No matter how much blood sweat and tears you put into a project, us creative types get a bright shiny new idea. Sometimes, that means we rush to finish the current one or abandon the WIP with the other unfinished projects. Other times, we want to throw that new idea into the story.
I’m a huge fan of taking breaks when needed, as it gives me time to think about what does and doesn’t work on a story, but I’m also a believer in finishing what I started. That isn’t to say I won’t listen to beta readers and do serious rewrites if it serves the story, but I can’t impulsively switch focus in the middle of a tale.
When I sell you a book, I offer you a premise. If I fail to deliver what was promised, you are more likely to complain about that than if I have a bunch of typos. So if I pitch a rip-roaring adventure involving Good Sir Knight, but we are mooning about court politics that is vaguely reminiscent of my real-world politics, you have the right to be a little upset with me.
I haven’t read all of him, but Brandon Sanderson has said “Go Deep, not wide” and it’s something I tend to agree with. His example was about exploring the use of magic in its established constraints as opposed to introducing new ideas, and the creators of South Park said something similar but as it pertains to how the stories progress.
The rule for story telling is that there can be an inciting incident, but things don’t randomly happen to characters and they spend the rest of the novel being reactive. It’s Because This Happens, the characters reacted in X. Because they reacted in X, the consequence of X happens; and so on and so forth.
In A Fable of Wood and String: Because a wyvern attacks the local farms, the men from the community band together to try to drive it out, leaving the older men, women and children in the villages with nominal protection. Because of interpersonal conflict (dad/husband is gone, I’m having to deal more with the neighbors), it’s easier for a deceptive puppeteer to infiltrate the village and kidnap the young people. Seth and Lily, our protagonists, are not sitting on their hands but active in moving the plot along from the get-go; both know they should be helping their father hunt, and aren’t faithfully guarding the town like they ought to, Lily out of resentment and Seth might be a little ADHD. After Madeline is revealed to be trouble, both take matters into their own hands: They are going to get their sister and the others stolen back.
Each little minisode, if you will, builds the main idea in some way. That isn’t to say that there aren’t things outside of the characters’ control but, if you spent hours and hours building towards a battle and you get there to find out the BBEG died from a random nosebleed and the organization crumbled as the lieutenants stabbed one another in the back, the audience has a right to feel let down. Contrivances work to a certain extent, but make your characters earn their happy(?) ending. And ultimately: Doing something random isn’t edgy. It’s bad story telling.
Let’s take Little Red Riding Hood.
Red is sent to her grandmother’s with her basket of goodies; her mother tells her to take the most direct path and not to speak to strangers. She’s spotted by the wolf, who tells her to go the scenic route to pick flowers. Red listens and goes off path to pick the flowers, so because of this, the wolf beats her to grandma’s house. He eats/subdues grandma, and takes grandma’s place in bed. Red shows up, and we go through the “What big ears you have” routine. Ideally, we’d have a scene where Red runs into the wood cutter (who she already knows, emphasizing the ‘don’t speak to strangers’ lesson) and we establish he’s nearby, so it doesn’t feel random when she calls for help and he answers. The wood cutter saves grandma and Red, and Red learns not to talk to/trust strangers. Classic, albeit a little boring for most of us already familiar with the story.
Less satisfying would be: Red is skipping through the woods and ignores the wolf. He races ahead, eats grandma and the plot ensues. The wood cutter who happens to be passing by hears the commotion, intervenes and saves them all. In this instance, Red is completely a victim, nothing she did or didn’t do changed the course of the story. The story beats pretty much happened the same, but it’s less satisfying; unless this is where her tragic backstory starts and you’re about to make Red go through some sort of villain arc as she rages against the local wolf population.
Least Satisfying: Red is on her way to grandma’s house, and the wolf goes to distract her. Our preteen protagonist pulls out a magnum and shoots the wolf dead, and continues on. No explanation, no build up. Great commercial for the gun, but that’s about it.
In order to make something good, I have to first make it exist. After I’ve come up with a rough draft, I ask myself: What is this story about? Not what happens; what am I saying about a given theme? If I were to pick a flavour: is it consistent or, does one part get especially off-focus? Is the tone nihilistic or hopeful? Funny or more serious? What stories are similar and, how does mine stand out?
What does the character of the protagonist say about the theme? Tweaking the main character slightly can change the directory of the story completely; the main danger here in not understanding who the protagonist is that they will make drastically different decisions as to how the plot progresses. The biggest problem can be if you need a character to go one way but everything about them says they would take a different route, how to make that seem authentic so you don’t break the contract with your reader. If I tell you Red is a dreamer and likes exploring, it’s easier to believe she listens to the wolf then if I establish she’s a rule-follower, but not impossible. Establish that she thinks a certain flower can make a tea to help grandma feel better or, she learns there’s a special butterfly in the valley and she’s always wanted to see one.
I can make Red a small innocent child or a sassy teenager out to harass a werewolf, but I can’t make her both.
I’ll pick on romantasy, because it’s currently uber popular, polarizing and many people still think it means ‘A sexist term for stories written by women, almost all stories have a little bit of romance’ and I disagree – you can have a fantasy story with strong romantic elements, a romance story in a fantasy setting, or one that really straddles the line between both. As the genre becomes more popular, we’ll see more niche subgenres emerge. And hey: you aren’t likely to alter market trends by yourself, but don’t complain if the bookstores are putting out what’s selling and you haven’t bought a book in a decade. Request what you like at your local library.
You can have the heart of the story being about a princess being in love with the prince. However, fate has torn them asunder and she’s on an adventure and Prince Barely-There may absolutely be her driving force to return, but we’re knee deep in solving a riddle or riding across the countryside – it’s an adventure story primarily, with romantic elements. If she and Prince Hot Lips are on the adventure together and we’re constantly enduring watching them flirt, sure, you can sell me it’s equal parts romance and adventure, so long as there’s at least some peril so the knuckle-draggers like me are entertained. If we’re primarily focusing on their relationship and the world-threatening plot doesn’t show up until the last 100 pages, congratulations: we’re probably in a romance novel with a fantasy setting. And clearly, because different writers are going to focus on different elements, we can’t easily categorize all stories neatly. I would argue The Cruel Prince by Holly Black was incorrectly marketed as romantasy, it’s got more in common with a political intrigue fantasy novel, but I suppose that doesn’t hashtag well.
Once you know this, you can better know when it is the time for some pay off, as if your audience is younger, you can’t dangle them along for two books before we ‘get to the good part’, and better understand what flavour we’re dealing with. You can’t have a sweet, saccharine adventure and then have a steamy make out scene at the end of the novel, shame on you!
All this isn’t to say that you have to wholly abandon a given idea. Expand on it in another work, where it would fit better or, consider doing other spin-off material. Fantasy readers in general don’t mind slightly longer books and additional supplementation, but again consider your audience and don’t muddy the overall story because we wanted to take a detour that muddied an an otherwise decent trip. Part 2 Will be about Planting Seeds, or how not to seem random.
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