In today's addition to my, Thoughts on the Writing Process. I've decided to talk about how information plays a major role in misunderstandings, and how those misunderstanding bring about plot.

      I like to use the term misunderstanding, why? To me it generally best sums up an event, and events generally make up a stories plot, which is a sequence of events. Then again, I'm using misunderstandings to represent information which is known, or unknown. I think information, and how it interacts with characters, are how events are made.

      So why are misunderstandings a major potential for an event? Well an event is something that happens because of cause and effect. A misunderstanding is a failure to understand, due to known information, or a lack of information. But it's applicable use, while simple is actually, quite complex.

A misunderstanding can occur in quite a few ways. Here are the ones I can identify with the most:

      There is believed information, which is information that a character knows or has put faith in which leads him to a conflict with another character.

      In this first example of a misunderstanding, we have a character named Bob. Bob is a Giant, but has been taught to believe since childhood that all tiny humans are incapable of intelligence or speech. Armed with this information, an event occurs because he meets with a tiny humans who can speak. The cause of the event, is the misunderstanding, the effect is based solely on the characters information. In this case, Bob has decided to forgo the normal act of squishing the small pest,  and instead wishes to understand why it can talk.

      Biased information, is information that a character got from another source which may or may not be true.

      Jill learns that her grandmother had been a terrible witch. The source of the information is unreliable, but curious, the character acts on the information and tries a spell on her best friend, thus shrinking her. Had she known for sure the dangers or implications of the information she suspected as false, she may have hesitated more.

      A lack of information, is information that is unknown by a character, but is known by others, which leads him to an event.

      Tom was not sure where he was, a moment earlier he had been with his friend Jill, and now he was lost in a forest. Without any information to figure out what happened, Tom started to panic, he had no idea, he was shrunk unlike Jill. Meanwhile his girlfriend Jill searched all around for her best friend.

      Absence of information, is information that is unknown by the character which will lead him to a destination without his knowledge.

      Tom was unaware he was on top of a giant girl's head, the trees around him had actually been her hairs. Since he had no information about this, he went about his survival tasks of building a fire with his shirt and cartoon of cigarettes.

      Priority Information, is information that takes precedence over other information, usually forcing reaction from a character he might not normally choose.

      Jill was aware that putting the flames on her head out was important, but she was also armed with the information that her best friend had been shrunk. She didn't dare move to get a glass of water to put the water out on her head, fearing she might crush him.

      Assumption information, is information that a character derives through multiple other sources of information to come to a hypothetical answer.

      The fire in her hair! Of course, if jail put together the information she had in her head, and thought about it, she could come to an assumption that her best friend had started that fire. She knew what she would have to do.

Information

      Of course if you apply misunderstandings in this fashion, you can look at anything in the realm of Information. Character personalities in your story, the actions which they use, even the way the physical environment interacts with them. In a sense, it's the most logical straight forward way to over analyze and break down a story, so much to the point where it looks like pieces of segments of information.

      So the pieces which make up the events in your story, will always have a general trend, lead by their settings, characters will act by the information there given, express themselves in events through the misunderstandings they encounter. Then they will eventually reach some sort of ending. If all the pieces flow together nicely, you might even have some form of good narrative which some people might enjoy reading.

      So if information is so vital for events to occur, and the way these events fold out is dependent on the settings and characters. Then the author must piece together a set of information which leads those characters to a destination. The destination not necessarily being anything in particular. A place, a state of mind, a character's development, a tragic end, all of these things maybe, but maybe something else as well.

      Information is the deciding factor for what your characters will be doing for the entirety of your, or any story, how they interact with it, how it leads them. The settings you place them in, and how that effects them. Hopefully your characters will have big hurdles to face, and relatable information to the reader. Usually a story will have a build up as well, and great reveals, sometimes the reader might have been aware of information long before the character, driving up the excitement. And if you mange to do all of this, you might just have a good story and plot worth your readers time.

If you want to create a more intricate scenario in your story, try this exercise if you wish.

      Take your character, and expose him to multiple different types of Information misunderstandings. Doing so might reveal more about your characters personality and normal actions.

      With your new information on your character's personality, choose information misunderstandings which generate multiple misunderstandings in your side characters in response to your main characters information. This will result in more sub plots forming, making your side characters more interesting.

      Finally, with your main plot and new sub plots, try creating new information which will further skew, or clarify the misunderstandings to generate a flow which evolves your characters personalities.

      If you were successful, your characters and plot should feel a lot more intense now, and provide more hooks to your readers.