I find that when I work with my students on their stories, plot is often not what they struggle with. There’ll be moments where we have to work out where a story goes together, but more often than not students come to their sessions brimming with ideas like where their character can go, a new scene they want to squeeze in, or an edit for something previously written. These filter into the lessons and become a large part of the hour we share. However, ideas fuelled by, and a story driven only by ‘plot’ quickly hit speedbumps just as they start to get going. When things take a moment to slow down, how does the story move forward? This block comes up because the characters aren’t as laboured over as the stories themselves, and this is what I find to be the biggest challenge of mentorships; positioning the young writers to scrutinise characters and understand their motivation.

Whenever I read a piece from one of my students, I always focus on what the character’s doing, and why [I think] they’re doing it. Sometimes, I don’t believe that the character I’m reading would do what they’re doing, or sometimes I’m just unsure why, so I often ask the writer to elaborate on this for me. For example, one of my students is writing a fantasy book in which the protagonist and this father, the most powerful person in his tribe, share different views about the world. However, after conversing with the lead side character towards the end of the book, the father learns to understand his son’s (the protagonist’) view more and accepts a different perspective. This is a great arc for the character, but I didn’t believe that who I was reading would do this. This is a major change for someone, especially a leader, to undergo, and not something that can happen instantly without the seeds being sewn throughout the story beforehand.

So, I asked my writer to put himself in the father’s shoes. He’d done a fantastic job of creating a rich and developed backstory for the protagonist, but what about the side characters? They’re just as vital to the story and are essential in developing both the world and the hero, so why not give them the same consideration?

Why would this conversation change his father’s perspective? Does he doubt his tribe’s intentions? Probably not, but where does his allegiance ultimately lie? To his tribe, his role, himself, his son? Is there a reason that he’s initially stoic towards his son? Does this have something to do with the death of his wife, the mother of his child? What impact did this have on how he raised his son?

This really helped us know the character on a deeper level which allowed us to understand how they’d truly operate within the story and flesh out the relationship between him and his son. This created justifiable reactions to the events of the book and made the dramatic turn of a perspective shift something that was both believable and earned.

Asking the writers to question their characters has subsequently become a large part of my lessons. It’s really helped them understand how to think about and write their characters, as well as allowing them to lean less on plot and focus more on story. Whenever something in their pieces isn’t working out, we begin with thinking about whether it’s a believable scene or not. If it isn’t, how can we make it more authentic? And that’s where they really begin to think critically about what they’re writing.

Matt Braida