This is yet another consequence of ✨shitty writing advice✨ that’s like “if it doesn’t advance the plot cut it out!”
Hey. Have you considered. That scenes with character development. *Are* advancing the plot
Just saying, but the fascination with plot and only the plot is mostly European-based. I found this out by studying Worldwide Story structures and I ran into a hitch around the time I looked at Africa (yes, the continent), West Asia, the longer history of East Asia (Not the newer history), and especially Aboriginal, Pacific Islander, and North, Central and South Americas. What? Plot, What are you talking about? Threw me for a loop.
Early storytelling, mostly Oral pre-writing, from what I’ve looked at wasn’t concerned with the plot at all. That’s not why you’re telling the story (and No, I’m not arguing for evolutionary Anthropology, because that’s effing racist.) The reason you’re telling that story according to some studying, etc, is likely so your children don’t go off wandering near that pool of water and go drown themselves. Like say, all those water monster stories. Why do you need a plot? It’s a survival mechanism.
This follows with Better Ways to Live from Africa, Aboriginal and Indigenous (*some* not all ethnicities within), the point ain’t OK, what’s the plot and make it interesting. The point is !@#$, I need you to effing remember how to fish and navigate to this next island. So there *tends* to be more emphasis on tone, theme, etc. This is also why I had to change from “Plot driver” to “Story driver” The way story is thought of is different and the point is never the plot. Why the hell are you thinking about the plot, they tend to say. That’s not the point. I need you to remember this important thing, or I need you to be able to repeat this exactly. Or I need you to understand this story at different ages. Or I need you to get the moral already and engage with it so you remember it.
The whole thing about making stories “interesting” and engage the audience for sheer entertainment and nothing else is mostly a preoccupation of being settled and in a connected empire. ‘cause you’re less preoccupied by that time with how to effing survive with your livestock or foraging, etc. You got time for leisure and money to spare to get over your basic boredom.
In addition, this whole notion about character-driven, Plot-driven is entirely imperialistic and comes from the “Great Man Theory” so it’s time to deimperialize too. If you actually look up the Great Man Theory which was abandoned by everyone else except writers from some reason, I guarantee you’re going to feel sick very fast.
It’s the paternalistic notion that only Great Men get to be recorded in history because the rest of us are losers who don’t contribute anything at all, with a lot of side of imperialism made by an imperialistic asshole (and I do mean grade-A asshole). But THINK about that. Do you really think that because someone like Bass Reeves isn’t widely known he wasn’t awesome sauce and contributed nothing? Fuck, he was amazing. Do you really think because we didn’t know about Anne Lister though her Pro-Tory bits are questionable, she didn’t have any impact?
On the flip side of the theory, is the whole Greek Notion that we’re just pawns of fate, and effect nothing. This is where you get the plot-driven camp from the 1980′s. –;; Honestly, 1970′s-1980′s writing books give me a massive headache since they are so much based on yelling at marginalized groups and ignoring the movements of other fields and misquoting left and right. But the Greek Notion also sucks. And Athenians, mainly, used this to say conform to the state, don’t do anything, and women and slaves suck and should stay in their roles.
But in reality, we both sometimes just exist and do nothing, and still learn something and sometimes we do effect events. Honestly, I prefer to butterfly effect theory of time, because it’s not imperialistic and we haven’t left it behind and it allows other story telling devices without stepping on religious ideas of time that’s often in story structures. It allows quite a bit of flex.
And as I’ve said, not everyone writes like you. Not every ethnicity makes stories like yours. But I think we should do our best to celebrate that. Also, I have a deep resentment of imperialistic racist assholes being celebrated and continue to be celebrated in writer lore when everyone else has moved the fuck on. That includes Writer’s Block theory. That guy who invented it was an asshole, not because he was a Jew that escaped Concentration camps, but because every other theory on the list and his lines of evidence were pieces of shit and he hated homosexuality and thought it could be cured. And wrote papers against Kinsey. Psychology has pretty much said whelp, that was terrible methodology, but us writers just need to hang onto it. So, stop worshiping imperialistic homophobic racist sexist white cishet men without knowing it, and keep in mind the awesome diversity out there when you dole out writer’s advice. Know where and when your belief systems come from and make sure if you are parroting an asshole, say like Freytag to justify it beyond they were so-called “great” people. I have no words for how I’ve seen Aristotle abused, and I don’t even like the guy. (I’d punch him if I had a blue box).
