I’ve always written from my gut. I’ve run whole workshops on notion. To truly inhabit character, and writing, I think you need to get to an instinctual place. If a character is to truly act like a character their actions can’t be overly thought-out. Otherwise they turn into a walking plot device.

I love the Q+A with Jeff Goldsmith, a podcast I’ve listened to for over a decade (a link to his excellent online mag is here). In an interview with the writer/director of Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier, Jeremy was describing the climax of the film, and he said this:

Jeremy: What I did and I remember very vividly, I was in my bed, and on my laptop, and I did a lot of preparation. I was all like stretching, breathing and here I go. And then I got into the headspace and I was Pat and Amber and I was there. I was visualising and I was creeping up and things were unfolding and I didn’t know what I would do. And I just did things. And sometimes they were wrong, and I was kind’ve fumbling my way through the finale. And I let it go. I never rewrote it again. It was the first draft. It was odd and impulsive. 

Jeff: So the fumbling is what we saw on the screen.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Jeff: Interesting

Jeremy: And that’s what I wanted. I wanted it to be real. Like, human. This is such a blunt, weird, awkward finale. But it’s so emotional. 

Jeff: Of course over time you tweaked it so out of all the things in your entire script, that was just left untouched?

Jeremy: I mean, I’d written everything up to there, so I knew where it had to go. So I was scared. I was walking up that pathway. And when Clark spoke? POW. I shot him. I don’t want to f*cking talk man. Why are you turning? You are trying to kill me so before I think about it, or have a speech, you just get shot in the gut. 

This is what I’m after when I write. I don’t want to have John Woo bullet ballet. I love that stuff as much as the next person, but it’s not what I’m after when I write. I want the full human experience, with all its weird, impulsive, oddities. People are inconsistent. I think characters need to be inconsistent too.

Here’s the thing though. Snake Island needed a plot. It needed structure. Otherwise it would’ve turned into a giant mess. So how could I incorporate those awkward, human moments, with characters working within a tight structure?

So presto!

[image error]

This is the first outline of the plot for Snake Island. To give you an idea of how long it takes for a book to come to be, I took this photo in March 2016. I know it’s pretty tricky to see (not because I’m super secretive – I just took a bad photo) but each of the different colours represents a different character. I wanted them to be equally balanced. At the end I believe some chapters have been broken up a bit more, and I think I completely demolished two, and all the white cards are gone, but other than that the original idea is still in-tact.

Also for those of you who are mega keen-eyed and super interested in what I do, Albert isn’t named Albert anymore. I used that name in To Become a Whale, and I wanted to name a character after my Grandpa. He’s now Vernon.

Also Stanley is now a woman (Sharon) and WAY more interesting because of it.

Now, to incorporate that instinctual, writing from the gut I love so much, you can see how much room there is for play in each of the cards. Each of the cards represents around 5,000 words (except for one in the middle that’s closer to 10,000). In those words, I just had to get my characters from point A to point B. What they did along the way was completely up to me to experience, in the moment.

So my characters got to both feel real (I hope) and serve plot. The best of both worlds!

Do you plot like this? Do you agree with the idea of characters needing to be based in instinct? Can you be cerebral in generating character? How off base am I? Comment below. Genuinely curious!