Connecting Plot to Emotional Arcs

I've mentioned in a bunch of other posts how your story's emotional arc should directly tie into the physical plot.

But I haven't explained how exactly to achieve this or why it's so important.

I also haven't shown you just how easy it can be!

So today, I'm going to show you how to tie your protagonist's emotional journey into your story's physical plot easily and effectively.

To prove how easy it is, we're gonna create a physical plot and emotional arc for characters in THE SIMS!

Watch the video version of this post here:

Let's get into it!

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The problem writers often start with is either having a strong character but weak plot, or strong plot but weak character.

If you're an amazing, perfect, professional writer, you have your character's arc and physical plot ready from the start!

But if that's the case, this post isn't for you, so GET OUT!!!!

jk you can keep reading

So what do you do if you're not a perfect writer?

If your issue is having strong characters but not a strong plot, you take a look at your characters strengths, weaknesses, and WANT, and determine ways these aspects of them can be directly challenged over the course of a story.

I've made a random sim here with the "story" quiz feature in create-a-sim, so she's got her traits and her want / goal loaded up!

Her goal is to become a computer whiz, and her traits are:

You may already see the problem here: she has NO FLAWS!!!

And some of these traits won't really do anything for us as far as telling a streamlined story goes.

So bye-bye "Dance Machine" and "Active" traits.

And hello to:

That's much better!!

"Gloomy" is a trait that could make our protagonist get in her own way of achieving her goals.

She wants to be a computer whiz, but she gets discouraged and hopeless every time she makes a mistake or doesn't learn something as fast as she wanted.

This creates natural internal conflict for our story!

"Loner" isn't necessarily a flaw, but it's something that can be directly challenged by another character in the story who's more of a social butterfly.

And now we have a starting point for our antagonist, just based off this one trait!

Let's make another random sim:

To challenge our protagonist's "Loner" trait, we're gonna make this guy's life goal to be besties with everyone he meets.

So in order for this to come up in the story, this character needs to be close to the protagonist in some way.

I'm thinking he's a coworker at her job. He's the top dog in the social chain, whereas our protagonist is in her own world.

So we have some natural external conflict here, but the protagonist could easily just ignore this guy, right?

Not if he's up for the same promotion as her, and he's the frontrunner for the job because everyone loves him.

Now our protagonist needs to push her loner boundaries and make friends at work if she wants to be considered for the job!

But let's not stop there. We want to make this guy a total nuisance in our protagonist's life. Because that's what a good antagonist is!

We're gonna make him:

and

Because what gloomy loner likes a cheerful bro, right?

Now you may be thinking "isn't the antagonist also supposed to have flaws?!"

Absolutely, 100%.

From the protagonist's perspective, this guy is already deeply flawed because he's a cheerful bro.

(protagonist voice) Ugh! The WORST!

But we also need to understand from the audience's perspective why this dude is a bad guy.

Let's make him:

Maybe he's using AI to do his job for him, but he gets away with it by distracting people with his gregarious personality.

Our protagonist could discover around the midpoint of the story that he's not doing his own job, and she decides that instead of campaigning for herself to get the promotion, the best way to ensure she gets the job is by exposing him and tearing him down!

And BAM! There you have it! We've got a pretty good starting point for a story!

See how helpful playing video games is? 😉

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Now let's do the other approach: starting with a plot and making characters to fit into it.

And look at this, we have a pre-made Sims scenario that's almost exactly like the plot we just created for our random sims:

So obviously I'm a freakin story-writing genius, at least by The Sims standards 💅

Let's go with a different plot:

We've got our random Sim with no traits here:

We know based off the description of this scenario that she and her fiancée are freelance artists.

Let's make her life goal reflect that:

And we'll give her a trait that supports this goal:

Now let's think about the plot.

It's all about this couple struggling to plan their wedding and honeymoon.

We're gonna want to give our protagonist a trait that will make this plot challenging for her.

So of course, the worst thing you can be in that scenario is:

But the conflict shouldn't just be related to the physical plot.

Our protagonist needs to be challenged in a few ways.

I want to see some drama between her and her fiancée too.

How can we make that happen?

Hehehe, let me show you:

She's the jealous type.

Now her fiancée, our antagonist, is going to need some traits that bring this side out of her.

Obviously, we're gonna make her noncommittal.

This not only will cause conflict and tension in their relationship, but also in the wedding planning process.

If she can't commit to anything, it's gonna be real tough to make plans for not just one big event, but two.

Now you're probably wondering, if she's noncommittal, why would the protagonist want to be in a relationship with her anyway?!

So let's give the antagonist a redeemable trait:

She knows how to make our protagonist laugh and relax. This is what works in their dynamic.

But this exact trait is actually one of the main things that will cause conflict in their wedding planning process -- she's always cracking jokes and not taking things as seriously as our protagonist.

But she's only doing this because she's...

This is why she has a hard time committing and taking things seriously: anything she does has to be perfect.

If something doesn't seem perfect, she'll distance herself from it or turn it into a joke.

This will cause a ton of conflict and tension not just in the wedding planning process, but in her relationship as well.

And there we have it!

We made two strong characters who will be incredibly challenged in this plot!

We're ready to write our story!

Look I don't know why but this Lin Manuel-Miranda gif was calling to me, but it was. so here it is

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I'm tempted now to play both of these stories out and try to find a 3-act structure in it all

But then I'd just be playing The Sims all day and no one wants that, right?

........... right?

Because if one of you wants that, I'll do it.

Anyway, that's it for today!

I hope you learned something. 👀

If you didn't, read this post again, or read one of my many other amazingly informative posts 💅

Bye bye!