THE CHARACTER JOURNEY
Alicia Rasley
Today, I’d like to talk about one powerful way to shape your plot—around
the character journey. This will make you more productive because you will have
this major plot theme in mind as you design scenes. How does this event further
the character’s journey? will be the question you keep in mind as you plot the
scenes!
If you think of the plot
as the protagonist's journey, you can overcome a lot of the Fear of Plotting.
So let’s talk about the journey, and then connect it to the parts of the plot.
WHAT IS HIS/HER JOURNEY?
Think of the plot as the
journey of this character to a new place in life... to some growth or change or
understanding. In most popular fiction, this journey will be towards something
more positive-- she will be a better person in the end than she was in the
beginning. (In a tragedy, it will be from good to bad, or bad to worse, as with
Hamlet.)
Through the events of
the plot and her own choices, the character will have grown towards greater
awareness or greater strength or a better relationship with her family--
something positive. (Of course, there will be some books where the
"growth" will be negative-- she starts out innocent and becomes
corrupt, for example.) Before this series of events happened, she couldn't
become that "new self," but afterwards, through the changes she has
had to make because of the plot, she has changed within. Oh, yeah, she's also
solved that mystery or won that gold medal or lost the contest or got a new
job... whatever the external change is you've got planned.
There's a continual
in-and-out between external and internal here-- the external events cause
internal changes, which allow her to grow in a way that makes it more likely
she'll resolve the external conflict. So one thing you'll want to identify is
what you think your protagonist's journey is towards-- how he needs to grow and
change. If you write inspirational fiction, you are probably already doing
this, because you believe in the power of spiritual and emotional change.
Here are some generic
journeys.
Some Protagonist
Journeys:
Mystery to truth
Fear to courage
Doubt to decision
(Hamlet)
Revenge to justice
Sin to redemption
Isolation to alliance
Denial of fate to
acceptance of fate (Oedipus)
Ambition to destruction
(Macbeth)
Exile to home (Odyssey)
Delusion to realization
Self-delusion to
self-knowledge
Deception to truth
Innocence to corruption
Naivete to disillusion
Naivete to intelligence
Smugness to humility
(King Lear)
Alienation to
reconciliation
Guilt to amends
Shame to self-acceptance
Self-deception to
self-awareness
Obsession to balance
Here are some more
detailed examples of actual protagonist journeys:
John starts out wanting
revenge against the man who killed his father. The plot journey teaches him,
however, that the situation was far more complicated than he imagined, and that
vengeance might only destroy his own soul. So he ends up, instead of killing
the man, turning him into the police. He travels from revenge to justice.
Charity needs to be
needed in the beginning of the book. That's how she knows she's loved, because
her loved ones need her. She has to learn that she can be loved for who she is
and not just what she does. So her journey is from giving-for-love to
giving-into-love.
Plotting the Three Acts
through the Character Journey
Most stories break into
three sections or “acts”:
Act I. Set upAct II. Rising Action
Act III. Climax and Resolution
In my historical
mystery, Natasha starts out avoiding the past, and ends up accepting the past.
Of course, other things happen (she falls in love with a “frenemy” and together
they solve a murder), but the major emotional change that allows everything else
is from her avoidance of the past to her acceptance of the past.
Here’s how that plays
out in the events of the plot:
Act 1: The past
confronts Natasha, when a Russian servant from her childhood arrives at the
inn. She avoids him.
Act 2: The past rises
up: The servant is murdered that night, and Natasha is the most likely suspect,
as she is the only other Russian person at the inn.
Act 3: In order to solve
the murder, Natasha must finally relive and describe the traumatic event when
she last saw the servant, during Napoleon’s invasion of their home country.
See how the beginning
and end of the journey can be spread across the three acts of the plot.
In Act 1, the starting
point of the journey is shown when Natasha specifically avoids the past in the
form of the old servant.
Note: The reader can’t guess the starting point of the journey without a bit of
help from you! So look at your first or second scene. Can you show the
character at the starting place somehow?
Example: To show a character starting at “lack of trust,” you could have Tom in the first scene
following the security guard around and making sure that the locks are indeed
all locked. Then in the inciting incident, he could suspect that Sadie is lying
when she warns him to stay home from work Tuesday.
In Act 2, the
consequences of this starting point cause something to happen (usually in the
external plot). This something is usually negative in some way, because, of
course, we generally don’t change unless we have to! Natasha’s refusal to
explain about her past leads to her being suspected in the murder.
Note: Act 2 is about rising action or rising conflict, so the change event
should be strong enough to force a perhaps-recalcitrant character into making a
choice or action, not necessarily the right one—rising conflict can come from
the character making a stubbornly wrong choice, like Natasha refusing to
remember her past.
Examples: What rising conflict could come from Tom’s refusal to trust?
Because he refuses to
trust Sadie’s warning, he is captured by the bad guys.
External plot and internal
plot are most effective when braided together
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Note: Remember that the external plot (like the mystery) and the
emotion/internal plot (the character journey) are most effective when they’re
braided together. So see if you can make the events take her towards her
destination, and her journey’s completion helping resolve the external plot.
Example: How can completing the character journey connect to the
climax—the solution to the external plot?
When Tom sees Sadie with
the kidnappers, he thinks at first that he was right all along—she’s
untrustworthy. But then when she whispers she’s here to help him, he lets
himself trust—and she helps him escape.
So let’s try that with
your own story:
Journeys imply conflict and
movement
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Your protagonist is on a
journey. The plot is the vehicle that gets him/her there. Now it’s your turn!
Look back up at that list of protagonist journeys. There are MANY more
out there-- this is just a sample of sort of umbrella journey categories. You
can make up your own! Notice that the journeys imply conflict and movement of
some kind.
Brainstorm from these
questions:
2. What internal resonance does this have-- how does the journey change who this person is?
3. List a few steps your protagonist will have to take to complete this journey:
a. How is the starting point shown in Act 1?
b. In Act 2, what event(s) force the character into rising conflict around this journey issue?
c. In Act 3, how does the completion of the journey help this character resolve the external problem (and/or vice versa, how does resolving the external problem help the character complete the journey)?
4. Any other thoughts or questions about your character’s journey?
So how does this work in
your plot? If you think about your character’s journey, you’ll see ways to make
this journey affect the external plot (the mystery or competition or whatever).
Obviously, when the central character starts to change, how he acts and reacts
will change too.
Want to brainstorm your
character’s journey? Great! I want to create a free class in ways to plot with
character and characterize through plot. (Yes, I know I need a catchier tag!)
If you’d like to learn more about your own character’s journey, maybe help me
explore different facets of this topic, visit me here at my new character
journey blog. I’ll have a starting post, and you can comment to
that, asking about your own story or telling your character’s “From-to” path,
and maybe I can discuss that and make a post about it!
---
Alicia Rasley loves to
read, write, and talk about writing. Her plot book The Story Within explores the many ways
character and plot can interact to create deeper and more meaningful stories.
In her own writing,
Alicia has journeyed from Regencies to family sagas, and back again! Visit her
website at www.aliciarasleybooks.com, and her writing blog at www.edittorrent.blogspot.com.
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Biography
Alicia
Rasley lives in Regency England-- well, no. She just writes about it! She lives
in the American Midwest, surrounded by books about Regency England. Her Regency
romances have won several awards, including the prestigious RITA for Best
Regency Romance. She has also written women's fiction, mystery, and non-fiction
books. She teaches writing online and at a state university, hoping to instill
the love of commas into today's college students.
She lives in Indiana with her husband Jeff, a philanthropist/writer
who does development work to benefit a remote Nepal
Amazon author page:
Twitter: @aliciaregency
Books
website. www.aliciarasleybooks.com
Pretty
England
Edittorrent blog:
http://www.edittorrent.blogspot.com.