People often ask, “Are you a plotter or a pantser” in that casual way that shows how much binary thinking is still ingrained into Western culture. Tea or coffee, cats or dogs, male or female—why was it only two paths that diverged in that wood?
But when you offer people the kind of menu of options available at any American diner, their response is shockingly fast. The “usual” of course. The path of least resistance, tried and tested, the choice that promises the least heartbreak. Most people already know what they want to order before they show up at a Burger King.
If choosing between two things you might want is excruciating, choosing the thing you’re least likely to regret is often trivial. As if the brain has been wired for survival and can always identify the path of least resistance with minimal effort.
I’ve been trying to identify why I find conflict compelling in some stories but not others, and particularly why I find love triangles so hard to read. A heart torn between two desires (every vampire-werewolf story ever) makes my skin crawl. I feel as if I’m stuck in a Starbucks line behind someone very stupid and indecisive, ready to scream, “JUST PICK ONE! I HAVE A PLANE TO CATCH!”
On the other hand, I love nothing more than a heart cornered between several dangers, looking for the path of least resistance, which also happens to be something terrible that they would never even have considered before.
As I work through the second half of my current novel, I treat each scene as if the protagonist is a vegetarian in a foreign country, trying to order off a menu where each item is strange and terrifying. In the end, they may end up eating things they’ve never heard of, like spanakopita or mesclun or samphire, and even liking them—but they only did it under duress.
The trick to truly compelling conflict though is doing the same courtesy for the antagonist. They aren’t shoving a menu of meat at the protagonist for fun, because they want to see vegetarians squirm. A writing teacher recently told me that the great mistake is treating the antagonist as someone who wants to destroy the protagonist, rather than save them. The antagonist must genuinely care about the protagonist, but they subscribe to a worldview where the means of their caring have the worst possible effect.
When I was growing up, a sports coach once told my parents that a vegetarian diet simply did not have enough protein for athletes. My mother (a strict vegetarian) agonized about this, but eventually caved. When I think of my antagonist today, it’s that sports coach. He made us run laps with weights around our ankles, refused to let us sit (for the entire four hours of training), and insisted on our eating meat. He had seen the dangers of the world and found a path of least resistance—and was offering it to others with the best intentions.
I don’t write villains. I believe that good intentions actually create the best conflict, the kind of conflict that can bring out new and interesting facets of human nature rather than simply pit tired ideologies and grudges against each other.
So, plotter or pantser? Neither and both. I plot to the extent that I can create a menu of dangerous items for everyone. But even I don’t know what they’ll choose to do when faced with that. Go hungry? Dare to demand something off-menu? Settle for a diminished life of inoffensive mashed potatoes? Or try the Harira and hope for the best?
Note: Like Minestrone, Harira is sometimes vegetarian, and sometimes not, and many non-vegetarians don’t consider chicken or broth meat. What your protagonist does when faced with the fact that they might have consumed meat by accident can also fuel the plot.