The Importance of Conveying Character Plans

Character plans may sound like kind of a boring topic to cover; they aren't as exciting as character goals, antagonists, conflicts, or stakes, but they are often still critical to communicate to your audience. In fact, conveying a character's plans will reinforce many of those exciting plot elements and help them show up in more impactful ways.

I consider the primary plot elements to be goals, antagonists, conflicts, and consequences.

And I consider the secondary plot elements to be progress, setbacks, costs, and turning points.

And the tertiary plot elements are plans, gaps, and crises.

Plans reinforce goals and help create a sense of progress.

If a character wants to achieve a goal, but has no plan, then the goal feels more like a wish. It's what the character wishes would happen, but the character isn't trying to make it happen herself. She isn't making plans for how to make it happen.

Wishes aren't as powerful as goals.

It's easy to wish. I can wish that I'd work out more, or that I'd fall in love, or that I'd travel to Spain.

But if I'm not making plans, I don't have any intentions to make those things a reality.

I'm not taking an active role, so not much is happening, and therefore, not much is at stake.

I'm a "passive protagonist" of my own story.

When we truly, deeply want something, we make plans to achieve it. We take action.

If I want to obtain something, I'll come up with ways to do that.

If I want to avoid or stop something, ditto.

And while a goal of maintaining something may seem like a plan-less cause at first, an antagonist will eventually disrupt it, and then I'll have to make plans to try to return things to normal.

Plans help create a sense of progress.

The best way to create a sense of progress is to take big goals and break them down into small goals, and then as the protagonist reaches the small goals, it feels like progress (I explain that a little bit here.)

Plans often help outline those small goals, or the way to get those goals.

For example, Katniss's overarching goal for the whole first book is to win the Hunger Games.

And this breaks down into smaller goals. She needs to prepare and train. She needs to win sponsors. She needs to find water and food in the arena. She needs to take out the Careers' stockpile, etc.

Some of these will also break down into smaller goals. In order to win sponsors, she needs to get a high training score and nail her televised interview. To take out the Careers' stockpile, she needs to distract them with multiple fires, get to their base, and hit the mines.

The narration makes sure to convey the plan to the audience, so they can experience a sense of progress.

If we know Katniss aims to win the Games, but we have no idea how she intends to do that, the plot feels weaker.

This often feels counterintuitive to new writers.

Isn't it better if the audience doesn't know what direction the story is going? Isn't it more exciting when we keep things off the page and surprise them?

Generally speaking, no. Not when it comes to plans.

This is because something is more exciting and surprising when it challenges the direction that's already been established.

For example, if we didn't know Katniss needed to get a high training score to get sponsors, by impressing the Gamemakers with her skills, then it wouldn't feel so shocking and detrimental when she strays from her plans and shoots an arrow at them.

Sure, it would still maybe startle us.

But it's weaker than if we knew what Katniss's intentions, her plans, were.

The story is more exciting, more surprising, when things don't go according to plan, or when antagonistic forces and conflicts threaten that plan.

But in order to create that effect, there has to be a plan that is communicated in the first place.

If I don't know what the plan is--the projected pathway--then why do I care about someone showing up and trying to get the protagonist to take a different path?

If the goal was properly communicated, then I might take some issue with it.

But not as much as if the goal and plan had been adequately communicated.

So conveying a plan actually makes the plot feel stronger, not weaker.

Perhaps the only time conveying a plan is less impactful, is when you lay out a plan in detail, and then everything goes according to plan. In such cases, we often don't need to lay out the plan that much. Doing so will make the story feel repetitious.

We instead lay out the plan in detail, so that the audience can feel tension when things don't go according to plan.

We lay out an intended direction, so they can worry (or at least get more interested) when something disrupts that direction.

Plans help set expectations, so that as writers, we can then deliver the unexpected.

Antagonists, conflicts, stakes, setbacks, costs, and turning points will all be more meaningful when the audience knows what the plan is. (Generally speaking, because there are always exceptions).

It doesn't matter if you think outlining plans is kind of boring or unimportant.

You need to do it.

You don't usually need to do it in extreme detail or even take very long to do it. A simple line like, "These fires will work as a distraction, so I can go into their camp" is enough. And sometimes, you don't even need to do it directly. It can be implied.

But the point is, the audience needs to understand, on some level, what the plan is.

At the beginning of this year, I went to the re-release of Interstellar in theaters (I missed it in theaters the first time, and I've been kicking myself in the rear ever since, so I'm glad I finally got to see it there).

The story very clearly lays out the main goal (find a new habitable planet for humankind) and the plan (and actually, there are two). The plan is to go through a wormhole to a specific solar system and visit three potential planets, and to do it as quickly as possible. Plan A is to get humankind off Earth to this new planet, and if Plan A fails, Plan B is to use frozen embryos to colonize the planet.

But the plan is hugely disrupted right with the first planet (Miller's). Because of a mishap, the astronauts have less resources and less time, and can no longer visit each of the remaining planets. They have to choose one.

So they choose Dr. Mann's.

But because of a betrayal (well, actually two), they are no longer able to rescue the people on Earth (Plan A), and Mann has also put the entire survival of the human race (Plan B) in jeopardy.

Guess what? These moments would not have hit nearly as powerfully if the Nolans hadn't made sure to clearly communicate the plans.

Sure, the story may have still been interesting, maybe even meaningful.

But it would have been significantly weaker.

None of those setbacks would have landed as powerfully.

None of them would have been as devastating. 

If we didn't know what the plan was.

So, you need to convey the plans.

Even if the audience isn't consciously aware of what you are doing, they should still be able to, 9 times out of 10, articulate what the character's current plan is if asked.

If they can't, you are probably shortchanging your story.