Plot and Character revisited...

[khiemtran]

As I mentioned earlier, I like to think of Plot as a function of Character and Situation. Take a Character and a Situation and you get a Plot. Show a Situation and a Plot and you can convey a Character.

I think this is also very important when it comes to handling genre clichés. If you have a plot that follows a standard pattern, and that's all there is, then the character is going to come out all cardboard. Fisherman's daughter becomes a swordswoman after her village is razed gives you a distinctive character only if that particular plot and situation happen to be unique. In genres where that sort of thing is practically expected, you haven't really given much of a character at all. You need to go into more detail to bring out what is unique about this particular fisherman's daughter. It's not the cliché itself that's the problem, it's relying on the cliché alone.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes. Especially if you start from that end. If you start from the character end, not so much.

You have this particular fisherman's daughter from this particular culture, and what she becomes after her particular world is torn apart by a particular someone for a particular reason. It's the particularity that gives you something worth having.

There's also this thing that real people don't always react in cliche ways. Often a character comes alive for me when they're in a situation where they don't. If what your fisherman's daughter wants is more complex than revenge, for instance. Or if she feels she caused it by saying she wished her mother was dead, and wishes have power and maybe she did.

Some of my best characters have come from looking at mythology and thinking about what it would actually be like to have that happen to you, and how differently two kinds of people might react to those events.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

You have this particular fisherman's daughter from this particular culture, and what she becomes after her particular world is torn apart by a particular someone for a particular reason. It's the particularity that gives you something worth having.

Yes, I think I'm only just starting to realise that the particularity really is the content, not just random variation to give the story some texture. Or maybe, if you're using a standard plot, the particularity really is the story. In the same way that a particular actor might interpret a famous role, or a musician might play the same notes, but still bring something new to a piece.