magistrate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
magistrate) wrote2014-01-01 07:26 pm
magistrate) wrote2014-01-01 07:26 pm
Entry tags:
Story formation and plausible choice meta
Holy crap, I think I've got a short story done in draft. (Well, "short"; it's roughly 6600 words long. One of these days I'll figure out* how to write at commonly-acceptable lengths like 3000-4500 words.) I think I started this one sometime in mid-November. Not a bad start to the year, even if I probably won't have it out the door today!
* This is probably a lie.
Over the past few days of trying to tie everything together, I've been thinking about a couple of things.
1. Plausible choice. When I wrote Water Rights (the short story I wrote for Edge of Infinity), I found that I'd written up a setting and a predicament and a conflict that I really liked... but that didn't really offer the characters a choice. (A dilemma, yes; a choice, no.) Basically, the situation wound down to:
– Catastrophe has happened.
– Of our main characters do X, they'll be sacrificing their dreams.
– If our main characters don't do X, EVERYONE WILL DIE.
Considering that none of my main characters were evil, assholes, or unforgivably selfish, there wasn't a lot of plot-level tension there. Character-level, yes, but even I wasn't satisfied with the "And now we sit down and talk about our feelings until we come to the conclusion everyone knows we're going to come to" plot structure. It was, to my mind, something more of a sketch than a story**.
** A distinction I've tried to articulate before, with mixed results. More or less, I think a story positions its characters and/or readers in relation to a concept/trope/situation/etc at the beginning, and does so in the end, but with a change in that relationship (or a lack of change which is meaningful to the reader). Something along those lines. Like I said, mixed results.
Which was interesting, because this time, I found myself in almost the same situation. To wit:
– Event has happened.
– If main character does X, she's making a significant existential sacrifice.
– If main character doesn't do X, she is AN INCREDIBLE ASSHOLE. And the story will resolve on the note of her sitting around resolving to just continually be an asshole for the foreseeable future.
When I stalled out at this point and took it to the whiteboard, I realized that I needed to give her a plausible choice. Something she can do to remove herself from the situation, or resolve it to a different outcome.
Writing this out, it feels like the most obvious thing in the world. But when I was standing in front of the whiteboard, going why doesn't it feel like my story arc is functional?, it was something of a revelation. The tension in the story hinged on what the main character would resolve to do. Tension requires uncertainty. To increase tension, I had to add in a plausible choice.
2. Digging deep vs. going far. So, I seem to have a habit of writing stories in which not much actually happens. (That was one of the big critiques on early versions of Of Men and Wolves, and you can still kinda see it. In fact, if you went through most of my published work, I think the majority of it is weighted more toward "Here is a thing; how do my characters deal with it internally?" than the traditional try-fail loop of plot-driven works.
Which isinteresting. Because usually you hear about plot arcs, and those arcs have to start somewhere and go somewhere and pull the reader along. Whereas I think a lot of my writing kinda sits the reader down and starts excavating layer after layer of stuff right where they're sitting.
And it occurred to me that those were both perfectly fine dimensions to work in. At the very least, they both product functional stories when done well, and it is my hope to do well. But I do need to recognize that they are different modes to operate in, and their criteria for success are going to be different, as well.
And on we go. I've been writing for as long as I can remember, publishing for... yikes, 2005 was nine years ago already, wasn't it? –and editing professionally for over a year, and I've been to one of the most prestigious writing workshops in the speculative fiction field, and I still often feel like I have no idea how fiction works or how to write something that functions. Then again, I hear that this never really goes away, so I'd best get comfortable with continually working to figure things out and put neat labels on the tools in my toolbox.
[ETA] Welp, I read over it, and I'm still not entirely happy with the arc – but I'm not sure what I can do to fix it without writing a different story. So I sent it out! Because if nothing else, starting the year on a submission has some nice symbolic heft, and it is sometimes the case that other people like my fiction more than I do after a long writing/tweaking process. &o.o&
There are just about 50 minutes left in January 1. I'm doing pretty well!
* This is probably a lie.
Over the past few days of trying to tie everything together, I've been thinking about a couple of things.
1. Plausible choice. When I wrote Water Rights (the short story I wrote for Edge of Infinity), I found that I'd written up a setting and a predicament and a conflict that I really liked... but that didn't really offer the characters a choice. (A dilemma, yes; a choice, no.) Basically, the situation wound down to:
– Catastrophe has happened.
– Of our main characters do X, they'll be sacrificing their dreams.
– If our main characters don't do X, EVERYONE WILL DIE.
Considering that none of my main characters were evil, assholes, or unforgivably selfish, there wasn't a lot of plot-level tension there. Character-level, yes, but even I wasn't satisfied with the "And now we sit down and talk about our feelings until we come to the conclusion everyone knows we're going to come to" plot structure. It was, to my mind, something more of a sketch than a story**.
** A distinction I've tried to articulate before, with mixed results. More or less, I think a story positions its characters and/or readers in relation to a concept/trope/situation/etc at the beginning, and does so in the end, but with a change in that relationship (or a lack of change which is meaningful to the reader). Something along those lines. Like I said, mixed results.
Which was interesting, because this time, I found myself in almost the same situation. To wit:
– Event has happened.
– If main character does X, she's making a significant existential sacrifice.
– If main character doesn't do X, she is AN INCREDIBLE ASSHOLE. And the story will resolve on the note of her sitting around resolving to just continually be an asshole for the foreseeable future.
When I stalled out at this point and took it to the whiteboard, I realized that I needed to give her a plausible choice. Something she can do to remove herself from the situation, or resolve it to a different outcome.
Writing this out, it feels like the most obvious thing in the world. But when I was standing in front of the whiteboard, going why doesn't it feel like my story arc is functional?, it was something of a revelation. The tension in the story hinged on what the main character would resolve to do. Tension requires uncertainty. To increase tension, I had to add in a plausible choice.
2. Digging deep vs. going far. So, I seem to have a habit of writing stories in which not much actually happens. (That was one of the big critiques on early versions of Of Men and Wolves, and you can still kinda see it. In fact, if you went through most of my published work, I think the majority of it is weighted more toward "Here is a thing; how do my characters deal with it internally?" than the traditional try-fail loop of plot-driven works.
Which isinteresting. Because usually you hear about plot arcs, and those arcs have to start somewhere and go somewhere and pull the reader along. Whereas I think a lot of my writing kinda sits the reader down and starts excavating layer after layer of stuff right where they're sitting.
And it occurred to me that those were both perfectly fine dimensions to work in. At the very least, they both product functional stories when done well, and it is my hope to do well. But I do need to recognize that they are different modes to operate in, and their criteria for success are going to be different, as well.
And on we go. I've been writing for as long as I can remember, publishing for... yikes, 2005 was nine years ago already, wasn't it? –and editing professionally for over a year, and I've been to one of the most prestigious writing workshops in the speculative fiction field, and I still often feel like I have no idea how fiction works or how to write something that functions. Then again, I hear that this never really goes away, so I'd best get comfortable with continually working to figure things out and put neat labels on the tools in my toolbox.
[ETA] Welp, I read over it, and I'm still not entirely happy with the arc – but I'm not sure what I can do to fix it without writing a different story. So I sent it out! Because if nothing else, starting the year on a submission has some nice symbolic heft, and it is sometimes the case that other people like my fiction more than I do after a long writing/tweaking process. &o.o&
There are just about 50 minutes left in January 1. I'm doing pretty well!