Mincing no words: character is always crucial. In this post, however, I’m going to focus on how to use an established character to construct your plot.

In a previous post, I wrote about starting your story at The End. The idea, as I explained in that post, is to figure out where your story is going before you start traveling.

In building my argument, I deeply integrated a quote from Chris McQuarrie, who, among other things, wrote The Usual Suspects. When asked how he came up with ideas for his stories, McQuarrie answered:

I create a difficult movie problem. And then I imagine a character who is the least likely to solve it.

The quote contains a lot of useful wisdom and I dig deeply into it in the aforementioned post.

But a fun idea struck me yesterday as I began to contemplate a new novel…the second in a series. Why the emphasis on second? Well, there are times when we start our stories from a blank page. In those cases, the thought process described in my prior article makes perfect sense (at least to me!).

But there are times when the character necessarily precedes the plot.

Examples where character comes first

One example of this is my current situation: I’ve (almost) written a first novel and I’m contemplating the second. At least a few of the characters in the first story, including my protagonist, necessarily carry over into the second.

Similarly, in a biographical piece, you almost certainly begin with some character that fascinates you. That character’s life provides the tapestry onto which you can imprint your story, but which events – in public and in private – will serve the interests of your story?

Or perhaps you simply have in your head a really cool character. You haven’t yet figured out her journey; you just know that she’s your protagonist and you’re searching for the right vehicle to tell her story.

Character and plot: two sides of a coin

There’s an old debate: does plot determine character, or does character determine plot?

In my personal view the question itself is hogwash. You might as well rate the importance of air or water for your survival, since you’d die if either were taken away.

A story is the combination of plot and character. Hand Jay Gatsby, Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Aubrey, or Ellen Ripley the wrong plot and you’ll have a terrible story. Plot and character constitute intertwined, essential ingredients, as necessary to fueling a story as spark and oxygen are to fueling a fire.

Plot + character equals…algebra?

Don’t worry…I’m not about to pull a Dead Poet’s Society “greatness graph” on you.

Still, I want to briefly have some fun with math. Remember algebraic formulas like this?

x = 2y

For anyone who’s forgotten…or (like me) was never all that good at math to begin with…this simply means that x will always be twice the value of y. It also means that y will always be equal to half the value of x.

• If x equals 40, then y must equal 20.
• If y equals 20, x must equal 40.

Got it?

Applying a bit of math to our story

Consider story along this same line. Going back to McQuarrie’s quote:

I create a difficult movie problem. And then I imagine a character who is the least likely to solve it.

In our first run through – the previous blog post – we looked for The End and then identified a hero suitable to that challenge.

We can invert this idea.

If I happen to know my protagonist first, then I can apply the same principle – the yin and yang of plot and character – to constructing an ending, and thereby implying the essential plot of my story. If a character must fit perfectly within her plot, then a plot must fit perfectly around a character.

Harry Potter, character/plot

Plot precedes character: on the one hand, if my plot is about defeating the greatest dark wizard in history, my unlikely protagonist needs to be someone unassuming, unskilled, uncertain of their ability, and yet destined to confront that wizard.

Character precedes plot: turning that upside down, if my hero is an abused kid, the orphaned child of a witch and wizard, a boy who’s grown up being told that he’ll never amount to anything, it makes sense that his plot must challenge those assumptions while thrusting him into the heart of a conflict within the wizarding world.

So we can arrive at the story of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone either way.

Henry V, character/plot

Shakespeare’s Henry V could have told the full arc of the king’s life. In fact, the Bard had already written quite a bit about young Henry as Hal in other plays. And of course he was largely pulling from historical sources such as Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Having the character already well established, both within his personal canon and in the minds of his audience, Shakespeare chose to focus on a specific campaign, the one leading to Henry’s famous victory at Agincourt.

Great art has a quality of inevitability, as if it always had to be what it turned out to be.

So it’s easy – after the fact – to assume that the play must focus on Agincourt. But that’s probably not how Shakespeare approached it.

Note that, historically, Henry died young. And his death was a tragedy for England.

Fortune made his sword,
 By which the world’s best garden he achieved
 And of it left his son imperial lord.
 Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned King
Of France and England, did this king succeed,
 Whose state so many had the managing
 That they lost France and made his England bleed…

Henry V, epilogue

Shakespeare didn’t have to focus the drama on Agincourt. He chose to. Having a character already designed as unpromising, reckless, possibly even unworthy, he chose to drive a multi-play arc that ultimately led to that character’s crowning achievement. Shakespeare edited Henry’s life in service to the story.

The End

Hopefully, it’s clear that my application of mathematics to this problem is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. To be clear, story ain’t math, and you can’t simply subtract yin from yang to discover plot from character or vice-versa.

This does not, however, diminish the core point: plot and character are twinned, so knowing one points you toward the other. Plot can help you find character, and character can help you find plot.

I’ll be using this technique to fashion the plot of my next novel. Since I’ve established the character of my protagonist, I need to work the other direction to find a plot which contains the appropriate challenge and a satisfying ending. Knowing my character won’t tell me precisely what my ending needs to be, but it’ll be a huge hint driving me in the right direction.

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I love writing about writing because it helps me not merely tell my story, but to reason about why I make the choices I make.

How about you? Do you have techniques you use to improve your storytelling? Tell me about it in the comments, and please consider subscribing to my newsletter.