Mentored By: Joy Passanante

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Background:

I have loved writing since grade school. It was always easy to create new worlds and engaging plot lines; however, I felt as if I lacked in character development. My characters do not have the drive needed to run a story—they let the story run their lives. This causes the character to change to fit the story and ultimately, they lose focus and believability. In advanced fiction, Joy Passanante spoke of “a character driven story.” Story direction was the major criticism I received after having this story work shopped in her class; my story didn’t have one. This led to the question at hand: How do I make a character driven story with a plot? How do I build a strong enough character that can lead me through the story, without sacrificing direction? Or how do I combine an engaging plot line with a character that moves the story along?

Current Project:

What I need to do now is read. I must find books that would be considered “character driven stories” and analyze them. Why do the characters in these stories work? How is the plot woven around the characters’ situation? Why are these stories effective not just to me, but universally? What makes a character driven story different from other stories? In general, what needs to be done to take this technique and add it to my own writing?

Plan for the Next Two Months:

This semester the goal is to read and analyze as many examples as I can find of the character driven story. I’m going to start out by reading a few texts about writing characters, starting with the Burroway and advancing to Baxter and perhaps James. After this I plan to apply the knowledge gained from these professionals to examples of character driven stories. While reading the short stories from various authors, I will decipher what kind of technique, craft, or other elements are used to help define each character and his or her story. I would like to take a look at stories from this century as well others and then compare the texts to each other. Which techniques do they use that are similar? What is different?

            I will use this research as the basis for a story introduction that will conclude the paper. In this short concluding sample, I will combine the techniques I have learned from the research and my own ideas that will be picked up along the way to find my own style in the character driven story.

Ideas about How to Present This Work:

The majority of my product, at least 15-20 pages, will be a research/instructional paper on developing the character driven story. Interspersed within the research section of the paper, I may use some of my older writing as examples of poorly written characters. I would analyze these selections, find out why they didn’t work and use the techniques being discussed to improve the examples.

I want the writing sample at the end to be only one or two pages total; however, as the project develops, I may find that I need to vary the length to suit the style. This will not affect the length of the research/instructional paper; it will stay at least at 15 pages.

            The plan for my presentation is to create a bulleted list of the techniques I found important in writing a character driven story and go into a bit of detail for each. If my writing sample is started by the time of the presentation, I’ll read it for the class and get feedback using the techniques I outlined earlier as a reference point. If it is not started by then, I may use some of my older writing examples in a similar manner.

Tentative Bibliography:

Adams, Alice. The Stories of Alice Adams. New York: Washington Square Press, 2003.

Baxter, Charles. Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2008.

Burroway, Janet and Stuckey-French, Elizabeth. Writing Fiction: a Guide to Narrative Craft. New York: Longman Publishing Group, 2007.

Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan). The Matisse Stories. New York: Random House, 1993.

Carver, Ray. ""Cathedral"." North Dakota State University Web Site. 14 September 2009 <www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/cinichol/GovSchool/Cathedral2.htm>.

Chekhov, Anton. Stories. New York: Bantam, 2000.

Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants Complete Story - By Ernest Hemingway / machete. 29 August 2007. 13 September 2009 <http://www.gummyprint.com/>.

—. In Our Time. New York: Scribner Book Company, 1996.

James, Henry. "Preface - The Portrait of a Lady." 2009. Read Print Library. 14 September 2009 <http://www.readprint.com/ >.

Joyce, James. The Dead. New York: Classic House Books, 2009.

Munro, Alice. Runaway. New York: Random House, 2004.

Paley, Grace. The Collected Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.