Accepting my Limits

I’ve been trying and trying for a long time now, and I’ve had to finally accept something about my creativity:

I am great at coming up with characters, but when it comes to actual plots and stories, nothing. Nada. Zilch. What the Schoolhouse Rock song “My Hero…” is about.

Now, I'm going to ask you that question once more. And if you say no, I'm going to shoot you through the head. - John Cleese

Aye, sometimes the character and setting writing comes easier than the actual plotting. This has been my experience as well.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Well, here is some advice:

Take "the Antagonist" you have made.

Now ask "What does he/she/they/it want the most?" and ponder on it for a while.

Once the answer is found, it is a matter of reverse-engineering a plan by "What is the plan and how can they achieve it?"

And when that is done, "When should the protagonist be involved to start stopping it?" for the rest of the characters.

Try figure out which character is a villain and the plot that one would need to pull off its goal.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Feb 3rd 2024 at 12:26:21 PM

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

Hm, let me just throw some ideas at the wall. You can pick what sticks.

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Defining the problem

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Does this even have to be a problem? If you have already signed a contract with a publisher based solely on your character pitch and now struggle to come up with an actual manuscript, then it's a problem. If you have the idea that to be a "real" writer you have to follow a specific set of rules, then I'd question why that is.

Rules could include, but are not limited to:

• To write a book, you need to have a plot.
  • For it to count as a "good" plot, there has to be a central conflict of sufficiently high stakes that is overcome by the end of the story.
  • Also, for it to count as a "real" book, it needs to have a certain length that your plot needs to fill. Exact numbers vary a bit by genre and target demographic, but a "normal" novel starts at around 200 pages or 50,000 words (one NaNoWriMo).
• The central conflict is central because almost everything that exists or happens otherwise has to be connected to this conflict somehow. Having unconnected subplots is bad.
  • Alternatively, have as many conflicts as you can fit in! Everything that exists or happens is justified to be there if and only if it causes a certain amount of conflict (this is the philosophy behind tropes like Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome and Deceased Parents Are the Best).
  • This is sometimes selectively applied to traits that are seen as the default (e.g. a character being white/cis/straight/abled, or a setting based on the western world). Anything that is somehow non-default has to make life harder for the characters or it's wasted potential.
• Your characters actively overcome the problems they encounter. Having characters, especially protagonists, who passively survive in a hostile world? That's bad. Active problem-solvers are the only people whose stories are worth telling.
• You have to adhere to general writing conventions and, if applicable, genre conventions. But you also have to be original!
• You are not allowed to accept your (or even have) limits. Do it this way, and do it all on your own. Otherwise, you are not really a writer.

Treating writing advice like this as absolute rules obviously leads to all kinds of Unfortunate Implications, especially if people in gatekeeping positions (literary agents, editors at big publishing houses, TV network executives etc.) believe in them. But, as we say around here, Tropes Are Tools. What is your goal? What process works for you?

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Lawful Good approach:

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You do not have to do it all alone. Co-authors are a thing, project-based or lifelong.

Maybe you just need to find the Lauren Faust to your Hasbro toy design. The René Goscinny to your Albert Uderzo (or the other way around?). The Terry Pratchett to your Neill Gaiman. The Wolfgang Hohlbein to your Bernhard Hennen. Or the James Sullivan to your Bernhard Hennen. Or the Robert Corvus to your Bernhard Hennen. Some people do well working with co-authors, is what I'm saying.

People who write all or most of their books together are often married couples or in otherwise close relationships. If you don't have someone like this in your life already, maybe adjust your dating profile accordingly? Creative problems require modern solutions, or how that saying goes.

As you like to create characters and struggle with coming up with plots, there surely is someone somewhere who comes at this from the opposite direction. Maybe the person you are looking for is writing tie-in novels for an existing franchise, but wishes to step out of the shadow of The 'Verse. Maybe they are a fanfic author who can never hope for a commercial publication, not even in self-publishing, while the bills are piling up and the time for purely hobby-based writing is running low. Or maybe they don't write at all because they can't for the life of them come up with characters to execute their plot ideas. You just have to find this person.

Another way of not doing it alone is to join or form a larger team. While this is not very common in literature, it is standard procedure for a lot of other media.

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Chaotic Good to Chaotic Neutral approach:

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Another way to deal with a piece of writing advice or "rule" that you struggle with is to deliberately go against it. What if you don't have a plot? What even counts as a plot? What if your characters are just living their life with no central conflict, or a series of unrelated mini-conflicts? What if you put your characters in a situation with no conflict potential whatsoever? What if you skip over the whole "life" and "situation" part and only write character descriptions for now?

What are The Powers That Be gonna do, put you in writing jail?

You might end up with something not viable for commercial publishing. You might end up with a piece of writing that you yourself don't like that much (that is an expected outcome of the "deliberately break a writing rule" exercise). But at least you learn more about your characters, and in the end you'll have something to show to potential co-creators. And, who knows? Maybe you actually have a case of No Plot? No Problem!, and you end up with a piece of great, if unconventional, writing. Or a plot might sneak up on you when you are not looking for one.

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Lawful Neutral approach:

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Look at the works that have done the No Plot? No Problem! thing before. There are genres, media types, and target audiences that are less dependent on plot than your typical adult genre fiction novel. Even if you don't want to do exactly that thing, it might help to know that it is there. For example:

• Content posted on the web with no gatekeeping process whatsoever. Domestic fluff fanfic. Porn Without Plot fanfic. Gag-per-Day Webcomics. Memes.
  • Visual media like webcomics and web animation have the additional advantage that the creator does not have to be conventionally "good at drawing" or spend a lot of time on details. Lots of stick figures out there.
• On the other end of the spectrum of cultural acceptance, high-brow literary fiction. While True Art is not necessarily incomprehensible, it can afford to be more unconventional or experimental.
• Edutainment. The information being taught takes the place of the plot, and you can still have fictional characters getting the information across. Often associated with kids' media, but doesn't have to be.
  • One - very much not child-friendly! - example would be the video duology on piracy by CGP Grey (warning for stick figure violence, Cold-Blooded Torture, mild sexual innuendo, and economics).
• Short writings lend themselves to leaving stuff (including plot) out, like
  • poetry.
  • prose texts of poetry length, very short short stories.
  • jokes (usually more plot-driven, but you can have character-driven punchlines).
• Media types that combine writing with something else, like
  • writing + music = song lyrics.
  • writing + illustration = picture books or comics.
• Interactive media. Your target audience may not be so much readers or viewers who expect to be told a story. Instead, your target audience are players who like to be given characters, playable and/or NPCs, and make their own plot via gameplay
  • in video games. There is a certain kind of sims player who restarts a given premade neighborhood since 2000 (for The Sims) or 2004 (for The Sims 2) just to ruin the lives of the poor premade sims living there. Again.
  • in Tabletop RPGs, Gamebooks, certain types of board games even. Social Deduction Games like Werewolf (1997) are probably the biggest example of character-driven games that don't require a computer.
  • playing with physical toys. Figurines, action figures, toy lines. Ties back into the "find the Lauren Faust to your Hasbro" approach that I mentioned above.
• A running theme through this section: media targeted at young children. The works are usually shorter, the lines between fiction, non-fiction, edutainment, and Rule of Fun are blurrier.
  • You think you can't have a work that solely consists of descriptions of one character? Let me present you with the German children's song "Meine Oma fährt im Hühnerstall Motorrad" ("My grandma rides a motorbike in the chicken coop"). It doesn't even really rhyme. (For the sake of consistency, content warning for absurd humor, Toilet Humor, and the titular grandma owning a pistol).
  • I distinctly remember books from my childhood where the "plot" consisted of showing a normal day - or occasionally night - for a particular setting: pony ranch, very romanticized farm, magical fairy tale castle. Those were usually told by an omniscient third-person narrator, but still very much focused on characters. I still remember some of them (the ponies more than the castle inhabitants, because priorities).
  • Okay, that gets a bit off-topic, but I still want to mention it. When books for that age group do feature a central conflict, that conflict is often of the No Antagonist variety. Our main character used the vacuum cleaner and inadvertently got her little brother's sock in. Our main character has lost his beloved teddy, will he find him again and/or how will he manage without? Our main character doesn't find rainy days as fun anymore after having outgrown her favorite rubber boots (and the boots weren't characters like a teddy bear would be, they were literally just shoes). Those are plots, sure, but not the type of plot that the above-mentioned "passive protagonists are bad writing"-gatekeepers would approve of (because they are "for kids" and therefor bad? And The Hero defeating the Big Bad in combat or by trickery is somehow seen as more mature? Why?)
• Corollary to the last point. If your characters don't really work for family-friendly media, then you could get an effect out of presenting your work in a childlike manner. Could be played either for Horror or Black Comedy.
  • "When night falls, the forest animals go to sleep. Here we have a squirrel. It climbs up the tree to sleep in its drey. Here we have a fox. It has to crouch a little to get inside its burrow. And here we have a human. He carries a large bag. He comes to the forest late at night to bury those things that he doesn't want the other humans to see." My, what a cute picture book.

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(Hopefully) Lawful Evil approach

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Cut the knot. Take an existing story's plot and run with it.

I do not condone plagiarism. Seriously, don't do that. So we have to look for ways to make this ethically and legally okay. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. These are just my ideas:

• If the story that you are taking the plot from is a copyrighted work and if you are still using parts of the setting, the original cast etc., then what you have probably falls under FanFiction. Your creative process might be the opposite of the more common "take existing characters and write your own plot" approach, but legally, you have to follow the same rules as other fanfic writers (don't make money off of it, don't copy whole text passages from the original work). If there are no clear rules, you are in the same legal limbo (maybe don't use the works of a creator who openly disapproves). If you are looking for a fanfic genre or AO3 tag to put your stuff in, it's probably Original Character fic.
• If you take an existing work, change all the characters, change the setting, change the writing style, and only keep the story beats, it might warp around into being original fiction again. Keyword "might".
  • If the plot is recognizable enough and the original work is generally considered a classic, then it's Whole-Plot Reference (see that trope's page for often-referenced plots). If the classic you are referencing has already entered the public domain, do research on how the public domain actually works. If it is still under normal copyright, consider consulting a lawyer before publishing anything based on it.
  • If the plot is not recognizable as taken from a specific work because a lot of works use the same basic plot, then you are writing genre fiction. Strictly Formula, probably, but being unoriginal is not the same as theft, because theft requires a victim and no one owns a genre.
• If the existing story is not from a fictional work, then you have a case of Based on a True Story. Could be autobiographical, Ripped from the Headlines, or possibly Historical Fiction. While real life can't claim copyright on the plot, changing the characteristics of real people who would recognize themselves and be recognized by other people can be both legally and morally problematic. Taking the political machinations of, say, the Holy Roman Empire and transplanting them to your fantasy or sci-fi setting is probably okay (and not a new idea). Taking the messy divorce of your childhood neighbors and assign the family members roles like demon-possessed Creepy Child is more questionable. Again, when in doubt, consult a lawyer before publishing.
• If the story you are inspired by is not exactly real but also not attributed to a specific author, then it might be a myth or something similar. Your characters want to steal from the rich and give to the poor? That's Just Like Robin Hood, we have a trope for that.

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Sorry for the unnecessarily long answer, I'm too tired to trim it down any further. I hope at least some of it is helpful.

Edited by prinzessinnen-und-raben on Feb 10th 2024 at 2:32:38 PM

"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.

Any suggestions as how I can find my Neil?

Now, I'm going to ask you that question once more. And if you say no, I'm going to shoot you through the head. - John Cleese

Two thoughts, both revolving around writing forums and writing-spaces elsewhere (online or off):

First, perhaps just talk about your desire to collaborate, and see whether a conversation starts with other people expressing similar desire. If you like any of them, consider approaching them for collaboration.

Alternatively, and more directly, perhaps look for postings by people already seeking collaboration; and if you find none of interest, post yourself that you're looking.

Either way, take your time and be cautious in deciding who to collaborate with.

Read their writing (if available) and encourage them to read yours. Talk with them, discuss your individual approaches, desires, preferences—and your goals for the collaboration.

And don't feel pressured to find someone: better to be without—or merely taking time to find one—than to be with a poor fit, I think!

And finally, if you do find someone, and if you have any thought at all of making something commercial with the characters, settings, or works that you intend to collaborate with, then write up and sign a contract—something that clearly lays out ownership and responsibilities and so on.

Seriously, without a contract, it's possible to end up with a lot of trouble and ill-feeling, I fear.

My Games & Writing

Good point, I didn't think of that. Creatives working together should do this in general (e.g. "Who owns the music if the composer leaves the band"). Maybe there are even template contracts out there that you can look up? I know that we have templates for the typical author-publisher contract in Germany.

Even before that, get straight for yourself what you can live with. Treat this like looking for business partners, long-term employment, a long-term relationship, not like an odd job that you take until you find something better. This goes both for the practical aspects of working together (e.g. timezones) and for the art direction.

Suggestions on what to do:

• If you possess the magic known as "easily making friends as an adult", use that. Don't ask me how this works.
• Look where the creative people local to you hang out. Is there a book club, a writing group (may be called a "course"), a Tabletop RPG space that offers meetings for newbies, an art center, an amateur theater troupe?
• Does your local library or university have a bulletin board or campus newspaper where you can post an add?
• Talk to people that you already know, online and offline. Maybe a friend of a friend can set you up with someone?
• Edit: For online writing communities, my first thought was the NaNoWriMo forums, but they are closed/read-only right now due to the organization figuring out how to organize moderation better. This is what I wrote before:
  • The NaNoWriMo forums are way bigger than a TV Tropes subforum can ever hope to be. It looks like you need to create an account on the website to access the forums. After you sign up, the forums are found here.
  • The NaNoWriMo is, first and foremost, an event. So the forums have an on-season and an off-season. In the lead-up to and during November, the forums are more active, but most users are already set on a project. In the off-season, it might be less crowded, but it can be easier to strike up a conversation without everyone hurrying back to their manuscript or outline.
  • (Still true after the edit) There are more writing forums out there than just NaNoWriMo, this is just the biggest one that I know. Use your own google-fu.
• If you are already into a specific genre/scene/subculture/fandom (*Microsoft Word tutorial voice* It looks like you are writing Science Fiction?), look for online communities related to that.
• Social media can be a tool to connect to people (duh). Is there a Facebook group or Subreddit relevant to any of the above (local-to-you bulletin board, writing community, genre fans)? Are there already established hashtags on tumblr or Instagram? If you post about what you are looking for on your own profile, who will see it? Different platforms have different cultures around those things, and having the highest number of users total is not as relevant as having a lot of creative people around. If you want the "too nerdy for mainstream social media" people, look at the fediverse (Mastodon is the most well-known example for fediverse software, but then you still have to pick a specific instance).
• Wherever you approach potential co-authors, be polite about it. Don't assume that everyone has to be waiting for you. Not everyone who is into fanfic or writing-adjacent hobbies wants to go into writing original fiction.

Two things that I advice that you don't do:

• Ask fanfic authors in the comments of their fanfic: "Love your writing, how about my completely unrelated proposal?". That just comes across as: "Do something for me!" - If you want to talk to fanfic writers, approach them where they talk about writing, not where they post the finished product.
• Ask an established author to work with you because you are a fan or because you don't know how to do it yourself. This rarely ever goes well, and if too many people bother the author with stuff like this, the author might withdraw from interacting with fans altogether. See Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things.

Good luck out there.

Edited by prinzessinnen-und-raben on Feb 13th 2024 at 10:19:47 AM

"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.

Steal a plot and plug your characters in. For example take one of Grimm's Fairy Tales and rewrite it in another setting with other characters. Shakespeare also works. If you do this, is comes across as being educated and not as being unoriginal.