I was listening to The Create Unknown podcast recently and Kevin Lieber talked about why he didn’t like the second and third seasons of Stranger Things. He briefly touched on a point from a book called The Science of Storytelling that basically said in a good story the plot revolves around the characters, and not the other way around. Which is very interesting to think about because we always talk about well crafted plots, but the best movies and books tell a really compelling story of characters. Everything that happens is for the sake of developing that character or diving deeper into what makes them tick.

And with that in mind, I’ve scrapped the entire draft of a story I’ve been writing. It’s been very plot-first. In fact, I just outlines the plot and put the characters through it. I thought to myself “why does this kinda suck?” That’s why. I think Kevin put it well when he mentioned that we don’t find stories interesting, we find people interesting.

Anyway, this doesn’t have much to do with the story except for the fact that I’ve redesigned the character after reformatting the plot. But it’s not like people read these anyway. Who’s got the time?