Plot Vs. Character

Plot versus setting.  Artist versus craftsman.  Lamott's Bird by Bird versus Burroway's Imaginative Writing.  Not so useful versus very useful.  Lamott and Burroway cover very different topics this week.  I found Lamott’s passages inspirational but perplexing from my perspective of an aspiring author.

As Lamott states, “Plot grows out of character.” If an author focuses on doing the best job possible in defining a character then the actions of the character “will fall into place.”  The author needs to listen to her characters who will whisper into her ear what the plot line is by the nature of their interactions.  I wish my characters would speak a little louder, possibly even scream.  I suspect I am having problems with this concept because my characters are not well defined.  Until I thoroughly understand my characters, I won’t know which actions will result from their interactions—which, come to think of it, is exactly what Lamott says.

Here’s another twist.  In my book in progress about Theodore Roosevelt’s children and their pony Algonquin, the plot is already written; the facts are well documented.  What I am discovering is that which “facts” I choose to include can have widely different implications for character.  Theodore Roosevelt stated that every day of his second marriage he felt more in love with his wife Edith and their children.  As president, he kept the hour from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. sacrosanct so he could play with his children regardless of the demands of his office.  Yet while organizing the Rough Riders during the Spanish American War, he left his second wife Edith who was extremely ill saying that even if she died in his absence, he needed to perform his duty to his country.  I suspect that great, complex characters like Theodore Roosevelt involve great, complex contradictions.  My challenge is how to create Lamott’s “scenic Easter egg” view into the life of Roosevelt and his family—to create the hidden jeweled surprise of a Fabergé egg rather than the empty interior of a single color hen’s egg.

I found Lamott’s sharing of Alice Adam’s formula ABDCE (Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending) for writing a short story extremely valuable.  I had a vague sense of this arc for plot development but would never have been able to articulate it.  I plan on revising my ending of the Algonquin book by fine tuning the sequence according to this formula.

Burroway claims that establishing the setting--the time and place of a story--“fuels the drive to write.”   A believable setting is created by careful selection of details and using vocabulary typical of that era or social environment.  In Ives’ short story “The Philadelphia,” his characters order beer using “Bud” instead of “Budweiser” and revel in the profane language typical of men at bars.  Careful word choice can also help establish tone and emotion when creating a setting.  I tried to use this concept when writing about Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and the aerial salute to their dead son Quentin by focusing on a fading rose, tormented leaves, and the remorseless fall of the memorial wreaths.

Borrowing the cinematographic concept of panning in (or out) from a scene, per Burroway, can also help establish setting.  Joan Didion in “At the Dam” does a masterful job of using this technique as she writes about the Hoover dam--from the image in her inner eye to taking a tour of the dam to the dam as a place of giant machines working almost independently of man to the star map locating the Hoover Dam at a time when man no longer exists.  I also used this panning out concept in my weekly writing—going from a single rose petal to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt in the Pet Cemetery to the aerial salute over the house at Sagamore Hill.

Is writing an art or is it a craft?  As a new author, I am finding that using craftsman-like techniques such as the ABDCE formula and panning in and out is helping me more at this time of my development.  I need to keep working at my craft until I achieve master status as an artist.