Is There Such Thing As a Bad Plot?

Photo by Greg Westfall, used under
Creative Commons licence.

Why did they do that?

You want to throw the book across the room.

Your heroine has just put herself in danger for no reason. The hero has lost his temper over something trivial and broken up with the heroine. These characters make no sense.

You decide life is too short and turn on Netflix.

When dissecting a disappointing novel or movie, it’s easy to blame a poor story on bad plot, characterization or dialogue.

But, I suggest, these may only be symptoms of a single problem: the author was unable to convince you of ‘why’.

Why did the heroine throw herself in danger? Why did the hero really leave?

If the author can convince you that the path chosen was the only one that made sense to the character, then you aren’t going to be bothered that the heroine just jumped from a plane without a parachute. It was her only option! Her country/sense of identity/loved one/integrity was at stake.

If you believe the character’s motivations, you’re empathizing with them, and wondering whether they’ll ever reach their goal or not.

But if you’re frustrated with what seems to be a silly decision, you won’t care that the dialogue is witty or the description is poetic.

I believe there are few bad story ideas, just under-developed character motivations.

Even good books can be made great by strengthening the reasons why characters made the decisions they did.

Read the last scene you wrote. Find a decision a character made. Can you make that decision the only logical path, given the position you’ve put them in? What is at risk if they follow any other course of action? Can you increase those risks?

The more we understand why, the louder we’ll cheer as the character achieves their goal.

Jessica Kate is an Australian writer. She prefers the term 'writer' because it's too hard to say 'training developer, aspiring author and former journalist' in one mouthful.

She loves reading anything by Jenny B Jones, watching The Proposal, and writing Christian contemporary fiction full of romance and drama. 

Her manuscript, Hating Jeremy Walters, was a finalist in the 2015 Frasier Awards and she's currently working on her second novel.

 She loves connecting with reader and writers at Facebook, Instagram, and her website.

Why do you write?

Last week, my writing and edits were starting to get on top of me. I was stressed. I felt that my edits were no good, my book would fail, my marketing wouldn’t do any good, etc.

Then I thought to myself, why do I write?

What drives you to put pen to paper?

I write for two reasons,

• I enjoy it
• I really think God wants me to.

Now, do either of those things have anything to do with things like…

• Getting published right away
• Selling truckloads of books
• Fame to rival Richard Castle? ;)

No.

There’s nothing wrong with aiming for commercial success, and I certainly hope to achieve it.

But it’s not my number one goal.

And when you think about it, why would God want me to write? It’s not like He can’t think up His own words. No, God doesn’t need me to write at all. But He wants to take the journey with Him. And He wants me to learn to trust Him.

And what do I define success as, anyway? A relationship of love, trust and obedience with God. That may include a great writing career, a mediocre one or none at all.

My job is to simply do my best, and walk with God through it all.

What about you? What motivates you to write? How do you deal with pressure?

Join the conversation below!

Jessica Everingham is a 25 year-old Australian writer. She prefers the term writer because it’s too hard to say ‘journalist, online training developer and author’ in one sentence.

She loves connecting with readers and writers via Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and her blog.

Her unpublished novel Hating Jeremy Walters was a finalist in the 2015 Frasier Contest, run by My Book Therapy, and runner-up in the 2015 Australasian Christian Writers Contemporary Romance Contest.