Chapter Twelve

Plot the Character Emotional Development

The character who is the most changed or transformed by the action of the story is the protagonist. This character’s emotional development as she experiences events and ordeals, successes and failures is one of the three primary plotlines. The challenging situations (the dramatic action plotline) create emotional upheaval and force self-confrontation with a transformation from within (the character emotional development plotline) that creates lasting meaning for the reader (the thematic significance plotline).

Not all characters are transformed by the dramatic action. Plot the characters who do change or transform on your Plot Planner, and track their trait changes on your Scene Tracker (see Part Two). Choose one character to start with, and, throughout the story, plot, explore, and develop that character’s emotional makeup. Readers relate to and bond with a character who reveals at the climax that all the events of the story had an emotional impact on her.

The Plot Planner line follows the energy of the story but does not reflect or follow the character’s emotional development. The line moves steadily upward to reflect rising tension and intensifying conflict in the overall story. When the line reaches the crisis, one of the highest peaks in the story, the character is at her lowest and poorest. If the Plot Planner line did follow the protagonist’s fate—which it does not—the line would careen down into the abyss at this point of crisis. Instead the Plot Planner stretches higher and higher and reaches a peak at her breaking point. The line swinging upward in this way reflects the urgency for each scene to present more twisted tension, severe complications, nasty conflict, brutal suspense, and crushing curiosity than occurred in previous scenes.

Plot out on your plot planner the incrementally worse interactions the protagonist encounters. Notice how and where he is most emotionally affected by the dramatic action. The tension and the conflict build as the Plot Planner line rises and the character struggles.

The character’s emotional development is most affected at the story’s three highest points: the end of the beginning, the crisis, and the climax. Each of these three high points, found in the beginning, middle, and end respectively, creates significantly higher tension than the one that came before, and each demands of the protagonist significantly greater sacrifice, bravery, and stamina to continue in the face of such emotional challenges.

In the first quarter of Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See, young Werner desperately wishes he could “get away from here.” Werner’s private fear of going into the mines and dying like his father provides powerful motivation for him to take action. Werner’s fear of the life he came from also helps for thematic significance by tying his character emotional development plot to the dramatic action plot. His proclivity for inventing and fixing things (his character strength) also ties into the coming action and provides more meaning by introducing the bigger and more universal idea of inventing something new.

Throughout the middle of the story, the primary gatekeepers to Werner's freedom confront him: his sister, his poverty, the horrors of war, and, ultimately, himself. Through dramatic action, each antagonist teaches Werner about himself and about life, science, the cruelty crouched in men’s hearts, and the nature of heroism.

In the final quarter of the story, Werner, having never taken responsibility for what he was doing and his part in the war, comes face-to-face with a blind woman who has personally taken on the responsibility to win the war. Witnessing her boldness, grace, and ultimate heroism, Werner is changed to his core. By staying where he is needed and helping her to safety, he defies reader expectations and becomes the hero of his own life.

Using the Plot Planner template and colored sticky notes, plot the scenes in the beginning quarter of your project either above or below the line, depending on whether the character is in control (below the line) or an antagonist of some sort holds the power over your character (above the line). Note the aspects of the character emotional development introduced: the flaws, fears, and secrets the character possesses. Use a different color sticky note from the color you used for the dramatic action plotline.

In our earlier example, Folly, Rae, the protagonist, is introduced as fragile, doubtful, exhausted, and fearful upon her arrival at the island. If we were to plot this on the Plot Planner, we would write “arrival on island” on one colored sticky note above the Plot Planner line for the dramatic action plotline. The note goes above the line because life alone on the remote island is perilous. In a different-colored sticky note at the same place, we would write “fragile and fearful” to indicate Rae’s character emotional development at this point.

Feeling fragile, fearful, and on the edge is not a temporary emotional state. These traits make up Rae’s lifetime emotional development due to what has come before (her backstory).

The middle section contains scenes both above and below the Plot Planner line that show how the character’s current emotional development affects her life on a deeper level. In the middle, make shorthand notes about her emotional development. Jot down notes about how her internal antagonists—her fears, flaws, and secrets—sabotage her and prevent her from reaching her goals.

In Folly, during the crisis—the scene of highest intensity in the story so far—Rae has a full-blown breakdown, something she has feared and attempted to prevent with pills and then with hard work. The pressure of the work she undertakes on the island, her fear of the dark and the unknown, and her paranoia create the crisis by forcing her directly into the belly of what she fears the most: being out of control. This time of intense vulnerability serves as a wake-up call, a moment of no return. She now understands the extent of her fragility, but she is also given a glimpse into who she could be with focused and conscious effort. (The sticky note for the crisis is always above the line at the highest peak on the Plot Planner so far.)

The end shows her character emotional development in terms of the degree to which she maintains control as she works her way to mastery. The moment of true mastery is shown in the climax.

In essence, the sticky notes containing character emotional development on the Plot Planner should show a visual pattern of the character emotional development arc.

Pacing the Character Emotional Development

Begin by focusing your attention on reaching the first scene or cluster of scenes with the highest intensity in the story so far: the end of the beginning.

Control the pacing of what you introduce about the character and the effects the action has on her emotions at the beginning by following the slowly rising Plot Planner line. Anticipate the shift or reversal outside the character that sends her into the heart of the story world. Plot it.

Plotting the middle proves increasingly difficult as you’re forced to throw all sorts of horrible people and situations at your protagonist. Pace the intensity of these scenes as they reflect his changing emotional development and foreshadow the coming disaster. Look to the Plot Planner for ideas on how to convey the character’s emotional reaction to the challenges that confront him. Search the notes you made about the character emotional development on the Plot Planner to spot patterns in his behavior. Does he always run when the going gets tough? Does he turn belligerent when under pressure? Does he accuse and blame others for his misfortunes? Introducing his character reactions in the beginning of the story allows you to incrementally deepen the reader’s understanding of how that repetitive pattern affects him emotionally in the middle. In the end, you have the opportunity to show the character acting and reacting in entirely new ways, incorporating all he’s learned and overcome.

By focusing on what is interfering with her success, the protagonist is controlled by problems. Let those problems take her where they want her to go. Keep her off balance and her emotions soaring. She should give the antagonistic elements and people in her life strength, feed their growth, and lessen her own. Anticipate the crisis, the next scene of highest intensity in the story so far, and the lowest point for the protagonist as she is forced to awaken to the bigger problem, villain, stakes, need, or challenge. Write what causes her to become conscious of a shift or reversal inside her, and place it on the Plot Planner line.

In the end, the protagonist has learned to focus on potential solutions rather than his problems. He takes control and begins leading his life in the direction he wants it to go. This change of perspective at the end sets up the climax where, in scene, he demonstrates being fully united with his new self-knowledge, new understanding of the world, and new sense of responsibility through his actions and his words.

Plotting out the protagonist’s emotional development on the Plot Planner gives you a visual representation of her transformation. Comparing how the character develops later in the story to how she handled situations earlier in the story allows you to better control your pacing. You can decide when to pull back in reflective scenes and when to charge ahead with pressure scenes. The Plot Planner guides your pacing scene by scene.

At the same time, with your notes in place for the dramatic action and the character emotional development, the Plot Planner allows you to see the different plot threads and their interplay throughout your story. By plotting the scenes above or below the line, and indicating the two plotline elements in two different colors, you are able to see the ebb and flow of all your scenes at once.

Keeping the Character Consistent

Character consistency is essential to keeping your readers deeply rooted in your story world. If the protagonist acts “out of character” or does something counter to the personality you’ve established, without some sort of foreshadowing or development, the reader feels cheated. You can avoid confusing your readers and cluttering your imagination by plotting a logical progression toward a breakdown along the middle of your plot planner, as well as the steps to his buildup at the end. Stand back from the words and gain access to a larger context as you allow him to emerge and develop with a better understanding of the significance of each of the story parts.

If you are developing a character like Novalee, who has difficulty asking for help in the beginning of Where the Heart Is, check your sticky notes on the Plot Planner for each interaction she has with others. Be on the lookout for any instance where she falls out of “character” by suddenly speaking up for herself. If she speaks up for herself in one instance, the reader will wonder why she can’t do it in another. Too many character inconsistencies like that cause the reader to detach from the character.

If, however, the protagonist speaks up on another person’s behalf, then you’ve deepened the reader’s understanding of her flaw. By witnessing her ability to speak up for another, the reader is better able to assess just how disconnected the protagonist is from herself.

Inserting Foreshadowing

We’ve discussed how to link scenes by cause and effect, and how each event leads to the next, moment by moment and scene by scene. Foreshadowing links scenes from the present to scenes that will happen in the future. Anytime you leave clues or allude to something mysterious, ominous, uncertain, or potentially life changing that will occur in the future, you are using foreshadowing. Always be on the lookout for ways to foreshadow seemingly insignificant events, objects, locations, character traits, reactions, and actions that will eventually take on significance later in the story.

Before you can layer your scenes with foreshadowing, a sense of the larger story is necessary. You first need to determine where all the different elements rest and all the different character clues hide. Professional writers don’t reveal everything that is coming up front. Instead they leave hints.

The reader (and the protagonist) doesn’t have an outline of the story and thus can only anticipate what is coming by discerning the clues given along the way by the use of foreshadowing. The life of the story takes on its own shape, and its sequence seems inevitable to the reader and audience because of foreshadowing.

The middle challenges the protagonist in an unfamiliar territory. Throughout all the setbacks and obstacles, the middle also provides the protagonist with opportunities to learn, discover, or rediscover a gift, clue, belief, ability, or skill that serves her in her final confrontation at the end. The act of discovery is often used as an act of foreshadowing in stories.