What's In a Name?

It's ROW80 check-in time again.  Already. Who is stealing all my time?!  (November makes me a little time crazy, even more so than usual.)

A rose...not actually by any other name

First my check-in.  According to my little word count widget over there on the right, I am 13% to my goal of 65,000 words on my novel by December 22.  I'm not exactly sure how many percentages I'm supposed to write every day to make that goal, but I feel like I'm pretty well on target.  I'm behind on the NaNoWriMo word count, but I have a good plan in place for catching up by the end of Sunday, and the writing is finally starting to some flow and some speed to it, so I'm not worried about where I am.

I've been using a trick I learned a few years ago from reading an article by Sue Grafton.  She said that she keeps a notebook, and before she writes every day, she writes down what she's going to write about (wow, that seems really complicated--I hope that made sense).  I have done this in an actual notebook in the past, and I've done it a few different ways.  The first try was writing a mini-essay about what that day's writing would involve, but that didn't quite work right for me.  After that, I tried listing the next several scenes using a one sentence description for each scene.  That was a little better, but sometimes I didn't know what all needed to be in a scene. 

Now, I'm doing two things differently.  First, I'm writing my list on the computer so I have it to look back on more easily while I'm writing.  Second, I'm writing a brief description of my scene, but then I'm making a list of things I want to have happen in that scene.  This seems to be working really well for me, so I'm going to keep with it as long as it's still useful.

Now, about those names...The love interest hasn't shown up yet in my story, but I know he's coming.  I know he's out there with his lack of a name I really like that really seems to fit him.  And it's nagging at me.  Who is this guy?  I know what he looks like.  I know all about his really cool antique motorcycle that he restored himself.  I know so much about him.  Why won't he tell me his name?  He's coming up scene after next!  So far he's been Cody and Dylan with a brief stint as Brad (he's really not a Brad!).  I am starting to think he's doing this on purpose, and he'd better knock it off, or I'm going to wreck his fancy motorcycle.

And with that, I'm going to go check in and say hi to a few of my fellow ROW80-ers, and then it's writing time for me.

Character or Plot?

Well, this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but we had a power outage last night so I wasn’t able to finish it and get it online. Anyhow…

Right now, as I am working to fine tune my work-in-progress, Blood of the Mist, I am reading quite a few books and articles and blogs about writing. And I’m running into lots of talk about “character driven plots” and “plot driven stories.” And so I’m wondering, which comes first—the character or the story? Is one more important than the other? Is there actually a difference? I mean, really. You can’t have a plot without characters. And you can’t have characters without a plot. If it’s a story, the characters have to do something, don’t they? Otherwise you have a verbal still-life.

Okay, I know there is a difference between character driven stories and plot driven stories. I even think I have a pretty good grasp of the difference. A character driven story has a protagonist with depth. We get to see the inner workings, know the thoughts and emotions that are driving this character. A character driven story has a really well developed protagonist, a protagonist whose inner life is as intricately detailed as the outer trappings of the story, and part of the story essentially takes place inside the character, inside his thoughts and feelings. (This is, of course, an overly simplified definition, but it will do for my purposes.)

Conversely, when I think of a plot driven story, I think of stories with rather flat, two dimensional characters. Quite a few thriller/spy stories seem to fall more into this category. Really, though, I don’t think it’s possible to write a novel or short story and not have some content involving the protagonist’s inner life (if anyone has examples of such a story, please let me know; I’d love to have a look). So I don’t know if there really is such a thing as a purely plot driven story.

I think a story that is just about characters moving from point A to point B to point C, doing this and that and having this and that happen to them, falls into the realm of fables and fairy tales. Or possibly stories for very small children—think “Dick and Jane.” And while fables and fairy tales are stories, I don’t think they really fall into the realm of fiction or short stories. They are a category unto themselves, and I believe they fall outside the scope of my current meanderings.

Ah, I think I finally found my point in all of this, finally figured out what I was trying to tell myself. Plot is important—my characters need to do things, and those things should be important to the story and interesting. But without a rich inner life filled with its own conflicts and conundrums, my story will not be as vivid and resonant as I want it to be.

So why is this important? In Nancy Kress’ book Dynamic Characters (by the way, she has several good writing books out there—you should check them out), she writes, “People are endlessly fascinating, endlessly surprising, endlessly strange…If you start with people—characters—as you feel our way into your novel, it, too, can become fascinating, surprising and strange.

In short—real.”

And there’s my answer. There’s why I’ve been feeling like I need to do more with my characters, need to know more about them, need to change some things about them and what they’re doing. I don’t want just action and thrills and adventure. I want more. I want my story to be real, and for that, I need my characters to be real, too.

What's going on in there?!

Did you ever suddenly notice that your mind has been doing things without you? It happens to me sometimes, especially where stories are involved. I’ve had that experience twice in the past few days, as a matter of fact. It’s kind of funny, in a slightly disconcerting sort of way.

The first time was while I was trying to figure out my way of working as a writer, trying to figure out what would work best for me. I realized that I've been going about this as if there's only one, true way for me to be a writer. If someone had asked me if there was only one way, I would have said "of course not!" But still I was proceeding as if that was the truth. I was acting as if I had to find the way to plan and organize and write. And I didn’t even realize I was doing that until the other day. It hit me suddenly, and I had to wonder, “What is going on in the back of my mind without me?” At least I figured out that I was doing it, so now I can stop and maybe do something useful!

The next instance of “my brain has a mind of its own” happened last night in the grocery store. I was walking along, past a food display I can’t even remember now, and I found myself thinking, “I wonder what Rachel would think of that?” Rachel? Who’s Rachel? There are no Rachels in any of my stories! There are people living in my brain I didn't even know about!

This happens with characters sometimes. I’ll be working on a story, and the characters who live in my head will insist on calling one of the other characters a different name than the one I tried to bestow. Or a new character will suddenly be there, name and all, and I find that there’s a perfect place for him or her in my story. But this is the first time that a name suddenly came into my head, apparently belonging to someone living back there, without there being a story to go with the name.

It’s kind of exciting, really. Rachel. I like her. I don’t know much about her yet beyond her name, but I like her. I can tell. I can hardly wait to find out more about her! I can hardly wait to find out what her story is!

As a last tidbit that has nothing (much) to do with any of the above, I just got an e-mail about a short story contest with an August 1 deadline. It’s being run by Wordstock and will be judged by Ursula K. Le Guin. Eep! That’s almost enough to make me not do it! Almost. But maybe this will be Rachel’s story. Maybe this is why Rachel made herself known last night. So I think I’ll get over the “scary famous writer” jitters and write a story for this. And see what Rachel has to say.