You’re typing along, in the zone, and then you realize you’re not steering anymore. Your character is. When characters take over your story, it can be a wonderful thing—you know exactly what she wants and says and does. Or it can be rambling in disguise, a character pulling the story somewhere you know it shouldn’t go. In this video I’ll share how I think about the difference, the first thing I’d do with a character who hijacked my keyboard, and what author Rex Stout concludes about who should decide your plot. Plot-driven or character-driven? It’s the wrong question, and I’ll tell you why.
The question is, help! My characters hijacked my keyboard. What can I do to be the writer and keep the character at bay? It’s a fun question, isn’t it?
And on some level it might be a wonderful thing. You get in the zone and you just know what the character wants and says and does. But on the other hand, it may be that it is the character hijacking the keyboard and taking over and rambling, going off on tangents, taking you in directions that you, the author, know the story shouldn’t go or doesn’t need to go. So, my inclination is, you know, I never want to tell another author how to write.
Each of us has to find our own process. But that said, my inclination would be to quiet the character, to listen to her, to listen to him, to think about why they’re trying to send me in this direction. It reminds me, interestingly, of a book called Plot It Yourself by Rex Stout, which if you’ve been listening to my webinars or these shorties, you know Mr. Stout is one of my favorite authors. He writes the Nero Wolfe mysteries.
The narrator is Archie Goodwin, and the title comes from an article that Archie cites in the course of a conversation with Mr. Wolfe. And one of the points that Archie is making is that the author of this article asked: Should you decide on the plot, or should you let the characters decide on the plot? And the author of the article that Archie’s citing concludes, no, plot it yourself.
I think it’s an interesting question on a big picture scale. I mean, think of it this way. There’s two ways that we tell stories as authors. We figure out the plot, the tale we want to tell, and then we figure out what kind of people would do those things. Or we get to know the people. We figure out the people, the characters, and then we decide, realize, conclude what those people would do. It is not that you are plot-driven or character-driven.
You’re both. It’s how you get there. So in this case, the character’s hijacking the keyboard. Well, maybe it’s time for the author to hijack it back. I look forward to hearing how you handled it and what the outcome is.
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