Doing It for the Plot
I’ve recently read two back-to-back bad books, written by experienced authors and issued by large publishers. Bit fed up, tbh.
The ultimate reason both books were bad was that they read like first drafts, with (as I said while ranting on Bluesky about this) good ideas not yet coagulated into a plot, elements that had been chucked in but weren't fully incorporated, and characters that were visibly acting according to the demands of the plot, rather than shaped so you felt their actions were natural.
(I strongly encourage aspiring authors to ask about editing before they sign with a publisher, including contacting current authors on your prospective editor’s list. Ask for names. I will happily tell you about everyone I’ve worked with if you hit me up.)
So let’s talk about plotserving character behaviour! Because that was one of the larger problems in both of the bad books I just read, and it is absolutely something you can tackle yourself.
Plotserving behaviour is simply when a character says or does something, or omits to say or do something, in a way that’s wildly against their established personality, their experience, and any plausible human reactions, because the plot requires it.
- After three passionate sex scenes and an ‘I love you’, one MC suddenly decides without discussion or provocation that the other one doesn’t want a relationship.
- The police officer steals a set of car keys from a garage because they have vague suspicions about someone they saw driving that car earlier, even though they’re investigating a completely different matter. (…okay?)
- The same police officer repeatedly interrupts the murder witness, actively preventing her from giving vital murderer-identifying and thus book-ending information. (I see what you did there, Author At 60% Of The Book.)
- Characters swing between wildly different emotions within a couple of lines. (“I laugh confidently as I explain my reasoning. The CEO frowns. I hang my head, instantly incapacitated by my lifelong shyness…”)
- The antagonist’s whole personality is ‘antagonist’ even when it’s clearly not in their interest. (“Just because you’ve already solved fourteen seemingly impossible crimes with psychological insights, Professor Brilliant-Mind, why should I trust you aren’t a total fraud this time?”)
- “I knew I shouldn’t believe what John Obvious-Badguy was saying about my girlfriend, especially while my three best friends were all showing me video evidence and notarised proof that he was lying, and yet…” (And yet the author wants a third-act break up, that’s what’s ‘and yet’.)
- “I had no reason to think the bloodstained torturer lackey of the oppressive government was anything but a monster, and yet something told me I should trust him.” (Something had damn well better have told the reader that too, or I am siding with the oppressive government from here.)
“For some reason I picked up the set of keys and slipped them into my pocket.” “For some reason, I didn’t think to ask the witness if she knew who the mad axe killer was.” We know the reason, mate, and nobody is fooled.
This stuff is fine in your first draft, of course! That’s what first drafts are for: to get you to The End. And then you need to look at it critically and say to yourself: I need a better reason for the argument in Chapter Six and Why doesn’t she think he loves her? and Why should she trust him here? and What’s a more plausible way to give her access to a car, or the information, or the medical records? And you need to go over and ground it. trace through the evolution of the MCs' feelings and notice how they behave and react. Backfill the motivations, layer in the feelings, shape the characters, tweak the situations, all of it while conscious of where you need to go, so that by the time the action happens, the reader won’t think twice--or, even better, will be smugly reflecting “Ha, I saw that coming!”
I’m not saying “Don’t have characters do bananapants things.” I’m simply saying that you need to root them in character and circumstance. If the plot’s denoument needs to be triggered by Character A’s wildly dangerous act, you can depict A as erratic through the whole book, or you can show them being a steady, reasonable, reliable person driven to temporary madness by external stresses, or have them forced to do it due to blackmail, or let the villain dose them up with meth, or reveal they were the leader of the criminal gang all along, or any of a dozen reasons. But you can’t have them do it simply because that’s what makes the plot happen.
Ask yourself: Why is the character doing this?If I were them, in their situation and with their personality and experiences, would I do it? And then make it so you can give a satisfactory answer. That’s all. (Okay, it’s a lot. But it’s not a complex principle.)
A few notes:
- This applies to all characters, not just MCs. Antagonists, witnesses, supportive best friends, sequel bait, rivals on the baking show: whoever they are, you need to have a good idea of their characters and motivations. You don’t need to put the whys and wherefores explicitly on the page, especially with minor characters: you just need to know it yourself. That way everyone in your book will come across as a person, not a plot-functionary.
- People evolve, and contradict themselves, and contain multitudes, and have off days, and react weirdly to stresses. Plausibility doesn’t require one-note behaviour, and indeed that would be unconvincing as well as boring. Just think it through so you understand them as a whole.
- Think about arcs. If your heroine’s motivation throughout the whole book is ‘She’s insecure’, that’s going to get monotonous pretty fast. Show us insecurity, then a slow build of trust and confidence, then an understandable backsliding prompted by specific events, and then a leap of faith, and you have a character arc.
- If you absolutely can’t think of a plausible reason for your character to do the thing—if it’s not in their nature, clashes with their experience, and can’t be forced on them—you’ve borked it, and you need to change either the character or the thing. Sorry.
How To Fake It In Society is out 28th April! Check out a sneak preview here.
I will be releasing Think, Write, Edit, Romance: the Romance Writer’s Journey from Blank Page to Finished Novel with Hay House in December. More on that here soon!