Making an Impact

Motivation vs plot. My strength is in creating characters and themes, in revealing what drives someone's thoughts; what I find hard is plot, sheer, simple driving onwards of action. Often that's why my short stories grind to a halt halfway through - I need the action to carry forwards an otherwise motionless piece of writing. At the moment, I'm considering the impact of one character's actions on another. I usually write short stories with a small cast and in writing something longer, I'm having to manage more people and how they inter-act. In real life, we all see things in different ways - as children, we see life from our own perspective and have to learn, slowly, that others will see things differently. Theory of mind, it's called. Those on the autistic spectrum struggle with it. It's also the reason why small children make those delicious comments that assume you know what they know, and they can't get inside another child's head to see that they might want that particular toy too and will be upset to have it snatched away. But even as adults, we can't see the impact our actions will have because we don't know where others have started from. The person we let out in the traffic queue may be having a seriously bad day and you lighten her mood or she may be on her phone and barely even notice your Random Act of Kindness. My real life examples: I regularly collect a prescription for someone else. Because it's a controlled drug, even the prescription has to be collected from a special place, rather than being put in the post. Each time I send in the repeat form, I wait the allotted five days, a bit more for courtesy, and then I have to start chasing it. I get answer phones; I ring several times; having started three weeks ahead, usually we're down to the wire, with the last tablet or two, before I can even make the forty-minute round trip to get the new prescription, and then it's a dash to the pharmacy to collect it. This all takes place against a backdrop of daily reassurance - yes, I'll phone again, yes, it'll be on its way, don't worry ... This morning, listening to that answerphone, I thought - she sounds nice enough whenever I speak to her - is it just that she has no idea of how important her small piece of paperwork is to those at the other end? Surely if she lived it through my eyes, she'd get her act together? Does she just lack imagination? Opposite end of the scale: someone who always returns calls promptly, answers emails, considers and puts things into action if they might help. In one of our early meetings, when I was fed up and suspicious of all officaldom, I was puzzled by him. I would talk and be met with an intent frowning silence. It took me some time to realise that he was listening to me. What he does probably seems normal to him, but it's had a huge impact, because I was losing hope when I met him. So when my characters do something, they don't act in a vacuum - they bounce off each other and cause repercussions. The 'what if' again - if he says this, how will she react? Where's she coming from, not just in general but today, this morning, now? I'm hoping these 'what ifs' will drive my plot onwards, using my imagination to stand in each character's place. After that, I'm going to drive up and stand at the counter and just ask for the repeat prescription form, because I despair of ever getting that call back!