Tommy's freaking out. He left a bouquet of flowers to surprise his girlfriend, but he's worried that some wild giraffe or wolf or leprechaun is going to steal them or eat them or something.

And somehow this relates to a good question from listener Christopher about plot and characters.

There's a lot going on in Christopher's question, so we break it down all kind of ways on this episode of Fiction School. How do you make a plot meaningful to a character? How do you make readers care about a character? What makes a subplot key to a plot? What do you do when characters want to do things differently than the plot you've got planned out?

Full show notes at http://www.fictionschool.com