Me: *opens Yet Another Google Doc To Continue Writing*

me: *opens yet another google doc to continue writing*

my pile of unused notebooks: 

How to write a character-driven plot

The Character-Driven Plot Wheel

1. Emotions drive actions.

Make your hero act on their deepfelt emotions. This not only adds meaning to their actions, but also helps communicate to readers your hero’s core emotional struggle.

2. Actions trigger consequences.

When your hero acts, give their actions consequences that affect the plot, themselves, and/or the surrounding characters. For example, driven by curiosity, maybe your hero opens Pandora’s box; maybe they act recklessly and someone dies; or maybe they stand up for what they believe in, but at great personal cost. Consequences raise the stakes and empower your hero with agency.

3. Consequences compel change.

Use the consequences of your hero’s actions to create a crucible of growth — challenges and situations that force them to take the next step on their character journey. That step may be forward, or backward, and it may be large or small; but something inside them changes.

4. Change influences emotions.

When a character goes through a change, even a small one, allow it to affect them emotionally. Maybe they feel increasingly frustrated or guilty. Maybe they’re afraid, having just taken another step closer to abandoning their old way of seeing the world. Or maybe they finally feel peace.

Regardless of the form it takes, remember to reflect your hero’s change in their emotions. Then let their emotions drive action, to trigger consequences, which will compel further change.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

And there you have it! That’s how you write a character-driven plot.

So what do you say?

Give the wheel a spin.

— — —

Your stories are worth telling. For tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog.

Raise your hand if you hate small talk but would push through a crowd to listen to someone ramble about something they're actually passionate about.

🙋‍♀️

Winnie the Pooh

In Which We Are Introduced Lillian-May And An Adventure Begins…

Series: The new age

Word count: 1,566

Characters: Madeline, Ms. Robin, Pooh and Friends

Warnings: Fluff, and brother sister bonding

Notes: So I wrote this for a school project. We had a small word limit and little time to complete the project so the ending it muddled and a bit rushed. The original idea was to add character that would give some life to the the lifeless 2018, Christopher Robin movie.

———

Here is Lillian-May, looking up at the sky now, watching the world pass her by. “That one looks like a duckling,” she thought, “that one a slithery skake.”

She laid in the middle of the bench, in the middle of her family’s rear garden, alone. Stretching her arms out she dug her fingers into the ground, getting dirt stuck beneath her nails. She pulled up and released what grass she held into the breeze. Quietly she watched it go. Swirling this way and that. She watched it until it disappeared over the fence, into the yard.

“Where does the wind take such small thing?” She couldn’t help but wonder.

She’d seen the wind take leaves in the fall, and the white fluffy wishlings the summer.

Lillian-May smiled as a grand idea, came to mind. She was quite tired of doing nothing. For you she’d done nothing all morning and now it was early afternoon. Sometimes doing nothing could be quite boring, if done for long enough.

She sat up swinging her legs over the side of the bench. Only something fun could cure her great boredom. Perhaps an adventure was what she needed. An adventure for what, she didn’t quite know. Just an adventure through the wood to find something. Something had to be better than nothing.

“I suppose I should start my searching,” she decided, rolling over onto her stomach, she got to her feet, and said her last goodbye to the duckling cloud. The skake got nothing more than a curt wave and rude raspberry.

She hopped up the steps, one, three, one, two, three, four, five, for to her there was no other way of going up the steps. She always forgot step two, then decided perhaps if that step had feelings she did indeed hurt them by skipping them over. So she goes back to start from the beginning, making sure she does indeed do step two.

Lillian-May open the door quietly, peaking her head through, she looks around ensuring no one is around to notice her, then slips through the small opening.

“Lillian-May, is that you darling?” Called her mother.

“No, mummy it’s not me,” answered Lillian-May.

The mother, her mother is a lovely woman—the loveliest, the very best at kissing booboos, and giving hugs, and singing lullabies. Her mother is the best mother in all of London, she has to be, as it says so on the card Lillian-May and her older sister made for their mother’s birthday earlier that year.

Her mother was an architect or at least that’s what Lillian-May was told, she couldn’t quite remember a time when her mum was anything except her mother. She sometimes finds herself thinking maybe it was a time before she was born if only she could remember such a time.

With those few words, she went on through the house, up the stairs, to the room she shares with her sister.

She can’t say she is close to her sister, not in the way she wants to be. For her sister, Madeline is a girl with a very big brain. Which is why Lillian-May found it odd that her sister understands very little.

She crouches on her knees before her bed, looking at the clutter underneath. As Lillian-May would explain there needs to be a underneath her bed, the mess keeps the monster happy, and the monster beneath the bed protects her from the snufflegrump in the closet.

“There you are,” said Lillian-May pulling out her hat of adventuring, it’s the only hat one can wear when good adventuring is to be done. For one cannot explore without the proper cap.

“What are you up to now?” Asked Madeline in a somewhat annoyed voice.

Lillian-May smiled mischievously, placing her hat of adventuring upon her small head. “Why can’t you tell?” Asked Lillian-May. “There is adventuring to be done. You, of course, are welcome to come. One can get the job done, but two makes it twice as fun.”

“I have work to do,” said Madeline, sitting at the one desk in their room.

Of course, he has work to do, people with very big brains always have work to do. They work so very hard to understand the very hardest things there are to understand.

Lillian-May always promised to keep her brain very small. For the work, her brother did never did seem like fun, like the small things that popped into her very small brain.

“That’s okay,” said Lillian-May, “I shall enlist my friend’s surely they will go adventuring.”

“Your animal friends?”

“Yep,” said Lillian-May popping the ‘p’.

That’s how it was and that’s how it always had been between the two siblings. Madeline, a girl with many responsibilities that she gives to herself. And Lillian-May, a child with her head up in the clouds.

After leaving her brother to his work, she hopped on down the steps, careful in not forgetting step two. She never forgot step two on the way down, that would just be silly.

“Mummy where are my boots?” Yelled Lillian-May the moments she reaches the base of the stairwell.

Lillian-May parades into the living room where her lovely mother sits, stitching up a quilt she’d made for her eldest child in her younger years.

“Mummy, do you know where my boots are?” Asked Lillian-May, “I can’t possibly go adventuring without them.”

“Of course you can’t. What’s a good explorer without her boots?” Asked her mother. She picks Lillian-May up, sitting her daughter on her lap.

“They aren’t under the bed, or at the base step like the ought to be.” Said Lillian-May in a sort of worried tone. Surely her boots didn’t walk off, they knew better than to run off without her.

“Did you look beneath the table?” Asked her mother.

“Why would they be there?” Lillian-May asked confusedly. Perhaps her boots had gotten hungry, as everything inevitably does, but then again they only eat mud and dirt.

“I do believe I recall a certain little girl leaving them there before dinner,” her mother said kindly.

Lillian-May grinned sheepishly, she had almost forgotten. Often times her adventuring days ended at the dinner table, and in her excitement, she forgot to check her boots at the door.

“Oh right, in all my forgetfulness I had forgotten.” Said Lillian-May.

With these words she slid off her mother’s lap, after saying one last thank you, she ran into the next room, the kitchen. She came to a stop before the table, bending over to see what lied beneath.

There she saw her boots, sitting in front of her chair, in a puddle of mud.

“Silly boots, I almost lost you,” said Lillian-May.

As her grandfather had once told her when she was very little. One can not set off on a proper adventure without the right pair of boots. Though she thought her adventure cap was indeed more helpful.

Lillian-May sat outside her back door, pulling on her big boots. She’d gotten them when she was smaller, now she’d grown, as all small children do.

“All I need now is some friends,” said Lillian-May in a matter of fact tone. “Perhaps a silly old bear.” She said as she ran off into the deep wood.

After some time she came upon a place most familiar. The home of one huggable Pooh Bear.

“Good evening Pooh Bear,” she called out coming down the bend.

“Hallo Lillian-May.”

“Prepare yourself, Pooh,” said Lillian-May excitedly.

“Ah yes prepare,” Pooh said. He thought for a little and then asked. “Prepare? For…supper?”

Lillian-May shook her head and giggled. “No you silly old bear. We are all going on a grand Expedition,” said Lillian-May as she boldly pointed her hand in the air. “We are going to go on an adventure.”

“Oh!” said Pooh. “What kind of adventure?” he asked.

“The fun kind,” said Lillian-May, not quite knowing what kind herself. “I don’t quite know what for. But it’s an adventure, for something.”

“What kind of a something?” Asked Pooh.

“We won’t know until we find it Pooh.” Said Lillian-May, as she carelessly drew symbols in the dirt.

“Ah yes, yes I see now.” Said Pooh, though he didn’t really.

“Now you’d best go round and get the others. I must go to get more adventuring supplies from my tree.” And with these new orders Pooh waddled off.

It wasn’t long before Pooh and his friends were all together ready to begin their adventure. First to arrive was, of course, was Pooh with his best animal friend Piglet, then Lillian-May and Kanga, with Roo in her pocket, then Eeyore and lastly Tigger with the rest of their friends.

“Well here we all are,” said Eeyore in his usual melancholy way. “Together again.”

“Yes Eeyore,” said Lillian-May. “Together for another adventure.”

“An adventure? Yippee!” Squeaked young Roo as he jumped out of his mother’s pouch.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready!” Cheered all the animals of the wood. Pooh, Tigger and all except save for Eeyore.

So off they all went on a grand new adventure, where to none of them knew, what for they didn’t know either. However they were with they’re friends, so it didn’t quite matter.

Ocs: Matilda May

“John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You're abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people, so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you fall in love with conforms to that pattern.”

Backstory

You’ve never thought much of yourself, conditioned to believe you’re nothing more than a horrible mistake. Due to abusive chastisement you’re quite the quiet, timid child. Because of the thoughtful intervention of your neighbor you’re put into foster care. Serendipitously you’re foster father happens to be your doctor, John H. Watson. Despite the change in guardianship you continue to act withdrawn. She’s just unsure of how to handle the new changes. John is very aware it’s going to take some time for you adapt, he is a doctor. John does enjoy you’re company, all things considered she’s still quite sweet. However, Matilda proves to be more than meets the eye.

Bio

Full Name: Matilda May N/A

Face Claim: ?

Fandom: BBC Sherlock

Occupation: Foster child

Personality: Untidy, kind, candid, reserved, anxious, picky, logical, defensive, obedient, and masterful

Relationships: John Watson (foster father), Mary Morstan (surrogate mother), Harriet Watson (foster aunt), James N/A (biological father), Sherlock Holmes (foster paternal uncle), Mycroft Holmes (family “friend”/ paternal uncle), Mrs. Hudson (surrogate grandmother), Molly Hooper (foster family friend/babysitter), and Gem Roulette (frenemy).

Fun Fact: Matilda suffers from Depersonalization-derealization disorder. She’ll often have dissociative episodes where she feels a sense detachment from the world around her. She goes to therapy but sees little use in her appointed psychiatrist. Or just psychiatrists in general.