I’m trying to form some Really Deep Thoughts on plotting, but the trouble is, my thoughts on the subject amount to this:

One: What does your character want?
Two: What prevents your character from getting what he wants?

This is in my notes from the last few days while I’ve been pondering and plotting: What a character wants most is also what they most fear. Also It is an act of courage to show someone who you really are.

In romance, the conclusion is pretty much forgone: boy will get girl—or in my genre, boy will get boy, happily ever after. It’s how we get there that’s the interesting part, and also the hardest part. You don’t want to be too contrived but you don’t want to put conflict into the plot that just due to a character’s stupidity. (Unless the character is established to be stupid, in which case . . . why should the other partner want them? Stupid people are boring.)

I’ve always had trouble with the difference between “character-driven” and “plot-driven.” James Bond, for instance, is considered “plot-driven”, but he wouldn’t be saving the world on a regular basis if he weren’t a character who’s capable and willing to do just that. Y’see? So when I think about plot I also have to think about what the character is capable and willing to do, or unwilling to do. Therefore, conflict; therefore, plot.

While I’ve been figuring out the plots of the wedding anthology story (working title of “My Secret Music Boyfriend” but that will be changed, probably) and Cartography For Beginners (and the movie—that’s never far from my mind, believe me), I’m also working on the plot for my Nanowrimo novel. I had three ideas, all taking place in the San Francisco universe, but I’ve decided to do a second Jamie and Ben story before any of the others and close the book, as it were, on that particular sextet of characters. There will be other stories in the same universe but they’ll deal with characters who are more peripheral to the current central group.

I have the main conflict, the characters (of course), a vague idea of the ending, even an epitaph, but not a title. I think that’s enough to start with.