Writer and Plot: The fiction writer's chicken and egg problem

Do circumstances govern men, or do men control their circumstances? This age-old question is the crux of a controversy in fiction writing: does your plot come from your characters, or are your characters shaped by the events of the plot?

Do circumstances govern men, or do men control their circumstances? This age-old question is the crux of a controversy in fiction writing: does your plot derive directly from your characters, or do the events of the plot shape your characters?

William Dean Howells once wrote, "The true plot comes out of the character; that is, the man does not result from the things he does, but the things he does result from the man, and so plot comes out of character; plot aforethought does not characterize."

A more moderate view is that events ordinarily modify characters, and that in certain instances characters actually make events. When circumstances pile up, irresistibly driving man on to his destiny, we have a tragedy. But not all life is tragic. Now and then the hero's hand disposes of affairs and he arises victorious.

When Thackeray planned Vanity Fair, the characters gave form to the plot. On writing to his mother he said, "What I want is to make a set of people living without God in the World (only that is a cant phrase), greedy, pompous men, perfectly self-satisfied for the most part, and at ease about their superior virtue."

To conceive of a character as subject to the limitations of heredity or environment opens up an endless number of combinations of characters and plot.

The writer need only dip in and sample.

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