: Re: How do I Build Stories Around Characters? I have a lot of characters I’ve spent time creating and developing, but I cannot, for the life of me, develop an overarching plot. Anyone got any

@Speyer920

There's a very good book called The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. If you can get your hands on it, it talks about developing the plot, characters, the world and all of that in an organic way so you don't end up with very detailed characters who aren't tied together by anything.

The key is figuring out which character in your stable of characters is the one you want to change. Give him a flaw that hurts himself and others, decide on how you want him to turn out - a new person or worse off than before - and then think about the key event that happens to changes him.

Once you have a character that is hurting in some way, psychologically financially, physically, socially, and you know how you want him to be at the end, and you make him real enough to have a desire that he wants to get by the end, a plot will take shape. You'll come up with enemies and allies and all the other details that are either going to help or hurt him.

This is how I think about it. In terms of one specific character undergoing an interesting change and all the events/people that facilitate/hamper that change.

Even Iron Man. Selfish weapons-dealer changes into selfless hero. Why did he stop being a weapons dealer - someone used one of his weapons against him. Who? Terrorists and his business partner. Did anyone help? His friend, secretary and an old man in a cave. How did he change? He became a weapon... but this time, a weapon to protect the weak.

I like plotting to the point that I over-plot. I keep changing the character flaws and then the whole story ends up needing a re-tweaking, but I rather that approach than just starting to type and realising 50k in that I'm not writing a story but describing a series of events.

Stephen King I think is the most famous author who writes with only a loose either of what he's writing about, but Stephen King is also famous for having some not-so-great last thirds where you start to tell, "Oh... you didn't plan this out at all, huh."

Proceed with caution. Fanfic authors are great at figuring it out as they go, but they are working with guidelines, and still you see some of them reach 200k and stop when they run out of road because they didn't decide on an end goal.

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