One thing that has become more apparent to me as I've been writing is that trying to balance character development and plot movement is a tricky maneuver. If there were Olympic style awards for mental gymnastics, this would have to be a category of competition.

Why? Because on the surface, plot is king. Action moves a story a long, and the choices a character makes in a moment of crisis can say a lot about who they are. It can be defining, both in real life and in fiction. But for me, a story that is all action, just plot twist after plot twist, while exciting the first time through, loses a lot of readability when I return. It's because I am just as interested in the motivation for the choice, the psychology behind it, as I am in the action itself.

I like character studies. I like movies where nothing happens, or maybe like one thing happens, and yet the people change a lot or reveal a lot about themselves. love noir, for example, where often the one thing that happens (dame walks into office; someone dies) happens before or right at the beginning and everything else is character driven. Sunset Boulevard is a great example of this. I often really enjoy bottle episodes of television. I love movies like The Cube, which might as well have been subtitled, “Satre was right; hell is other people.” FN1.

I even liked Gosford Park, though I think the trailer did it a disservice by making it look like a murder mystery instead of a study of class/caste in 1930s Britain. In Gosford Park, the fact that someone died, or even who killed them, becomes far less relevant to the story than the characters social relationships to one another and society, which is where the viewer locates the motive for the murder, the “why?” of it all.

So sometimes I find I am writing and what it happening on the page seems important to me. It is profound. It is necessary to understanding why a person makes a choice, doesn't walk the girl home, steals their parents keys, fights off the zombie. But that means taking the time to show and tell the why, which can slow down the action. Other times, the why seems crystal clear to me, and obviously demonstrated through a character's choices.

This is where it becomes important to have beta readers, ones who really care about how a story is told. People who can tell you where the “why?” goes unanswered, or where your focus on answering “why?” involves to much self-indulgent, introspective navel gazing. Sometimes what seems completely clear to me, as the person who has the whole story in my head, reads as mud to someone else. At times like these, it is important to cultivate honesty in your beta readers. Cheerleaders are good. Friends will encourage you and support you. Good beta readers, though, will help point out the places where you can make your story better.

With in the dance of plotting vs. character developments as well as encouraging friends and critical beta readers, the answer is clear: if you want to succeed in telling a story effectively, you have to find a balance between the two.

So thanks to all my betas, cheerleaders and critics alike.

________

FN1. Also, does anyone else wonder if the concept came from the Kokology personality profile The Cube? Because that test always feels like torture to me.