There's more to a story than plot

Hey everyone! It's NaNaWriMo (that's National Novel-Writing Month to those of y'all who don't spend all your time around writers, in which case, congratulations), which means a lot of folks are whipping out their word processors with the goal of pouring out a novel in one month. Me? I'm using it as motivation to finish the manuscript I started in September. And I've realized there's a problem with it: It's all plot.

These days, it feels like entertainment culture is more obsessed with plot than ever, with people screaming left and right about spoilers every time a major (or sometimes not even that major) new movie is released. As if knowing a single plot point could ruin the whole experience.

Meanwhile, I was on an old movie kick recently and ended up watching some black-and-white trailers. And you know what? They often spelled out the plot. What we would consider spoilers, these mid-century ads considered selling points. Come see this or that movie star do such-and-such in this film!

Which makes sense considering movies evolved from theater, where knowing what happens before the show starts is commonplace. No one goes to see Romeo and Juliet without knowing how it ends. Opera audiences get a whole synopsis in their programs.

To obsess over spoilers to such an extent that knowing how something will happen "ruins" the experience is to say that plot is the only thing that matters in a story. Never mind charming character moments, or exquisitely rendered scenes, or rich world building.

But I find that often, those are what make a story stick, and plot is the road that carries you through. I don't only want to know what happens - I want to get to know another world and the people in it.

With my current WIP, my goal was to keep the word count lean for a change (I'm known for spewing out 120k-word behemoths). And so far, I've been trying to accomplish that by being as efficient as possible with each scene - sticking with the outline and getting across what happens as quickly as possible.

But I think I've swung too far in the other direction... in trying to go lean, I've ended up with a skeleton. I'm nearly halfway through my outline, and I find I am struggling to connect with my own characters. And I realize it's because I've reduced them to names on notecards moving down a timeline of beats. 

Last month, our very own Victor Catano wrote in praise of filler, and I was totally nodding along as I read it. I've known for ages that, when it comes to the books I read or the TV/movies I watch, it's often the "pointless" moments I like best - the banter, the random character moments.

So I'll be revisiting my manuscript with the express goal of adding "filler" and giving my characters actual lives, instead of just having them focus on my outline the entire time. I'll probably finish my current skeletal draft first just to have something more to work with, but I can already tell a lot will need to be rewritten.

They say all writing is rewriting anyway.