This post is part of Just Jot it January, and the prompt word, “personality,” comes to us from Astrid. Check out her blog here!

In a way, I’m jealous of authors who can plot and plan a novel or an entire series before they start writing. I haven’t published a full-length novel in a year because I’ve been busy writing three of them in a continuing series, and I’m afraid to release the first one in case the details in the third one require a change at the beginning of the overall story.

All this because I’m a discovery writer, or a “pantser,” as we often call writers who write by the seat of their pants. I love being a pantser—finding out what’s going to happen in my story and to my characters as I write is both fun and fascinating.

Many times for me, an entire book will start with a single personality. And often, that personality will come to me from listening to a character’s voice and seeing them in my head.

It’s basically how I wrote my “Second Seat on the Right” series. Click for a random episode.

Because my stories are character-driven, personality is essential to pin down. Personality can often help me to decide what situations to put them in.

In Creamed, my latest release for instance, Tom comes to town and inadvertently steals Mary’s business at the Christmas market where they both have booths. If not for Tom’s strong feelings on the subject of fairness (he hates unfairness), the story might have gone a completely different way.

In other words, the personalities of characters have a lot to do with conflict and its resolution, and therefore, plot.

And that’s my lecture story structure for the day. Not sure how I came to this point, but here we are.

(Seriously, I didn’t plot this post ahead of time. 😏)

This wandering post is part of Just Jot it January! Want to join in? Just click here to get to the prompt and drop your link. It’s fun!

Thanks again to Astrid for the prompt!