Plotting the Character-Driven Novel

by Linda Rodriguez

In Plotting the Character-driven Novel, Linda Rodriguez turns her sought-after writing course on using depth of character as a springboard to a strong plot into a book designed to help the aspiring writer who wants to tell a story made compelling by the truth and complexity of its characters. She provides examples of actual documents she has used in creating her own award-winning books to demonstrate the methods she teaches. Great plot springs from character and the motivations each character has for taking or not taking action. How do you use character as the springboard to a strong plot that draws its complexity from the motivations of its characters? What are the hidden fears and desires of each major character, what happens when these are frustrated, and how do they intersect and conflict with one another? What are the secrets this character is hiding even from him/herself? What will this character tell you about her/himself if given the chance? Through asking these kinds of questions of your characters, you will learn to create an exciting and complex plot, building from the integrity of the characters you create.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

155 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2016

About the author

Linda Rodriguez’s novel, Every Last Secret featuring Skeet Bannion, won the 2011 St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic First Novel Competition and will be published by St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books on 4/24/2012. Rodriguez has published two books of poetry, Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009), winner of the 2010 Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, and Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications, 1995, Scapegoat Press, 2007). She received the 2010 Inspiration Award from the KC Arts Fund, the 2009 Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award from the Macondo Foundation, and the 2009 Midwest Voices and Visions Award from the Alliance of Artists Communities and the Joyce Foundation and has been both a Ragdale Fellow and a Macondo Fellow. She is the vice-president of the Latino Writers Collective, a member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, The Writers Place, and Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals and anthologies. Her poems have been broadcast on The Writers Almanac with Garrison Keillor (NPR) and New Letters on the Air (NPR). She is currently working on a book of poetry based on teachings from her Cherokee grandmother and another novel featuring Skeet Bannion.