The Toddler Technique

My Most Effective (and Annoying) Method for Developing Plot

Welcome to September and happy birthday—today!—to Shelf Life Editor Emeritus my Grandpa. This September marks the two-year anniversary of Shelf Life’s first article, which I’ll discuss next week on the actual date. Today I have something fun for you, if you consider annoying children fun, which I do not. Just kidding, the article is still fun.

What I know a lot about: Taking a concept, image, or idea to a tight, complete plot. 

What I know next to nothing about: Kids. You can fit everything I know about kids into a sippy cup, that’s how small it is. I don’t spend time around children if I can help it. My tolerance for children rises with their age; the older a child is the easier it is for me to be around them. I find kids become truly tolerable around age 25. I need the prefrontal cortex to be fully developed in order to spend time with someone. I’m sorry, that’s just how it is.

They say—and I believe—that the things you find most annoying in others are in fact the things you dislike about yourself or feel insecure about. Perhaps my dislike of children is because I am, myself, just an overgrown child. One of their traits I find annoying is one I have, too: I want to know why everything is the way it is. It’s not toddlers’ fault that they want to know why why why all the livelong day. They’re kids, it’s their job to learn about the world so they can grow up to be 25-year-olds and hang out with me.

As a writer developing a plot, it’s also my job to learn everything about the world and what its inhabitants are up to so I can pin down the series of actions that will lead the characters through the story. For a quick primer on plot versus story, check out Plot, Story, and Storyline. Toddlers—as I have already acknowledged—are the experts in learning everything about the world so it makes perfect sense that I would look to them and appropriate their learning strategy for myself.

Perfect sense.

Here’s how you do it: Whatever it is you have, whether it’s a concept, an idea, a story, a scene, or an image, you treat it like it’s a weary adult and you are a curious toddler and start asking it why. Look at what you have and begin with the most obvious unknowns about it and ask why. The answer you give must be sufficient that it would meet the approval of a toddler. You cannot answer “because it just is” or “because life’s not fair” or “you get what you get” or “because I said so” or “you’ll understand when you’re older.” It has to be a toddler-satiating answer.

Then you ask another why based on the answer you got.

Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight Saga, has said that Twilight originated as an image she saw in a dream of a vampire boy and a mortal girl lying together in a field of flowers. Let’s pretend we’re Stephenie Meyer with just this image and we’re using the toddler technique to develop a plot from it.

What are they doing in that field?

They’re getting to know each other.

Why?

Because . . . because they like each other.

Why?

“Teenage boys and girls like each other, you’ll understand when you’re older” isn’t good enough to satisfy a toddler. Why do they like each other? Why does Edward like Bella? He’s more than 100 years old and he’s never liked a girl in a serious romantic way before. Why not? Why this girl? 

Well, she’s different than all the girls he’s met during the last 100 years.

How is she different?

Do you see where I’m going with this? 

When we start a story with a vivid scene or image in mind, we’re probably starting somewhere in the middle of the plot. We need to work backward to find out how the characters got to that point and work forward to figure out where the characters go from that point. The toddler interrogation is how I find out.

Here are some of the questions I use to figure out my plot when I’m stuck:

• Why is this character mad (or sad, or scared, et cetera)?

• Where are they going?

• Why did they do that?

• Why did they say that?

• How did they get there?

• Why are they fighting?

• But what if they don’t?

Regarding the last question on the list, “but what if they don’t?” is in response to anything you already know the characters are doing or anything you already know is happening. For instance, “The story starts with my character going to the Island of Magic to recruit a Mage to help save his kingdom.”

But what if he doesn’t?

This helps me get at why the character is doing what they’re doing—what will happen if they don’t do that? What is the consequence of inaction? What else could the character do to solve the same problem? What have they already tried that didn’t work?

While using the toddler technique, there are two questions that rule over all others in utility and importance. They work together as a pair and you will use them over and over again, ad nauseum:

Why didn’t it work?

What will they do since it didn’t work out?

A plot is, in essence, an obstacle course between your main character and what they want. If the road to their goal were smooth and straightforward, you’d have no story. Your character is trying to do something or get something, and conflict arises from the challenges they face in doing or getting it. Your character tries something to get to their goal; it doesn’t work. Why not? What foiled them? Why did their plan fail? What got in the way? The character must then try something else: What else do they try? And then: Why didn’t it work?

The story starts with my character going to the Island of Magic to recruit a Mage to help save his kingdom.

Why didn’t it work?

We need to know why it didn’t work because if the character simply recruits a Mage and that Mage saves the kingdom as planned, we don’t have much of a story.

He arrived late and all the licensed Mages have been recruited for other things.

What will he do since it didn’t work out?

He’ll have to try an unlicensed Mage.

Now we’re talking. The character was foiled and was not able to get what he came for, so he had to switch gears and settle for something that is perhaps less optimal. Now he’ll have to adapt to work with what he has instead of what he thought he was going to get. It will be harder to save the kingdom with a substandard mage—

Hey, why is this Mage substandard?

Maybe they failed their Magery exam. Maybe they’re in disgrace after a spell went dangerously wrong. Maybe they’re dyslexic and often say incantations backward, causing unintended effects. Maybe a rival mage slandered them and ruined their reputation but they’re not, in fact, substantively subpar. 

Next we’ll add another layer to the toddler technique. This layer stems from my favorite technique for, you know, actually dealing with curious toddlers. They have a lot of questions and it’s a lot of energy to answer all of them. When you don’t know the answer, or you’re tired of answering questions, or you just—I don’t know—want to help develop a young mind, you turn their question back around on them like this:

That’s a good question. Why do you think it’s like that?

Now the toddler is in the position of using their reasoning skills and imagination to answer their own question. They won’t always (or often) come up with the right answer but it’s insightful to hear what they say. Consider:

Toddler: Why is the sky blue?

Technically correct answer: Light wavelengths from the sun scattered through the prism of our atmosphere.

Adult: I’m not sure. Why do you think the sky is blue?

Toddler: Because water is blue and birds get in the water and splash it on the sky.

That’s not the technical reason why the sky is blue, but it’s a creative reason why this child believes the sky is blue. Stay with me for a second.

Fictional characters believe all kinds of things that aren’t technically true in the context of the story. Characters are fallible. Characters lack insight into their own inner workings, possibly because they lack access to therapy, and into the workings of the world around them, possibly because they lack access to a newspaper. A good story must work with the reasons why things are how they are and also the characters’ beliefs about why they are how they are.

The second layer of the toddler technique involves playing the role of the patient adult and turning your questions back onto your characters to find out what they think about the world and events around them. For example:

Q: Why is this character so angry all the time?

A: Because she witnessed a massacre as a child and has debilitating survivor’s guilt.

Versus:

Q: Hey, character, why are you so angry all the time?

A: “Because everyone around me is incompetent and their lack of judgment is infuriating.”

My favorite time to do this is when I’m in the most distraction-free environment possible and don’t have any means of  writing things down. This mental process flows best for me when I’m casually following a trail of questions in my mind to see where it goes. Walking the dog or taking a shower are my go-tos. Before I walk out the door or hop in the shower, I put my mind on the rails and make a conscious decision about what I’ll mentally work on. Walking the dog is especially good because I can bounce questions off my dog. She doesn’t have any answers but she looks at me inquisitively till I come up with something.

Then, once I’ve followed the train of thought to its logical end, I sit down and type out or write down what I came up with in a summary format. This usually generates new questions, which I write down as I go in parentheses or brackets in the text and highlight in a bright color so I can come back to it easily. It might look something like this.

My character arrives at the Island of Magic to recruit a Mage to help save his kingdom [SAVE IT FROM WHAT? WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE KINGDOM?]. However, he arrives late and all the licensed mages are busy. [WHAT DOES LATE MEAN? LATE FOR WHAT? WHY IS HE LATE? WHAT MADE HIM LATE?] Instead, he must contract with an unlicensed mage [HOW DOES HE LEARN ABOUT UNLICENSED MAGES?] with a bad reputation. The mage has a bad reputation because he botched his last job [WHAT WAS HIS LAST JOB? HOW DID HE BOTCH IT?]

Oh shoot, I’m stuck.

[WHY DIDN’T IT WORK?] The unlicensed mage doesn’t want to take the job. [WHAT WILL HE DO INSTEAD?] He’ll bribe, coerce, or blackmail the mage into taking the job. [WHY DIDN’T IT WORK?] Well, it sort of did, but now he’s stuck with a mage who hates him.

The course of a good plot never did run smooth. Use the toddler technique to keep dropping roadblocks between your character and what they want, and before you know it—you’ve got plot.

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