Plot by Jeff Abbott:

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Last entry I wrote about how I came up with the idea for the characters in Collision. Today, I want to write about how plots start.

Yes, plot and character are absolutely intertwined. Characters drive plots when they're trying to reach their goals. But every plot needs a spark, a start, that drives the characters into action.

In this case, the spark was an image in my mind: a man's business card being found in a dead man's pocket. The image came to me, unbidden, a few days after I'd started thinking about the two main characters in Collision. And I knew the dead man was not a copier salesman or a road warrior or a doctor; the dead man was the most wanted assassin in the world, and now he was dead, and the business card in his pocket belonged to Ben, the business consultant in my being-born novel.

Why would the world's most feared hitman have an ordinary man's business card in his pocket?

I call this the Kick. You have to have a way to get the characters into the flow of the story, and sometimes you have to give them a kick. This is especially true with my characters, who tend to be ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Sometimes an unsuspected past catches up with them (as in Panic), or they are in the wrong place at the wrong time (as in Fear) or-in Collision-they're being used.

People don't like to be used; certainly Ben doesn't. Finding that common emotional ground-here, resentment of being made a pawn-is another way to make a character in an extraordinary situation immediately relatable to a reader. Ben knows he has no connection to this terrorist; but the police don't, and so of course he's under suspicion of having terrorist ties.

The other beauty of the Kick is that it opens up a lot of questions to grab the reader's interest-how is Ben connected to the dead terrorist, why is this happening, how is Ben going to clear his name-and to propel the story forward. The choices the characters make here-how Ben reacts to this news, for instance, when he's first questioned by government agents-shapes the course of the plot.

As I start to answer those questions raised by the Kick, I have to make choices that ensure that I'm executing the idea in a fresh and compelling way. Choices such as deciding what a character would truly do when faced with danger, or what's the best way to introduce a character's background, or how can I keep the suspense building over four hundred pages.

Next: when ideas pay off-really reaching a reader.

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