Decision Points: Plantsing My Way Through My Story
I’m the kind of neurospicy author who bounces between Order and Utter Chaos in my writing style. In other words, I’m a proud plantser. What my characters choose to do at any given moment is sometimes as much a surprise to me as it is to them. As such, both the creation and learning of those decision points becomes absolutely crucial in the drafting stage.
A couple days ago, I covered plot points and turning points. My drafting process circles from the action in the inciting incident, to the consequences the protagonist must deal with and their reaction to those consequences. Subsequently, they have a choice to make as to how they will approach the conflict created. That chosen action will have its own new consequences, and the cycle repeats itself in ever higher peaks.
A well-drafted story centers on conflict. That conflict revolves around the choice your characters make when they reach certain crossroads. In the words of Ken Smith and Tessa Mudge over at the Good, Better, Right blog,
Confront your protagonist with a baffling choice or fateful decision, and you’ve got a great opportunity to reveal complexities, contradictions, and consequences that will add real depth to your characters and your storyline.
Major and minor decision points are equally important, to both my characters and me. At what point they come, and the effects they’ll have? That’s the topic of today’s blog.
Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash
Major Decision Points
Major decision points are just that. Characters face high-stakes conflicts. Because of this, the obstacles or dilemmas they face become more interesting to readers and more challenging to the characters. When I deny characters what they want, suddenly their choices on how to move forward have consequences they’re not sure are acceptable.
My protagonists often struggle because their choices force them to confront themselves. Internal conflict in particular calls for fraught decisions and obstacles to acting on those decisions. Yes, there’s a difference between queer romance and queer romantic suspense. By the same token, a well-balanced story has bits of tension and suspense regardless of the subgenre they encompass.
Coming off of the pinch points, the choices protagonists (or even secondary characters) make remind readers of what’s at stake. In queer romance of any kind, the relationship must be tested in a way that both characters genuinely fear its end. If the characters (or, Gaia forbid, the reader) doesn’t think anything at all will ever come between them, the narrative loses steam. When the narrative loses steam, readers put down the book.
To put it another way, my characters sometimes fight more with themselves than they do each other. I don’t necessarily thrive on building out their internal conflict. I don’t necessarily fight it, either. Major decision points are where it’s easiest to add depth to my characters’ profiles and motivations. Better yet, those choices often foreshadow upcoming conflicts.
Minor Decision Points
The dips between crises are the moments I use to explore the little things, the small connections. Because I rely often on the Fichtean Curve structural framework, I find I’m better able to test my protagonists’ mental mettle. After all, as N.J. Simmonds says, “Great pacing means having quiet moments in a story where nice things happen and everything is going to plan, as well as sections full of rising action, obstacles, and decisions.”
Of course, one of the biggest lessons that remains with me from penning my first manuscript is that if it’s not on the page, readers won’t know about it. This is why it’s vital that I stay as close to my characters as possible over the course of the story. Their actions and reactions to events are important, absolutely. But it’s those in-between moments where they show me their truest selves. Better yet, they’re often the scenes I most enjoy writing. In Heidi Hornbacher’s words,
A scene where a character must struggle to reach a fraught decision and then face obstacles in acting on that decision will always be more interesting than what happens after.
(emphasis added)
This isn’t to say that these minor decisions outweigh the others. If that were the case, we’d call them… Well, I’m sure I don’t need to state the obvious.
No, it’s about including the process by which they made those major decisions. The choices might be related to the plot itself. More significantly for queer romance, the time characters take to work through possible consequences relates more to their inner conflict. And sometimes? Maybe it just allows you to fine-tune your story’s setting to show more of your character’s personality.
The Butterfly Effect
The idea of the “butterfly effect” came from MIT meteorology professor Edward Lorenz, through a computer simulation on weather forecasting. (I promise, I have a point here.) After a simple change to a formula, weather patterns veered off course in ways the professor never anticipated. Eventually, he half-seriously suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a weather event many miles away. In other words, the future is nearly impossible to predict.
Stephanie Morrill’s words are closer to what any author would expect to hear, especially a plantser like me. She states, “Whatever choice they make, the trajectory of your character’s path will be impacted. ‘No change’ isn’t an option.” (Emphasis added.)
My protagonists literally cannot stand still, no matter how tempting doing “nothing” may be at that moment. The major decision points involve real-time events in the physical world itself. Something is happening to them. At the other end, the minor decision points happen more as realizations. Some event—or another character—has presented them with new information that changes their whole worldview.
Whether that worldview is macro- or microlevel depends on where they are in their journey. As much as I can think I know where that journey is going, like Lorenz suggested, the future isn’t visible to a plantser like me.
Photo by Steve DiMatteo on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up
Decision points, major or minor, work in conjunction with the plot points and turning points my characters need to experience throughout the narrative. The butterfly effect comes into play when they veer off into a direction my outline did not anticipate. At that point, I go from Creator to After-Action Reporter. As protective as I am of my babies, sometimes I have to let them make their own choices.
The exciting part of this, though, is knowing that those choices don’t always have “yes” or “no” options. It’s that gray area I love to traverse. I like to think I know my characters well enough to correctly guess which path they’ll take in their decision tree. Sometimes, though, they surprise me in the best ways.
Sure, personal histories, backstory, and even earlier current story time events affect the choices they make. I still consistently find ways to challenge their inner beliefs and worldview. That is what makes the eventual faceoff with their inner demons all the more powerful. Better yet, it’ll make it all the more cathartic, for both the characters themselves and the readers who’ve followed their fraught-with-peril journey.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
