The Careful Planning of Plot Arcs
I’ve been thinking about plots and plotting lately (plotting as in developing plots to stories, not plotting as in “mbwahahaha”, I save that for mice), and I had a bit of an epiphany. I don’t tend to so much come up with plots as I do set up a bunch of scenes like I’m playing games of truck dismount. That is to say, I take a few characters, array them about the place, put in a few obstacles that will make something horrible happen, and sit back and watch what happens. I like to call this “character-driven”, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to look at the big picture just a bit more.