King distrusts plot. For him, it's all about the story. "I want to put a group of characters...in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn't to help them...but to watch what happens and then write it down," he says in On Writing.
Faced with this quote, I think about the number of my characters who, eventually, didn't seem to do anything. So I had nothing to watch and nothing to write down. I tried to fix this by changing their names, love interests, or genders, or swapping them with a more interesting minor character.
But the problem didn't lie with the characters. It was the story. It was either no good to begin with, or I let it grow cold. The story withered and then the characters grew pale.
There's no remedy once this happens, at least not in the present. The idea and the characters must be killed. I must get it right the next time.
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