Plot vs Character
Or why ‘who’ matters more than ‘what’
About ten years ago I ran a workshop at the Kaospilot School in Denmark on storytelling and business design.
It was fun. I borrowed a lot of exercises from Keith Johnstone’s Impro for Storytellers and anywhere it said ‘the theatre’ I said ‘business’ and anywhere it said ‘the play’ I said ‘your company’. (Like David Mamet’s True and False and Peter Brook’s There Are No Secrets, Impro for Storytellers is clearly just a book about life disguised as a book about theatre. So it feels perfectly natural to use it to talk about anything.)
We did a sales exercise where everyone had to try to be the most boring sales person they could imagine. And everyone found out that the more boring you try to be, the more interesting you become — and the more interesting you try to be, the more boring you become. (One student was adamant that he would be able to bore us to tears with his in-depth explanation of why he loves Bic biros — but it was enthralling. And he was totally mystified.)
We did a branding exercise I called ‘Chinese Whispers in the Snow’ (this was December in Denmark and about minus 5°). Everyone stands out in the yard, feeling the time pressure of everyone wanting to get back into the warm. You line up in groups of five and the first person has to whisper their business idea to the second person in the line, who whispers it to the third and so on. The fifth person in the line has to come inside and present the business idea to the rest of the class. If the idea has made it down the line intact, then you know it can spread by word-of-mouth. If it hasn’t — it can’t. The first idea presented came out as “shoes”. The second idea “something to do with the environment”. The third idea “to work with third world designers and makers to produce a line of fashion products in collaboration with first world brands” (or something along those lines). It’s a pretty ruthlessly effective way of separating the ideas that work from the ones that don’t.
But the exercise that stuck with me most was when we explored the difference between plot and character. Plot is obviously about action. Character is about identity. The reason the Bic-biro aficionado was surprised by our delight in his ‘boring story’ was that he thought more plot made things more interesting and less plot made things less interesting. In fact, in his total inaction, lingering on the finer details of a pen clip’s flexibility, we were getting the chance to see and enjoy his character. We saw him. We got to know him better. Without a whole bunch of entertaining incidents getting in the way of that.
Here’s an exercise you can try at home. Sit down with a friend and tell them a story. Give them a pen and paper and ask them to draw a line as you talk. As long as the story is carrying on in the same direction — keep drawing a straight line. If the story changes course, turn left or right. You either end up with one long straight line (it’s all character and no plot), a really wiggly nest of curly lines (all plot and no character) or somewhere in between.
And — as you might expect — the wiggly line stories are really boring. “Oh, I was in my house watching TV when the TV exploded and a ninja jumped in the window but then I realised it was a dream and so I woke up, but I wasn’t in my house, I was actually…” Yawn.
The straight-line stories are totally engrossing. And you can reliably produce a straight-line story if at each step of the story, instead of asking yourself “What interesting thing might happen next?” you ask “What would I expect to happen next?”
After a half-hour of dull and wacky tales of ninjas and dreams and other interesting things I got the whole class to tell a story together. (This is based on one of Keith’s exercises.) One person sits at the front of the class. They choose a location. (They chose ‘Siberia’, which it turns out was just the name of their classroom.) And then their job is just to ask “What happens next?” Anyone in the class then replies with the first thing that comes into their head — with the instruction to always respond with what they would expect to happen next.
I still remember this straight-line story, improvised en masse by a class of business students. And I feel a shiver when I think of it. And I remember exactly the feeling of sitting at the edge of the class hearing:
I am in Siberia.
It’s very early in the morning.
I listen to the wind outside my tent…
…and I tuck myself down further into my sleeping bag.
I turn the radio on.
I hear the sound of static. There’s no reception here, but the white noise keeps me company.
On the floor next to me, there’s a newspaper. I don’t understand the words, but there is a photo of Denmark on the front page and it reminds me of home.
Outside, I hear the dogs moving around and I know I have to go out and feed them.
I sigh.
I shuffle the sleeping bag down off my body.
Pull on my boots.
Unzip the tent…
…and head out into the snow.
Who matters more than what.
When you go to see a film, if the ‘who’ isn’t interesting, the ‘what’ isn’t interesting. And if the ‘who’ is interesting, then the ‘what’ can never really be boring.
And we know that in any realistic story it’s character that decides everything. Stories hinge on whether people are aware of their own character. They hinge on whether people are able to reflect on their own bias and conditioning and question their own blind spots. The pain is watching someone desperately throwing themselves into action — totally unaware of how their story of who they are and who they are meant to be is damning them to making the same mistakes again and again. The joy is watching someone who manages to step out of the cycle of unconsidered habit and act with integrity. To know themselves. To make a choice based on what is true and necessary.
And yet how often are we able to do that? And how often does it feel like the most important thing is to carry on? To do more and try harder.
You can picture the film. The hero writes another to do list. Comes up with another action plan. Gets up earlier. Stays later at work. Tries to fit more into the day. It never ends well.
The relief comes when the action stops. When the hero sees something clearly for the first time. When someone realises they can’t carry on like this any longer — and surrenders.
Business planning is all about action. Getting things done isn’t the same as making things happen. Time management and productivity training and all of those things are no help if you’re only looking at what is being done and not who is doing the doing.
Who matters more than what.
Character matters more than plot.
To work creatively, it’s not enough just to think about what we’re going to do. The most powerful thing we can do as creative people is to look also at who we are going to be. To look at where we are and what’s needed and choose what role to play. The biggest enemy of being creative is being stuck playing one habitual role (what my friend Franki calls “the tyranny of one mask”).
If you’d like to improve your identity flexibility, then you might want to play around with:
For more on how to be clear, follow Clearing The Way.
For help getting the hang of it, get in touch.
PS. If you want a very sharp lesson in what makes a good character, watch this hour-long review of the Phantom Menace and how to test whether Han Solo is a better character than...anyone else.
