Contrivance vs. Character: When Plot Mechanics Show Their Seams
Learning to follow characters instead of pushing them.
There’s a feeling every writer knows but rarely names.
You’re working on a subplot. It’s doing Important Things—delivering information, positioning characters, enabling the scene you actually want to write. You’ve justified its existence. You’ve revised it three times. And still, every time you sit down to work on it, your hands slow. The prose comes out wooden. You find yourself checking email, refilling your coffee, doing anything except pushing through the next paragraph.
Something is wrong. You can’t articulate what.
I spent two weeks in this exact state recently. A subplot in my current manuscript was doing three jobs at once: revealing a secondary character’s divided loyalties, giving my protagonist critical intelligence before a major scene, and providing him resources to participate meaningfully in what came next. On paper, it was essential. Every thread it touched depended on it.
I kept rewriting it. Adjusting the pacing. Adding justification. Cutting justification. Moving it earlier, then later, then back. Nothing helped. The subplot sat in my manuscript like a foreign object—technically present, mechanically functional, and utterly lifeless.
The Diagnostic
Here’s what I eventually understood: the subplot was contrivance, not character.
The distinction matters.
Contrivance serves plot mechanics. It exists because you need X to happen before Y can happen. The character does something because you, the author, require them to do it. The sequence of events is logical. It might even be clever. But it doesn’t emerge from who these people are or what they actually want—it emerges from your outline.
Character-driven plot is different. Things happen because of who people are, what they want, and how they’d realistically pursue it. The sequence of events might be messier. It might not hit your structural beats as cleanly. But it breathes. Readers can feel the difference even if they can’t name it.
The test isn’t “is this subplot necessary?” The test is: does this feel like something these people would do, or something I’m making them do?
My subplot failed that test. The mechanics were sound. The character motivations were thin. I was pushing pieces around a board instead of following people through their lives.
The Relief
So I cut it.
Not trimmed. Not revised. Cut. Deleted the scenes, removed the thread, accepted that three jobs now had no home.
And here’s the thing about cutting something that isn’t working: when it’s the right call, you feel it immediately. Not loss. Relief. The story started moving again. The energy that had been trapped in that dead subplot flooded back into the manuscript.
What Emerged
The scene I needed to write was simple: my captain summoning his second lieutenant to brief him before a critical social engagement. The failed subplot had been loading this moment with external mechanics—information drops, resource transfers, loyalty tests. All the weight was in what got exchanged.
When I stripped that away, the weight shifted to who was in the room.
The lieutenant who enters isn’t delivering plot information. He’s a man whose uniform is always immaculate—not from vanity, but from a lifetime of being watched and measured and found wanting by standards most men would never comprehend. He wears his perfection like armor. Each crease and button a declaration: I do not soften. I do not yield.
The captain isn’t receiving a briefing. He’s bracing for judgment. His lieutenant is clever enough, observant enough—if anyone on this ship could see the cracks, it’s him. The captain holds the silence and waits for the blade.
The blade doesn’t come.
Instead, the lieutenant pivots. Becomes genuinely useful. Offers expertise freely, without positioning for advantage, because someone finally stopped treating him as a threat. And the captain feels something loosen in his chest—not trust, not quite, but the specific relief of a man who had braced for a blow that didn’t land.
Then the First Lieutenant arrives. The old one. The loyal one. And he reads the situation instantly:
“You’re taking Gore.” Not a question. Not an accusation. Just the flat recognition of a man watching his captain choose a weapon he couldn’t provide.
The scene ends with two weights in the captain’s chest instead of one. He made the right choice. He knows that. It doesn’t feel like the right choice. It feels like a small betrayal dressed in tactical logic.
None of this was in my outline. None of it could have emerged from the contrived subplot I’d been protecting. It happened because I stopped asking “what does the plot need?” and started asking “what would these people actually do in this room?”
The information still got delivered. The relationships still advanced. But now they advanced through character truth instead of mechanical necessity.
The Principle
Kill-your-darlings advice assumes you’re cutting something beloved. Something precious you’ve grown too attached to see clearly. That’s real, and it happens.
But this is different. When cutting feels like relief—when the story suddenly breathes again—you weren’t killing a darling. You were removing an obstruction you’d mistaken for load-bearing structure.
Not everything that feels essential is essential. Sometimes what feels essential is just complicated. You’ve invested so much work justifying its existence that you’ve convinced yourself the justification is the same as necessity.
It isn’t.
Recognition
The story knows when you’re forcing it. That wooden feeling, that resistance, that sense of pushing uphill—these aren’t signs you need to work harder. They’re diagnostic. Something in the machinery is binding.
When progress feels like negotiation with your own plot—when you’re constantly justifying why something has to happen instead of simply watching it happen—check what you’re protecting. Ask whether it’s earning its place through character truth or through mechanical necessity.
The former will carry the weight. The latter will make you check your email twenty-five times an hour…
Something that helped my manuscript work flow again after weeks of stagnation, delivered with brevity. Hope this helps. Subscribe for Tuesday posts.
Fair winds,
—D. S. Black