Learning From The Classics Podcast: Plot Development

This track is a recording of my weekly LIVE PODCAST - Learning from the Classics, dated February 14th, 2025.

Happy Valentine's Day!

In this LIVE session, I will relate prompts from Classic Literature to the challenges we face every day. There is a certain sense of security in understanding some struggles are universal and not personal to ourselves. In such novels, there is also a reconciliation to be had with souls we cannot and will not ever meet, but who teach us so much.

Today I will be looking at character development and how we use it to gain the best possible outcome when writing. My own writing process and the new 3 part writing course: Empowerment Through Your Pen is referred to throughout. I also refer to my latest novel Blethingwood Hall which is available weekly.

All LIVES are available week to week on a playlist.

Transcript

Today is the last live we're going to have on the writing course.

The writing course Fighting Your Own Story Empowerment Through Your Pen and then next week we will go on to discuss classic literature again as part of this Commitment to Book Club.

So tune in if you want further insight into the stories you're listening to each week but again hopefully the information and notes that you can improve your writing with are still available on all the live recordings so you won't miss anything and don't forget as I say each week to interact as much as you can with what you hear through the reviews.

I know many of you write some fantastic reviews and I'm very very grateful for that.

The group chat as this keeps the book club alive and vibrant and the more of us that sort of interact especially on the on the original stories group the more alive it's going to become and I'm assuming we all love classic literature otherwise we wouldn't be listening in we've all got that in common so it would be great to see some more of you interacting on the group within the group and if you require further information on the right further help on the writing course please after this week refer to the lives and comment through the course comments for feedback and advice for your particular question.

Jo you have been great at doing that so thank you for letting me know where you are it's a tough journey but it's well worth undertaking.

Now I'm going to start today with just referring to I did a couple of polls on the course and these polls are kind of a multiple choice if you like so you select one of the answers for those of you that haven't seen the course yet and it just registers your response to the question that I've given so on the course there's a poll for each lesson but lesson number one there was a poll which said how did you feel when connecting to your inciting moment now this is relevant for all of us whether we're taking the course or not so the writing course is about writing about an inciting moment something that happened to you and developing a narrative from that so that you can come to terms with it the question again how did you feel when connecting to your inciting moment and so 50 percent of you said well I felt cautious I thought about this a lot but I'm worried I won't do the moment justice and the other 50 percent divided equally answered I'm scared I don't know if I'm ready for this and positive yes I am actually ready to be heard which is great so I'm just going to address those answers first quickly and my response to this would be you are doing yourself justice just by undertaking the course in the first place this is a challenge you've signed up for the challenge and that demonstrates your intent so you you're already halfway there if you listen to the course content repeatedly to make sense of it you listen to the live recordings specifically the last two to support your journey and if you only just managed to do that you have taken the biggest step already okay you've committed yourself to thinking about this moment you've committed yourself to reframing this moment in an empowering way be it now or in the future and you've acknowledged that there are elements of your life experiences that perhaps you've been burying and that need addressing that is the biggest step the biggest step is not actually writing the narrative the biggest step is saying I'm going to look into this I'm going to take on something that may take me a good few months to achieve but I am going to set my intent in stone and say yes I am doing this um so that's great so that's my um response to that poll if you have any nervousness about it or you're unsure about whether you'll be able to do it justice just consider that that you are doing yourself justice just by being here and that goes for all of us um including me okay the second poll is how does your setting reflect the mood of the scene so if you have undertaken lesson one and you are now immersed in lesson two which is talking about how you're coming to terms with and making sense of the inciting moment about what happened um you will then as referred to on last week's live be thinking about your setting where you are and how it's reflecting your state of mind so how does your setting reflect the mood of the scene there were four choices to your answer the two chosen okay 50% of you selected the setting is dark the mood is helpless and the protagonist is desperate so your setting is dark and it's reflecting you in a very bad place the other 50% said it is gray the protagonist feels nothing but they knows know they must move forward to survive okay so my response to that would be well this task is all about survival and you are here you survived now what were you going to do with that what are you going to do with that how will you use this experience in such a way that you can stand back now and be an objective observer which is what this writing challenge is about being able to detach yourself slightly stand back and read it as though you're reading someone else's story and seeing it for what it is doesn't make it any less dark but it makes it manageable as i referred to last week unfortunately i kept saying rsa and it's actually ras obviously because it stands for reticular activating system so that's ras yes um but if you look at the way you are recalling things and how understand how your brain is programmed to remember things and focus on things if you refer to our um discussion about the reticular activating system how this network of neurons in your brain um that controls wakefulness controls behavior seeks out more of the same you will begin to understand that if you're looking for the dark you are going to seek out more dark your brain will be programmed to look for more of that so we're trying to reprogram that so yes there is dark but we're trying to reprogram your brain when referring to this inciting moment by writing a narrative and reprogram it so it is searching for the lucky the positive the good that came out of the bad the symbols of hope when you're in the depths of despair the messages of resilience that's what we're trying to do okay and that will empower us because we will come to understand i am not in any way detracting from the enormity of this but what i'm doing is saying this is a whole story now not just a part of the story and the whole story is i developed i grew i came to a resolution which is what lesson two and lesson three are about so so far we've looked at the inciting moment we've looked at the main character and the setting they're in we've written it about somebody else another person just like i wrote Blethingwood Hall about Penelope Darlington and her two brothers which in reality is me and my two brothers right so this main character is a version of you whichever version you want and perhaps moving towards a conclusion and how we develop we may develop into someone braver than we actually are because that's what we're aiming for that's what we would want for ourselves it's a narrative you can bend it a little bit perhaps you'll find a way out by a process of deduction yeah deducting something that you're initially too angry or too upset to be able to do now you have distance from it now you can find a way out and write that down when you write down a positive conclusion positive something positive in your resolution your um RAS is acknowledging that and it's looking for more of that what else was positive about that what other conclusions can i make that are not quite so dark so this week we're looking at development of character and plot which will then lead seamlessly into your resolution okay which is your lesson three obviously with a new novel it takes a lot longer to get to that resolution but any good film or story we have watched and taking something from that has a positive resolution because that represents hope and what are we without that okay so we're looking at the development of the main character how they come to terms with what's happened the decisions they make and this lesson lesson two is the lesson that's most like journaling it's an info dump okay um it's where all your thoughts your inner monologue takes place so the first lesson you're speaking to other people their antagonist winds you up does something you didn't like hurts you in some way shock horror lesson two what do i think about that and how am i going to how am i going to develop from that okay and anne frank said the finest thing of all that i can at least write down what i think and feel otherwise i would suffocate completely and this lesson is all about that in the middle of your story is all about what you think what you feel and how that changes over time okay it's happened now how are you going to come to terms with that okay so this lesson is going to help you overcome that part of yourself that feels silenced and when it's done you will have the peace of finally having outed what was chaotic and unbearable in your mind write without aim write without judgment okay i say this in the lessons just get it out okay and then you can edit later okay narrative exposition this is called he's trying to tell you something it's the insertion of the background information within a story or a narrative so you're putting everything into it your backstory who were you did anything happen prior to the event that dictated how it was going to go is there any historical context anything that's relevant to where you found yourself at that point what sort of relationship did you have with the antagonist before did you know this was going to come had they done this sort of thing before this is a rant it's a moan it's a cry for help but it ends with you developing from that you will change so that you can resolve that in the last either chapter paragraph however long or short your story may be okay some of us might not even get to writing anything that resembles paragraphs it might just be notes that's fine too but stick to the structure have your lesson one notes lesson two notes lesson three notes keep them in order that structure is there to support you that structure is there so that you don't just go on one big long rant and not come out of it okay your brain is looking for reasons to drag you down and we're not going to do that because we're going to stick to the structure and we know what you're doing brain and we are not going to allow you to destroy us right very powerful is the brain and we must program it to achieve the best outcome for ourselves that's where the empowerment comes in that is what we're doing here okay so you're looking for connections you're looking for ideas that pull together or resolve each other okay are they going to go on to do this again are they going to go on let's say for example they really upset you they've done something horrid they really upset you and you can see by their pattern of behavior this is the antagonist that they might go on again is this something you can do to stop that you develop you develop as a character and then you say your main character says no no then you get away with this again this is going to this stops here okay so again let me reiterate this lesson is all about personal development the beginning of this lesson your thoughts will still be a mess you will still have just you're still recoiling from the shock horror of the inciting moment whatever that may be your inciting moment involves an antagonist someone who's winding you up someone who's hurt you someone it may be weaker than you or more powerful than you but it is up to you with your character development to further understand that person and reposition them as a person who is weak as a person who is compromised people do not do horrible things unless they are compromised themselves whatever for whatever reason they are compromised we in this lesson seek to acknowledge that and see it for the ridiculousness that it really is it's not an excuse you're not allowed to get away with that because of what you experienced and i think that makes you a weaker person for having made that choice okay because no one has the right to destroy another person another innocent you know one innocent i have my innocence taken away from me so therefore i should do it to you no that doesn't work like that and it's not right but this is our development here this is at this point where we say okay i've now got to step back from this step back from the horror of it and say okay how am i going to choose to develop how am i going to choose to focus my mind on those symbols of hope and resilience that i exhibited i must have exhibited even if i felt weak because i'm here today and i'm doing this course i've chosen to address it and that comes from a position of strength we are seeking clarity that's what we're doing with the whole process and in order to do that we have to emphasize the main character's emotional state we do have to show their sorrow we do have to show their despair it might be a quiet acceptance i don't know about you but i it's not a conscious choice i just accept step back and take time to come to terms with something so if something awful happens it usually takes me two three days of just being completely normal before i register ah that was a bit bad wasn't it that's a defense mechanism there's no right way or wrong way we all experience things differently know thyself understand how you experienced it uh and don't judge yourself for that that's how it is and these are all ways that we protect ourselves some people completely go to pieces immediately some people go very very calm calm so it's worth noting that that's a strength whichever personality type you are that's your strength you go to pieces immediately get it out i got it out and i dealt with it i was true to myself i was my authentic self for me calmness is i maintain control i was able to hold it together so that i could walk away and deal with it on my own really important that you acknowledge the person that you are and embrace that and when we start moving towards the resolution when we start moving towards this thing happened i developed as a person and now i'm ready to be at peace with it or i'm ready to understand it further might not ever be at peace with it but to understand it further it doesn't mean a resolution doesn't mean oh let's just wrap this all up in a nice tidy bow and we can just sit it there and everything's fine again that doesn't mean that okay you can let the sadness linger you can leave the aftermath floating but it's important that you see whatever whichever choice you've made for your conclusion you see it for what it is you see it as a choice and these are choices nobody has the power over you unless you give them that power it may be they had that power over you when you were young but you're not young anymore they don't have that power anymore and this is about understanding who we are acknowledging who we are and growing to respect the choices that we made for whatever reason okay when i said at the beginning of these lives on these lessons it's a cathartic experience i meant it okay this is a process of self-development and if you have never addressed this situation before think about it now make yourself some notes and think about it now okay use the structure use the tools i've given you it doesn't have to be a work of art okay it has to be a nice paragraph so you've got something there so that when you're ready to revisit it you can open that book maybe add to it over time but it's always there you have encapsulated those words and they're not going to get they're not going to disappear and over time the memory is less poignant things that seem so relevant fade away we forget and it's really important that we don't forget that we write them down and we register the significance of them and we rewrite the narrative so that we understand we're not only looking for the dark anymore we are standing back objectively we're writing it so it's somebody else it's happening to and we are encapsulating it in some kind of a story so that there are many different elements and not just the dark okay so even in a sad ending you can show how the characters learned or grown through their experience you are trying to gain a new perspective or understanding the whole point of this story is to show there's this person something's happened to them they developed and they've changed from someone who was vulnerable to someone who's in more of an enlightened state somebody who is now empowered so what i'm going to do is i'm going to give you three different examples now of ways to wrap up or resolve or conclude our little story and with those examples i would say we can take them we can manipulate them and we can choose our own symbolism um our own elements to um to stretch our conclusion further as far as it can go to demonstrate just how much we've come to terms with it okay so example number one he watched the rain run down his window pane but the drops no longer held for him sorrow instead they were washing away what once had been this was a fresh start a new beginning and the way forward for him was clear and it's important to write it positively even if you don't 100 feel it because you are reprogramming your brain to believe the positive to seek out the lucky to seek out the good news the picture lay on the table example number two faded and worn the picture lay on the table faded and worn she was young then yet to feel the pain of loss but she held it close nevertheless unfazed by how much she had changed if it wasn't for her resilience that innocent girl would still be suffering i'll read that again the picture lay on the table faded and worn she was young then yet to feel the pain of loss but she held it close nevertheless unfazed by how much she had changed if it wasn't for her resilience that innocent girl would still be suffering so you've acknowledged there ah there's a picture that was my past didn't i look happy wasn't it lovely but the picture's faded now isn't that sad isn't it lovely that she didn't know the pain of loss but isn't it sad that she had to go through that okay balance all the time she held it close nevertheless resilience it doesn't matter that i've seen awful things i'm still going to hold that young person close to my heart unfazed by how much i've changed now i'm not going to focus on how much i've changed now because if it wasn't for my resilience that girl in the picture would still be suffering balance understanding acknowledgement there is some positive to be found in the darkest of hours not in chapter one when everything happens it's all a big shock but by the end by chapter three yeah okay that nearly killed me but i got out and i'm here just to you know embrace the day example number three as the sun dipped below the horizon casting long shadows across the room she whispered a silent goodbye and walked away that was another time and this was now a new now a good now as the sun dipped below the horizon casting long shadows across the room she whispered a silent goodbye and walked away that was another time and this was now a new now a good now so just to recap when we're writing the character development we info dump did they know this was going to happen what was the antagonist thinking of how am i going to deal with this by the end of that development okay that was terrible but i'm gonna have to get through this somehow and pull myself together and conclusion is a balance a conclusive statement if you would like um those of us doing the course if we want to see a written example of those um three paragraphs i've just read message me on the comments and i will send you a copy of each of the conclusions okay then you can copy those doesn't have to be word for word it could be and adapt them in your words so that you are writing down setting in stone a positive conclusion then when you've done that you close the book and you walk away we are reprogramming our brain to remember or recall an instant in a balanced objective way there are no hard truths other than what we felt at the time and what we choose as our conclusion they are the hard truths all the rest is hearsay okay all the rest is hearsay and there's a lot of hearsay because you've had many years of your brain speaking to you and saying wasn't that bad wasn't that bad isn't it terrible wasn't that bad and we're not seeking to undo that that's all part of the grief process but we are many years away from that now i hope and we are actively choosing to empower ourselves by giving the moment some structure reprogramming our reticular activating system in order to seek out something that is has positively developed from that okay it's not going to be all it's not either it's terrible or oh i feel great now it's really not that black and white but it's an acknowledgement of how to recall instances and maintain an objectivity so that we become enlightened and empowered now from next week i am going to talk about um classic go back onto classic literature again and we're going to be just discussing that discussing some of the stories i tell and get back to the book club style element um if there's anything that you'd specifically any stories you specifically like to dive into further contact me in the group in the original stories group um if not happy listening it's so great that uh you keep coming back and i shall see you next friday at the same time you have a lovely valentine's day i'll see you on the other side

Reviews

😘brilliant writing education. Thank you thank you for taking the sting out of it. Bringing me a greater sense of potential and possiblity in writing. 💗🎈🙏