Plot, Theme and Character
22 April, 2026
Last week I shared how Unspoken came together over what felt like a lifetime. Well, it was ... a political lifetime.
Over the next two weeks, I thought I’d dive deeper into what makes the story tick - without spoilers or turning it into a Year 10 English lesson!
Plot - AKA let's move right along folks
When I first started writing, I thought plot was all about big moments. The twists. The shocks. The dramatic reveals.
And I wasn't wrong.
But it turns out, when you're crafting your novel, they’re the easy parts.
What's really hard is all the moments in between - thousands and thousands of words - the downtime you might call it. This is where you really begin to understand the main characters and their motivations. It's during these passages that you keep your reader glued to your story or ...
Put simply, plot is what happens when your characters make decisions, and the consequences of those decisions.
One decision leads to another.
And in fiction, those decisions often mean things get more complicated, not less.
At about the five-year mark of writing Unspoken, I stuck the following note to my monitor:
Weave a thread. Every now and again yank it tight. But never, never yank it so tight you break it.
Every time I looked up, I saw it - a reminder that I needed to keep things moving along and the plot tight and connected - cause and effect.
Build pressure. Release it a bit. Build it again and then tighten things, and every now and again, really tighten things. Then release it ... and on and on.
In Unspoken, like most popular fiction, everything is the consequence of one moment. An event that sets things in motion. From there, as the writer, it's not about working out what I want to happen next. It's simply writing what had to happen next.
Hang in there class, I'm nearly done!! 😂
Theme - AKA what’s really going on under the surface
If plot is what happens, theme is what it all means.
Or put another way, what are the forces shaping the decisions our characters make?
When I was writing Unspoken, a couple of themes kept jumping off the page.
What are the consequences of systems built on control and power imbalances?
And what happens to the people who get caught up in those systems - either willingly or through no fault of their own?
The interesting thing is, unlike plot, theme isn’t something I sat down and structured. It just kept showing up in the story as the characters developed.
If you invest the time to create genuine, believable characters, I believe the themes start to emerge on their own.
At some point, it stops feeling like you’re driving it - the characters are making the decisions. You’re simply following along to see where those decisions lead.
Once you get to this point in your writing journey, it’s really exciting to sit down each day and think, Alright Francis, where are you taking me today?
Speaking of our protagonist Francis McGuire, next week I’ll wrap this segment up by sharing a few insights into how the main characters in Unspoken came to life.