Plot, character, and charm

The audience is unforgiving. They want each scene to lead into the next, and everything in the story must be there to help resolve the central conflict. In other words, they don’t want tangents. They want the story to drive relentlessly towards its resolution.

The problem is, people don’t fall in love with a plot. They love characters. So they don’t want relentless action any more than they want tangents.

How do I stick to the point of the story without stripping away all the character? Well, often the plot is about the character, and resolving the plot requires the character to change. Of course.

But what if the story is all about action? What if I’m writing The Man Who Was Thursday or North By Northwest?

Well, be G.K. Chesterton or Cary Grant, I guess. Be so charming that we don’t need to know anything about the character.

But that raises questions. What is charm? What are the limits of charm? Could a charming writer or actor make anything interesting? Maybe…

On the other hand, what are the limits of good writing? Can a dull actor ruin an otherwise brilliant story? Yes. Of course they can. But not always, or else schools would stop performing Macbeth and Twelfth Night.

So there is a tension among plot, character, and charm. It’s hard to balance let alone maximize all three. But you can compensate for the lack of one with the excellence of the other two.

That’s the best I can do—make tradeoffs.