Interested in Writing Fiction?
A Crash Course in
Creating Characters
and Developing Plot
This Power Point is an optional resource—
use it to help jump-start a story, improve
character or plot development in a story
already underway, or otherwise inform your
magazine submissions.
Characters
How do you make
them?
How do you make
them INTERESTING?
Types


Flat (or Simple, Secondary, Static)
Round (or Complex, Primary, Dynamic)
Need to Be



Try starting with a
CHARACTER idea, not
a plot idea!
Believable, Real
Consistent
Distinctive
Worst beginner
faults: characters
who are all alike
(can’t tell one from
the other), or are
generic.
Flash Fiction

Look at “The Poet’s Husband”: character
development.

Look at other pieces: what do you think of
this “micro fiction”?
Sometimes it helps to LITERALLY
draw the character!
Try a verbal “character sketch” now…
I.e., invent someone.
A person who will be with you all semester.
At least 3 paragraphs.
Look again at your character
sketch.

What were you doing? Your
character is FLAT! BORING!
GENERIC! 2-dimensional!

Look at questions in Harmonious
Confusion and TRY AGAIN!
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/HarmoniousWhole.htm
Plot
What is it?
How do you
make one?
How do you make a GOOD one?
What is the difference between an
essay or a work of expository prose
and a story?
Essays generally have a thesis, are
primarily factual and reflective
(not dramatic), are “narrated” by
the actual author, and are usually
structured as traditional, atemporal arguments.
Stories don’t have a thesis, are
primarily dramatic and fictional,
are narrated by an invented
Don’t confuse a firstperson narrator of a story
with the author of the
story!
Plotting a Story

What's a plot?
o

This question linked to
CHARACTER = a stronger
story. Consider “Cathedral.”
A sequence or pattern of events.
What sets a story in motion?
A QUESTION is posed, explicitly or implicitly, and you want
to know the answer!
Or: a balanced situation becomes…unbalanced! Some
sort of equilibrium is disturbed.

Keep in mind overall estimated or intuited length (remember
in media res).
Students almost NEVER use this particular
resource. SETTING can also reveal character.
Plot—Don’t Plod! Building Suspense
o
o
o
o
o
o
Introduce additional narrative questions. Create
multiple obstacles, physical or emotional.
Control the rate of revelation. Slow pace = interior
monologue, description, dialogue, exposition. Fast
pace = action, answers to narrative question.
Provide false clues: what false clues might have been
added to the the student stories we’ve read so far?
Develop sub- or parallel-plots which delay revelation in
the main plot.
Consider creating your backstory gradually. Don't give
main character’s full story immediately. Let it evolve.
Provide powerful IMAGERY which heightens tensions.
Note: many students are not aware of where their
scenes stop and start, and their transitional
passages are consequently “muddy”: overelaborated, bogging the whole story down.
What else is important to plot?


Scene Development
o
A unit of time and place in which (usually) important action takes
place.
o
Can be like mini-stories within the larger story.
Scene transitions
o
o
o
Provide a simple extra space on the page. This is common these
days.
Transitional phrases.
“Jump cuts.” Allowing for ellipses, intuitive connections,
leeeaaaps… (cut out needless exposition and crud).
Helpful Plot Devices:





Flashbacks
Foreshadowing
Parallel or intersecting plots or sub-plots
False leads
“Hooks”
What we’ve been
examining so far is the
traditional, linear, “rising
action” plot…
Hook = “triggering action” or
“complicating action” or “narrative
question” or “twist”
False clue
Increasing
tension
X
Partial answer
X
Introduction of
minor parallel plot
X
X
X
Flashback
Standard
rising
and
falling
action
What SLOWS
Pace?
X
X
X
X
X
X
What SPEEDS pace?
ACTION!
Scene-setting (exposition)
Dialogue.
Internal
monologue.
Description.
Resolution
And each carries with it its own
worldview, understanding of
time, vision of human desire
See the O’Brien story you read.
Alternate Plot Structures
Framed
narrative.
Different
plots can
express alternative ways
Montage.
of experiencing TIME
and REALITY!
Chronologically backwards plot. (Yes—backwards.
See Lorrie Moore’s “How to Talk to Your Mother.”)
Static plots. (See experimental stories by Robbe
Grille.)
No plot (as in pure interior monologue).
And they all lived happily ever after.
Now that’s a dumb way
to end a story.
Hemingway’s
notion of the
• Let only the tip of the iceberg show—
the right details will evoke the great
mass of what lies beneath.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Provide fewer, but better, details. (Less
is more.)
• Avoid platitudes, like the ones I’m
using here.
It roars down the road. The engine
howls, a caged animal begging to be
set free; plumes of bronze smoke blast
skyward with every scream. Dust
billows in airborne whirlpools behind
gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow
bears down upon everything trapped in
its destructive path. Ever closer it
approaches, once a mere speck on the
horizon this beast becomes a veritable
leviathan.
It roars down the road, The engine
howls, a caged animal. begging to be set
free; Plumes of bronze smoke blast
skyward. with every scream. Dust
billows in airborne whirlpools behind
gargantuan tires. Its ominous shadow
bears down upon everything. trapped in
its destructive path. Ever closer it
approaches, once a mere speck on the
horizon this beast becomes a veritable
leviathan. Once a mere speck on the
horizon, ever closer it approaches.
Silences aren’t silent.
Silences aren’t nothing.
Being good with words means knowing when to shut up.
See Blackboard “Course Documents” for
sheet.
Also at:
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/
cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/Style.htm