Smith (author of Crown Duel, Court Duel and more) sponsors a discussion about story and plot here.
There’s a ton of great insight there already, so I don’t have a whole lot to add that has not already been said. But here’s my own experience:
The basic notion I am going with is that there’s plot (a bunch of events in a logical order) and there’s character (a collection of drives and desires and qualities and quirks), and that somewhere in the place where they meet, story is born, and that’s the thing the reader actually cares about and is interested in. Of course other folks might use different words for this, or see all these things as inseparable, but for the purposes of this posting I will stick to this terminology.
The way I think about it is: plot is what happens to the character, story is what the character does about it. And reaching that point, where the magic happens and the story comes alive, is more often than not (for me at least) the product of a certain amount of work, of writing things I later throw out, and doing what I can to be open to inspiration.
I consider myself a plot-first writer. I tend to come up with a set of plot points and then search around for the character who would be a good match (this search usually alters the plot points in the process). As such, I have suffered occasional agonies due to not making sure that I actually have the basis for a story before I start writing something. While working on the draft of Mirable Chalice earlier this year, I had to do a pretty painful but ultimately necessary re-write because I had plot but no strong story, due to not enough “character” in my characters. If I don’t really know my characters and they are just flat cardboard dummies being shifted from plot point to plot point, I don’t have story.
The hardest part, I find, is achieving that alchemy that changes a collection of plot points and a proto-character into a story. It often feels like a magical process beyond my control, and I am not sure I will ever be able to make it happen. All I can do it to try to put myself in the best position to be open to inspiration.
That’s one of the reasons I am glad there are other writers out there posting about their processes (like the above-linked), to remind me that it’s okay to have to work hard to achieve story, and that writing is not always about inspiration and sudden flashes of genius. Sometimes you find a beautiful patch of wildflowers just blooming out in the wild. But sometimes you need to dig up the earth yourself, and fertilize, and plant the seeds and water them, and your back gets sore. Then one day it all blooms and it seems like magic, even though a lot of hard work went into creating it.
A side note for the other gamers who might be reading this: I think this is the reason that writing for a game is diffferent than writing fiction. There’s a reason we call it “writing plot”. As GMs and Game Directors, we’re bringing the plot to the players (plus some of the supporting characters), but they are bringing the main characters. Story can only happen via the stewing-pot of the game, when all that comes together.
