Day 69

People are plotters

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The plot line for any story is about the actions of people and the consequences of their actions.

Let’s face it, people, well most people are plotters and schemers, looking to do good or bad, though we always seem to focus on the bad. It wouldn’t;t be much of a story if everyone wanted to do good, would it?

So we have an example, the Gunpowder Plot, you know back in the dark ages someone wanted to blow up the houses of parliament in London.

It wouldn’t be a plot without the plotter, Sir Guy Fawkes. A plotter. A schemer. The person who got the gunpowder convinced a few conspirators and nearly got away with it.

Stories often lurch from one thing to the next as the people involved make decisions and take actions rightly or wrongly that lead to an inevitable conclusion.

That inevitable conclusion may not necessarily be the original inevitable conclusion you considered in the master plan, but having an eventuality in mind can give you a basis to reverse plot the actions needed to get there.

And like in real life when you plan for an outcome, sometimes it doesn’t quite go to plan.

I know quite a few of my stories have rather interesting endings, but that’s simply because characters, like real people, sometimes have a mind of their own, and another plot in mind. How can they, if they are just characters in your imagination?

I’ll let you think about that, and we’ll revisit it later on.