What Makes a Good Story?
By Angela Roberts
What makes a good story? Some would say that it’s all about character. As long as you have a solid, multi-dimensional, believable character, you have a good story, and plot is less important. Others say the opposite. As long as you have an interesting, gripping, coherent plot, you don’t need to spend so much time on character. The reader will be carried away by the story. Both schools of thought have their examples and their fans. Both are right and both are wrong. And here’s why.
A good story is one that successfully combines a good solid character or characters with an interesting and coherent plot. The reasons for this are simple. Firstly, a story that consists of character without plot is not a story at all. It’s a character sketch or a vignette. Stories must have plot; they must, as any writing professor will hammer into his or her students, have action, complications, and a resolution (even if that resolution is ambiguous). First-year creative writing classes are full of texts where a character yammers on about themselves without telling a story or even having a point. And, yes, there are plenty of “art” films where characters wander aimlessly exploring the “meaning of life” (or something), and, if there even is a plot, it is much too convoluted to care about. But these aren’t good stories. Their value lies as other art forms, about which I’m not discussing here. Suffice it to say that to consider these types of works as stories or to praise the artist’s storytelling ability in these cases is misguided.
On the other hand, to place plot ahead of character is just as misguided. Stories should never be written solely on the merit of an idea or a theme, as most plot-only stories are. They will inevitably become merely about that idea or theme, and one may wonder why the writer didn’t just write an essay rather than a work of fiction. They’d probably get their ideas across more effectively. The first thing I ask anyone who comes to me with a great idea for a story is: Who are your characters? What happens in your story? And then what? And then what? This is probably the best test of whether or not you’re ready to start a story. If you can’t answer these questions, you need to go back to the drawing board.
No one wants to read a story about characters they don’t care about. And no one really wants to read a story about characters that don’t do anything. Even in Seinfeld, the supposed “show about nothing,” things happened and characters wanted things. The characters were active rather than passive.
These rules are just as important for speculative fiction as they are for literary fiction. Many people seem to think that SF (and genre fiction in general) is entirely plot-driven and constructed with stock, flat characters. Well, readers know that isn’t at all true. This is not to say that there are no flat characters in SF. There are flat characters in every genre. But the good stories, the ones that rise to the top and remain in the popular imagination, are the ones with solid, compelling characters. And a great plot. Tolkien is an obvious example, but worth mentioning. No one would have read The Lord of the Rings if Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship were not great characters, no matter how interesting the plot. No one would still be reading LOTR in this time when there are scores of fantasy novels on the market, if it wasn’t for those interesting hobbits, elves, and humans with their strengths and frailties. Certainly the movies would not be the major multi-million-dollar successes they are if Tolkien had not written characters that we want to care about.
As much as we enjoy the great mysteries, quests, magic, and adventures of SF, it is the characters that we remember most. Frodo and the Fellowship, Robert E. Howard’s philosopher-king Kull, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon, Harry Potter, Garion of David Edding’s Belgariad, Ursula Le Guin’s Ged, and many more; these are the characters we want to follow on their great quests. We cheer on their successes, we mourn their sorrows, and we thrill at their exploits. We’re enchanted by both the great heroes and the great villains of SF. Who can forget Sauron, Saruman, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Torak, or Voldemort?
And if there were no successes, sorrows, exploits, or quests, why would we care about these characters? Not only is the combination of character and plot essential for the makings of a good story, but they will be forever intertwined in a good story. You can’t have a good character without showing why and how they are so good, and you can’t have a good plot without characters that pull your readers into it and make your readers want to keep going.
Think about that the next time you’re writing or reading an SF story.