Let’s look at plot-points in our fiction and our lives.

A book may begin with an idea, but to make it grow and sing for the reader it needs characters they can empathise with, or even hate. Either way it’s necessary for our characters to evoke emotion in the reader. So how do we wring that emotion from our characters lives?

 Plot-or-turning points are what drive our stories forward. Yet, they don’t always begin with paragraph one, chapter one, about a character who has had a perfect life.

The first turning point for our character is birth and it’s all the plot-points from then, until your story actually begins that shapes our character and will help you draw on the emotions of the readers. As I thought about this blog, it occurred to me that the best exercise for writers and readers alike is to look back on our own lives and write out all the plot-points that brought us to this moment – this place.

If you decide to do this think back to your childhood and the vision you had of how your life would unroll and what happened to change that vision. I’ll start first.

When I was eleven and been told I had passed my eleven-plus – big surprise to me and I blame the composition I wrote, I can still remember most of it. The story began with dialogue and finished with the irony, which I’m told resides in most of my books. After that good news I believed I would be going to a commercial college – my mother even bought me the appropriate blazer. Brought up in a mining village I had visions of a secretary taking dictation from a handsome boss – we’ve all read that book. Turning point, my exam results were too good for a commercial college I had to go to a Senior High School, one that led to university, which you’d think ought to be a good thing, but you try wearing a blazer that was different from all the others. But then, I’m a Scorpio and my dreams had been dashed so for a while I messed around, refusing to bend to someone else’s dream. I was confused by algebra and intrigued by history and did just enough to get by in everything else until I evolved a new plan, one which didn’t include university. Without a qualification to my name, I left school at 15 and then began work with a fashion house, eventually becoming a window dresser – see I was always creative.

I learned a lot working at Graftons – how to put on make-up, how to dress in the latest fashion, and the best time to ask the manger if he would reduce the clothes you had your eye on. I worked with lots of girlfriends and we all went out dancing together – the Grafton girls. BG Next turning point, I met my husband at St Margaret’s Ballroom. We were both 18. He was in the New Zealand Navy and lets put it this way, I was 5’9” and seldom found anyone taller to dance with and he was a handsome 6’2”.  Love at first sight, bet on it. After three months my mother told me to give him up, as he would only go back to New Zealand and leave me. I remember saying, ‘If he was going to New Zealand, I was going with him.’ I was a really confident 18 year old and before I was 21, I’d been married almost a year and on my way to NZ. Now my vision was of tropical sunshine and palm trees instead of grey skies and equally grey mining villages.

NZ lived up to my dreams but the 2.4 children that young love expects to produce didn’t happen and after 5 pregnancies and only one live birth we adopted. Then while I stayed at home and looked after the children my husband spent months at sea. But the next turning point wasn’t terribly exciting, or at that time anything I expected to be life changing. Because one of my sons was having difficulty with School Certificate English, I decided to go to night school and take that subject so I could help him. I earned an A pass and my teacher said I should take creative writing next year. Though much more happened in my life after that, it was her belief in me that gave me the idea – the vision – that I could be a writer. And I am.

As you see, sometimes a big event can change your life, change that vision of the future in your head, and at other times it’s something small. So look at your own lives, seek out that moment when you had to change your vision of the future. I didn’t go into the really emotional points in my life, some things are too deep, too private to share with strangers, but that doesn’t apply to our characters. Dig into their back-stories, the events, which shaped them and wring out their emotions, their joys their fears.

Everyone has a story, even you. You may not want to share it but if you are a writer, or potential writer, studying your own plot-points may help you write one about characters that is worth sharing with readers.

By the way, those history lessons didn’t go amiss because I still love reading history books and now that is where my characters live.