Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven and How We Often Get It Wrong

I was reading a thread about fridging on AW today–fridging is the practice of heaping torment on some side character to give motivation to the protagonist, based on a Green Lantern comic where his girl-friend was murdered and stuffed in a fridge and this was his motivation for the revenge plot–and it highlighted something to me that I think we often miss when we compare stories based on their focus.

There has long been a dichotomy in the study of literature involving the over-focus of a particular story on either its plot–a characteristic commonly attributed to the trashiest commercial fiction–or on its character, an allegation commonly leveled at literary fiction during debates on the prestige of various forms of writing.  It’s an argument with a lot of history and occasionally acrimony, and much like with fridging, I think a lot of people who participate in it are really missing the point.

The more sophisticated participants don’t get caught up in the literary vs, commercial fiction arguments, instead focusing on reader/writer preference, but even still I think most of them are thinking in too simplistic of terms and miss the subtle nuances that underlie the real issue.

First, I want to point out that it’s also possible to have a setting driven story, a complaint often made against science fiction and fantasy dealing with extensive description or focus on world-building, and it’s also possible to have an over-focus on theme.  Fairy tales, for instance, often lack plot or character nuance because they are created to express a theme or moral to their audience.

But the real issue goes back to my example of fridging.  First, I want to look at the issue from the side of so-called plot driven fiction.  What plot-driven fiction does when dealing with characters is to take short-cuts in characterization based on common tropes.  For example, killing the protagonist’s wife/girl-friend/sister/daughter/mother to provide motivation for the plot.  Or the hero’s journey trope of call-to-action/refusal/submission, where rather than having a unique personal motivation to approach the quest, the character is forced into it by circumstance.  Or in a crime story, where a character is thrust into action by being framed by the real culprit or suspected by the authorities.  Although these can be valid and complex motivations, to often, as with the female in the fridge, they are treated as short-cuts needing little development, as the audience is familiar with the motivation.  Sister raped and murdered -> Male character is off, no further thought required.

On the side of character-driven fiction, the complaint is often that the character thinks too much, rather than too little.  This is described as whining or angst, or wimpy-ness.  many times, the reader of commercial fiction wonders why the lit-fic hero doesn’t get off is ass and do what needs to be done, isn’t it obvious what should happen?  This is an attitude inculcated in readers by the ubiquitous use of sign-posts in commercial fiction.

But this view to me is too simplistic.  Sign-posts exist for a reason.  They have uses, and they can be very effective.  Many commercial fiction writers have been sign-posting to get through tricky motivational issues without “bogging down the reader” in internal monologue and to jump straight into the “exciting” parts of the story.  But what they should really be using them for is to give the reader a way to relate to the character, while exploring how specific circumstances create an unique motivation for the character, rather than relying on generic reader outrage.  Too often the character is fridged, and then its off to the races, never looking back to consider why that character was special to the protagonist and what specifically about the fridging event is motivating the character.  That exploration should be informing the morals and the lengths to which the protagonist is willing to go to get justice for the act, and not just an excuse to have a swash-buckling, fire-fight heavy adventure with a pass for any bad acts committed during.

The distinction between character-driven and plot-driven fiction does exist, but it’s neither as clear-cut or as blatant as the various detractors of each focus make it sound.  It’s not all cookie-cutter archetypes and protracted passive wangsting, but rather a subtle misunderstanding of the various tools of writing.  Neither the external nor the internal arcs of the story can stand alone.

You can certainly have weak or under-developed character arcs, or a meandering plot full of holes, but the idea that one element precludes development in the other is false.  Although the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses is basically discredited, I think we can still argue that by imposing these terms on our fiction, we’re creating a false impression that it’s relevant to a well-made final product, and it isn’t.  However you arrive at your storyline, the actual book should never reflect your behind-the-scenes methodology.

Finally, there is another less common way of looking at the issue, which is based on the idea that a premise is a promise by the writer to the reader where the writer asks questions and then answers them.  From this perspective, a plot-driven story is where the primary question/promise is based on the external narrative arc, and a character-driven story is where the primary promise involves the internal character arc.  But even here, a good book doesn’t lack in its promise about the other arc.  The two arcs still influence each other.  It’s simply that the book makes clear that the climax-resolution is molded more around one arc, while the resolution of the other is a consequence hinging on the main resolution.

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Timeskip

One of the most versatile tools in ther writerly arsenal is the time-skip.  In fact, it might be the most versatile tool in the story-teller’s arsenal in general.

Let’s look at some examples from television:

There’s an intense moment, perhaps a friend has just been killed, or fallen off a tall tower, or maybe the heroes have just killed the monster, and… BAM! Timeskip.

Because, really, what is left to show after the hero screams “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” for two minutes.  How are you going to show the come-down from that?  For the most part you can’t.  Which is why I hate shows with a lot of long, anguished screams.  You see this in anime all the time, as well.  You see, the timeskip can be a great tool, but it can also blind the writer to other possibilities.

After the 40th time I’ve seen a scream/timeskip, I’ve gotten really tired of them.  Seriously, writers, find a better way to show this emotion.  The fact that you have to resort to timeskips so often after a major character dies tells me your skills at emotional depiction are rather one-trick pony.  It’s clear you just don’t know any other way to move on from such a scene.  But they exist!  And you should learn to use them.  And the same goes for any other dramatic moment.  Fade-outs aren’t everything.

 

But timeskips can still be good.  Once you’ve finished the scene and sequel, we don’t need to see everything that happens between then and the next major event.  A little “***” can work wonders.

“Quick, shut the door!” she yelled.  I slid the bolt into place just as the first oozing, moaning thing crashed up against the glass.  The sun peaking over the roofs across the street just made the pale, peeling skin more sickening.  I could hear the scritch-scratch of broken nails as they dug into the solid oak grain.  I could see the hunger in life-less bllodshot eyes.  I closed the curtain.  He wasn’t getting fries with this.

***

Eventually the creature wandered off, looking for easier pickings.  I shivered despite the warm sun poking through the thin fabric of the curtain, knowing that if this had been a summer blockbuster instead of the real thing, there’d have been an arm through the door, ready to rip off whatever was at hand.  But without a fully functioning brain, the nerves couldn’t get enough of a charge to do anything to solid wood except claw and moan.

That’s a passage from halfway through a zombie apocalypse book I wrote for god-knows-what reason.  It’s certainly not well-written enough to stand out from the crowd.  But between those two paragraphs was hours of whispers, weeping and shaking.  It would have taken thousands of words and the reader didn’t need to see it.  And that little line of asterisks let me skip all of it, and you never even realized you were missing anything.  You had the build-up and the resolution and none of the junk in between.

 

The same goes for long journeys.  If nothing happens between Parsell and Merrit, your characters can go to sleep in Parsel and be awake and in Merrit by the next paragraph.  There’s no need to drag the reader through the eleventy-hundred bowls of stew and loaves of journey-bread the characters eat on the way.  Which is not to say that you can’t put scenes in between, especially if it’s a long journey.  They just has to be relevant to the story.

 

Which brings up the third use of time skips.  Lots of time actually passing.  If four years happen between one important scene and the next, you’ll never be able to include the in-between, and you shouldn’t need to.

The real secret to doing good timeskips is knowing how to show the time passed.  In our little zombie snippet, it was just a few hours between evening and morning.  Not much happened but the zombie leaving.  But if you’re skipping months or years, things are going to be different.  Characters will have moved around, things will have been accomplished that may not be important for the reader to see, but they will have an effect on the characters and their circumstances.

 

Those are three common uses of time skips: skipping short periods of time between scene and sequels, skipping over time and distance such as ona  journey, and skipping long periods of time, such as in an epic fantasy saga.  There are more, but I can’t address them all in one post.  I wish I had been able to include more specific exmaples showing the difference between a good timeskip and a lack of one, but that would also take up too much space.  If you’ve read any decent amount of books or watched tv shows or movies, you’ll have your own examples to look at.

 

Atsiko’s Plot Recipe for Stories

There are three ingredients you should have when writing a story: An idea, a plot, and a story question. You can come up with these in any order, but from a structural perspective, they usually go like this: idea leads to story question leads to plot.

When I start working on a story, sometimes I have a plot, sometimes I have an idea, and sometimes I have a story question. And sometimes I have a combination thereof.

An idea is a “what-if?” I generally look at it as defining the setting of the story. A story-question is what most people think of as an “idea”. Every idea can allow many story questions. A plot is a “then this happens”. Every story question allows for many plots.

You can start off with any of these, but you need to figure out all three somewhere within the writing process. Let’s look at an example.

Here’s a hypothetical idea: “What if a nation in a world equivalent to near-future Earth is in danger of being economically marginalized by a super-national economic/political unit similar to the UE, and it attempts to restructure its school system to produce valuable skills and professionals to help it compete?”

Now you need your story question. Let’s say: “How would this affect the students within such a system?”

A basic plot might be: “Smart students in a prestigious school do ‘bad’ things.”

This is from a story I am actually working on. I picked it because it demonstrates the loose order in which you need to come up with each element. I came up with the plot first. Then I came up with the story question. I wanted to know how current educational practices in various countries might affect the way children developed and behaved as students. How would the pressure to achieve affect various types of people, and what would they do to lessen that pressure?

I came up with the what-if last. Since I was looking at current systems of education, I needed a setting that could incorporate them. Since I was looking at the extremes of these systems, I needed slightly more overt pressure on the country to adhere to these trends.

But it’s completely possible to come up with the what-if idea first. A lot o sci-fi works on this model. A lot of epic fantasy or romance starts with a plot. A lot of serial UF and mystery begins with a story question.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you don’t have to begin with something in the plot continuum.  What we’re looking at here is mostly the plot angle of attack.  You could also start with a character, or a scene, or a setting, or whatever.

 

World-building—And Why It Matters

One of the first things you’ll hear on going to a writing forum dealing with the genres of Speculative Fiction is that “characters and stories are more important than world-building.” Which, on the surface, is absolutely correct. You could create a fictional world twenty-thousand times as deep and fascinating as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and if you didn’t have a story with characters that took place in it, you’re not going to sell a book. At least, not a commercial fiction book.

But think about this, you could come up with the most fast-paced, suspenseful story ever written, and if the characters are cardboard, you won’t sell it. The same goes for having the most fascinating and intricate characters in the history of story-telling. If you don’t have a story, something for those characters to do, you won’t convince anyone to pay you for writing about them. So, we’ve concluded that no one aspect of a story make up for a lack in the other two.

But wait, didn’t I just quote Generic SFF Writing Forum Member as saying that both character and story are more important than world-building? Well, yes, I did. You can’t sell a story without a story, and it isn’t a good story without good characters. But the question is, how do you create a good story? With good characters? I would like anyone who would buy a story that was exactly the Borne Identity set in 435 BC Japan to raise their hand.

Now, for those of you who didn’t raise your hands, why not? (The rest of you can GTFO.) One reason might be that it makes absolutely no sense. You can’t set a story that’s identical to the Borne Identity in 435 BC Japan, because the story is set in Zurich, relies on the real-world geography of Zurich, and includes a great deal of not only Swiss, but also 20th century culture, that just didn’t exist in Japan (and still doesn’t, and never will) in the 5th Century BC. That makes sense, right?

Now, you could set a similar story to the Borne Identity in 5th century BC Japan. Perhaps an ambitious warlord or clan leader is using deadly proto-ninjas to assassinate his adversaries. (Yeah, it’s cliché, and historically inaccurate, but that’s not the issue. Well… okay, it’s exactly the issue.) But a similar story is still not the same story, right? There are going to be differences, most of them enormous, at least as far as the details go.

You might still be able to throw in some amnesia, and espionage, and a romantic subplot, but there won’t be any car chases, or guns, or long-range communications technology (e.g., cell phones). The characters and the setting, and probably many themes, will be informed by an entirely culture and perspective. And readers will expect the writer to be accurate in those things.

How does a writer do that? They research. A lot. Even the most seat-of-the-pants writer will be constantly checking their ideas against reality. They may decide to ignore it in very important areas, but they will know they are doing so.

In fantasy, or at least, secondary world fantasy, the writer does not have that enormous pool of reality to compare the story to. Instead of research, they do world-building. Everything that your normal, non SFF writer can look up on Wikipedia? You have to make that stuff up.
Of course, you do get the advantage of flexibility. Whereas an author writing in a well-known period of earth will have to fudge things—even when they know some readers will bite their head off for it—an SFF author has a lot more freedom to make shit up.

But, lest the reader still find plot holes you could drive the Deathstar through, you must be internally consistent. And that’s where all that effort you spent world-building comes in. Now, you can borrow a lot from real life: gravity, thermodynamics, human beings—but for most of the history and culture and geography, you can only get inspiration. Same for characters. You have to sew it together yourself from whole cloth. All of it…

Er, well–as much as you need for the story anyway. How much that is will depend on the scope of the story, but considering that most SFF written today has relatively large scope, you’ve still got a lot of work to do.

“But wait! It’s hard enough to come up with a plot and characters. Why must I create an entire world, as well?”

What? You thought SFF was easy? Reality check!

Making shit up is hard, but you have to know all of this stuff because your story and characters have to fit in the world in which they live. Remember our talk about setting the Borne Identity in 5th Century BC Japan? Setting matters—a lot. Now, there are many approaches, many methods, many ways to do this creation.

Some authors spend a few months working this stuff out at the beginning. Some people mix it together with the story and characters as they go along. Some people go back and revise once they have the basic draft of their story on paper. But you’ve got to do this work sometime. We can discuss the advantages of the different methods later. For now, you just need to understand why this stuff matters. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to decide which aspect to cut when they conflict.

 

The Two Types of Urban Fantasy

Looking at the genre from one angle, there are two types of Urban Fantasy, Type-P fantasy and Type-D fantasy.

Type-D, named after Harry Dresden–because he is awesome and I saw the TV adaption on the Sci-Fi channel (before they came up with that ridiculous re-branding “SyFy”), and because someone over on AW used it– is fantasy where the MC is aware of the story’s supernatural elements.

Type-D can further be divided into stories where magic is “out of the broom-closet”, and known to the world at large, and the much more common set of stories where it’s a Big Fuckin’ Secret. You might guess which one I prefer. It’s probably due to my bias from secondary-world fantasy, where even if it’s a distant existence, both physically and mentally, magic is usually known to the general populace.

Type-P, named after Harry Potter–which is one of the more famous examples currently–is fantasy where the MC discovers that magic exists.

These stories come in two common varieties, stories where the MC does have magic, and stories where they don’t. The latter are usually the most popular.

Both types have their advantages and disadvantages:

Type-D can throw you right into the action. The plot is to the fore and it is where most of the attention is focused. Demon-hunting, vampire cabals, changeling conspiracies. A great example is Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire. MC knows about magic, is involved in magic, and is going to have a great time hunting down the “bad” kind.

Type-P is different. You might have some action at the beginning, such as the kid-napping or murder of someone close to the protagonist–or of the protag themselves. But then you have to deal with the fact that, “ZOMG! Magic!” Whether you’ve got a reluctant protagonist or one who Jumps at the Call, they have to process their reaction some time. You get a lot inner dialogue, friction with more worldly allies, and a great deal of shock and awe. All of these contrive to distance the beginning of the story from the real plot.

Which could go either way. Sure, their twelve-year-old sister got kidnapped, but… “Level 12 Fireball!” How can that not be cool? And that’s one of the major differences.

Type-D is often about the surface events, the plot, even though it is likely to be quite “character-driven”. Type-P is often more about the character arcs, the themes. Of course, these are only generalizations. You can still have fantastic character arcs in Type-D UF, and run around collecting plot coupons and fighting bad-guys in Type-P.

But if you look at my examples, you might notice something. How old are the characters in Dresden Files and Child of Fire? How old in Harry Potter? What about, dare I say it, Twilight? You can argue that it’s PR, not UF, but the genres are pretty close, and there’s a great deal of crossover. If you look back at most of the recommendations in my original post, you’ll see that the trend continues.

Now, I’m not dumping all Type-P UF in the YA category–although if you look at the whole Fantasy genre, you’ll see it follows the trend closely as well. There are counter-examples, naturally. Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, for example, has a discovery plot and an adult MC. And it is not alone. Nor do younger characters always qualify a story as YA (or MG). But it’s a trend.

And one of the reasons for it is the ability to use magic as a metaphor for just about anything we don’t know about, or are uncertain of. Including growing up, love, getting out of the school environment, learning that life isn’t so simple as you thought, etc. And Type-P UF, and Type-F for that matter, handles these themes very well. Issues of self-discovery, personal identity, social identity, cultural identity, sexual identity. All of these have been addressed within Type-P. Being a wizard, a shifter, a vamp. These are all things that separate someone from the rest of humanity, just like being gay, or black, or female might set someone apart.

In Type-D, characters are usually more stable in their identity, more confident. They aren’t dealing with so many first, so many new things. They’ve already honed their skills, learned their lore, chosen their profession. And this allows for all sorts of stories that you couldn’t have in Type-P. It makes for different approaches as well. Whereas a twelve-year-old is not going to go undercover in an ab-dead dreamshit ring, a thirty-year-old were-falcon cop could do so easily. And vice-versa. Middle-aged investment bankers aren’t going to be wandering around in the attic, or playing hide and seek in the wardrobe. 9-year-olds certainly won’t be hunting down strange sorcerers who turn children in burning piles of grubs that burrow away into the soil.

There are many other ways to divide or classify urban fantasy. There’s N. K. Jemisin’s Stylistic vs. Contextual UF, over on Jeff VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days. You could classify by protagonist type: “Kick-ass broad” vs. suave vampiric playboy. Or smart, tough, magic detective. There’re the various lineages and influences I mentioned in the last post. The list goes on. They all provide some insight, and some context.

Next time, we might talk about those lineages a little more in depth. I think the term “lineage” in general makes for a great sub-category of “sub-genre”, unless you’d prefer “sub-sub-genre”? Either way, we’ll explore the idea soon.

 

The Other Side of Tension: Conflict

Last time, I discussed tension in relation to the interaction between the writer and the reader.  Basically, tension exists between what the reader thinks will happen and what the writer knows will happen.

But there’s another kind of tension, and it’s one that many people may be more familiar with.  We’ll call the first kind of tension “external” tension.  In this post, we’ll be discussing “internal” tension.

Internal tension is tension that exists entirely within the book.  It is the difference between one in-world world model and another.  If a character’s vision of the world is different than the world’s vision of itself, the character cannot predict how the world will react to their actions.  Similarly, if the character’s idea of how a man should act is different than his love interest’s, he can’t predict how she will react.  Remember how I said readers hated not knowing what will happen?  Well, it’s the same deal for characters.  Because readers and characters are both people (or they should be, but I’ll save the discussion on cardboard characters for another day).  And people don’t like uncertainty.  It makes them nervous and it makes them feel helpless, because they don’t know what to do to get their desired outcome. 

If you will remember, I made the claim last post that tension is the basis of conflict.  To be more specific, internal tension is the basis of conflict.  One character sees something one way, the other another.  Well, that’s fine, right?  But when people see that thing a certain way, they try to make it fit their vision.  They make things conform to their expectations.  If it doesn’t fit, it’s got to go, or be ignored, but whatever 

The problem is, we have two (or more) different views here.  One person’s uncertainty is another person’s comfort.  Now we have an issue.  The hero wants the king on the throne and not one penny more than 20% taxes.  The villain wants himself on the throne, and not one penny less than 90% taxes.  And they’re both ready to fit the world to their vision.  (The main reason the bad guys needs those high taxes if he wins, to pay off all the debt.)Which means one of them won’t get what they want.  They’re gonna have to fight it out.  Now we’ve got conflict.

And this goes for any type of conflict, really.  Want internal conflict?  The love interest likes bad boys.  The hero is a mama’s boy.  To wear a bike helmet or not to wear a bike helmet?  That is the question.  Still internal tension, but now we have one person having a choice, instead of two people having a fight.  Sure there’s no bangs and zooms and magic swords (or are there?), but we’ve still got that tension.  And the reader (and the character) wants to see it resolved.

To sum up, conflict is when resolving one character’s tension prevents the other character’s tension from being resolved.  It doesn’t end until both are resolved.  Often by killing one character (in fantasy, since this is a blog about spec fic), and other times through character growth.  Which is a lot harder to pull off well.

Next post, we’ll apply some of these ideas to magic systems.

 

Tension; Or, How Stories Work (And a Little on Suspense)

I know that, last time, I promised I would explain consistency in magic systems. And I will.

But before we get to that, we need to understand why consistency is important. And to understand that, we need to understand how a story works. This post is applicable to almost any post about writing that you will find on my blog. This may be the single most important post you will ever read on the art of writing a good story—in any genre. I’m not trying to say I’m the only person who knows how stories work, or how to a write a good story. But I have yet to read anything that actually breaks down the concept, in simple terms, of reader-writer interaction.  And reader-writer interaction is the foundation of story-telling.

Reader-writer interaction is the basis of tension. And tension is the basis of a good story. You can have a story without tension, but it will be boring. You will hear from a lot of people that conflict is the basis of a story. That is false. Tension is the basis of conflict, and—being more basic—it is thus more important to a good story than conflict. There can be conflict without tension. And again, it will be boring. Now refer back to the first sentence in this paragraph. You should now understand why reader-writer interaction is the basis of good story-telling.

So, you are probably wondering what I mean by reader-writer interaction, and you are also wondering how it works. It’s pretty simple. Tension is built on the reader’s understanding of the way the world works. The reader knows (or thinks they know) what can and can’t happen, and thus they know whether the characters are in a tough spot—or not. Their understanding of the world is based on their knowledge of the real world, genre conventions and tropes, and what the author tells them. These three legs support their world model. What does the reader model have to do with how stories work? Stories are made up of “scenes (and sequels)” Each scene is like a miniature story. To understand how a story works, we need to know how scenes work. So, what is a “scene” how do scenes work?

A scene is a sub-section of the story consisting of a set of closely related and chronologically sequential events. It is the writer’s input into the reader’s world model.

Scenes work like this:

The reader starts with a model of the real world. They then modify it to fit the genre of the story—and thus, the scene. Since this scene is the beginning of a larger story, they may further modify it to fit what they learned about the story from a) the back cover blurb and b) the little excerpt that often comes after the glowing recommendations from other (popular) authors. This is called a “primary (world) model”. The reader then proceeds through these steps:

1. The reader loads their primary model.
2. The story provides the first scene. The reader reads this scene and then runs it through their world model to determine the most likely outcomes. At the beginning, the reader’s model is likely to be rather generic. They don’t know enough about the story yet to generate a specific, complex and realistic model. (This modeling occurs in real time, re-modeling every time the reader learns/discovers something new.)
3. The reader looks at all possible outcomes. If the writer is good, there are a few, prominent outcomes that over-shadow all the rest. If they are really good, there is one of these that is not only the most likely, but also the most horrible. Alternatively, there may be a small group of bad outcomes.

Tension is created in the third step, as the reader begins to question the inevitability of these horrible outcomes: Is this what will really happen? Can the characters avoid this? If so, how? The more horrible the outcomes are—and the less chance the characters have of avoiding it—the greater the tension. If there is no tension, the reader has no reason to care about the scene, and thus no reason to care about the story. This is bad.

But wait, you may be thinking… what happens next?

Next, the writer must resolve the tension. How do they do that?

This goes back to the idea of the world model. A writer will have a complete world model, where the reader only has a partial model. In order to resolve the tension, the writer must apply this model to the scene. Unlike the reader, they know exactly which outcome will occur, and why. They just apply their complete model, and the outcome is obvious.

Sounds easy, right? Wrong. To keep the reader interested in the story, the writer must maintain suspension of disbelief. It doesn’t matter whether they choose to surprise the reader, or conform to their expectations. (The first resolves tension by saving the heroes from the undesirable outcome; the second by getting the pain over with. Both are powerful methods and do much to shape the course and feel of the story.) The reader must not be allowed to question the inevitability of the writer’s chosen outcome. They must eventually accept it as the right one.

1. Writers achieve this goal by completing three basic tasks: They must make sure their complete world model allows for the outcome.
2. They must make sure the reader’s primary model allows for the outcome, but doesn’t exclude others. 
3.  They must retroactively exclude other possible outcomes with as little conflict with the reader’s primary model as possible.

At the end of a scene, the reader has formed a slightly different model of the world, a secondary world model. The goal of a story is to slowly guide the reader’s model towards becoming consistent with the writer’s model by repeating the above process so that the two are identical at the end. Not every scene has to bring the reader closer, but there must be an average shift towards the writer’s model. That’s why the writer’s model must be consistent with itself, or they’ll never bring the reader into the fold. (But that’s next post.)

To sum up: Tension is created by differences between the reader’s model of the story world and the writer’s model of the story world. These differences are not a matter of fundamental differences, but of the reader’s model not being as complete. The goal of the story is to slowly complete the reader’s model in a way that does not push them out of the story.  (This post also touches on “suspense” quite a bit, even though I don’t call it that.  But I’m going to do a post on using suspense later, so I didn’t want to spoil it.)

 

Respecting the Writer: Making Shit Up

I’m sure many fantasy writers have heard their genre described by readers and other authors as “making shit up.” As in, “I could write fantasy. It’s just making shit up.” I can’t answer for the reactions of every fantasy writer who’s heard this, but I know it always pissed me off. Making shit up? Well, yeah, that’s what *fiction* writers do… all of them. But this strange idea is only applied to those of us who write fantasy. Or sci-fi depending, but that’s a whole other post.

To be fair, a lot of beginning fantasy writers think this, too. I’ve seen it everywhere. On several of the many writing forums on the web, in a few blogs that shall go nameless, over on the NaNo boards. Some of these people are honestly ignorant. They just don’t realize the kind of work that goes into creating a believable fantasy world. Others are lazy. They feel they can get away with making shit up, because who is there to catch them? The readers, sure, but the Fantasy Fabulation PoliceTM aren’t going to show up at their house and beat some work ethic into them.

And then, finally, there are the people who are on the “make it up as you go” side of the world-building debate. I mean them no disrespect. They’ve chosen a method and they feel it works for them. Whether or not someone has the chops for this sort of writing is a debate I’d rather not get into (again). Heaven forbid someone make subjective statements about someone else’s behavior. On the Interwebz? Shouldn’t happen.

But hey, I have no trouble admitting there have been many great books written like this. Not how I do it, but then, I haven’t sold tens of thousands of copies of over twenty different novels. I’m not going into the mechanics of world-building on the fly. I may be a punster when I write, but I have files and files of world-building material on paper, on disk, and in my head.

The point I haven’t gotten to here is that world-building on the fly is not the same as “making shit up”. I could make up a world in 30 seconds, and nine times out of ten, the reader would have thrown that book against the wall in half the time. People think getting a real-world city/religion/philosophy/branch of science right through research is tough. And it is. One mistake, and that community is all over you. But when you fuck up in world-building, the number of people who can–and will, believe me–get on your ass is exponentially greater.

Readers like a story to make sense. Why? Because then they know how to react to it. Awesome Fantasy Character #1482 is crushed by a fifty tone granite tomato(hey, this is fantasy): *atsiko weeps*. Two pages later, the author resurrects this character. *Atsiko screams and throws the book out the window.* Well, the window was closed, and I have to pay $200 for a new one. Now I’m doubly pissed off. If I had known how easy it was to bring characters back to life, I would not have cried. I would have winced, maybe. ‘Cause the Goddess knows getting squished by a fifty ton granite tomato hurts like hell. But if it doesn’t kill the person, why should the author trick me into wasting my emotional energy? Guess what would happen the next time someone died? Atsiko would flip through the lame-ass death speech (because they all are), confident that the character would return by the next chapter. If I didn’t already need a new window.

I’ve talked in other posts about how the reader doesn’t like being played with. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, and if we are really engaged in the story, it can be emotionally draining. For the same reason you don’t make a book all action, you don’t constantly fuck around with the reader’s emotions. We also don’t like it if the author is an idiot. Ground glass is not poison people—it’s beach sand.

Now, to relate this back to our original topic:

1. Readers like to have a general idea of how much of ourselves we should invest in a given part of the story. That’s not to say we don’t like surprises. A predictable book is a boring book. But if anything is possible, nothing is interesting.** And a boring book is also boring.

2. Readers like to have a general idea of how easy it will be to solve a problem. That is, if the hero is surrounded by a thousand ravening orcs, the reader would like to know how much effort it will take to defeat them—or if the hero is just screwed. All the tension is gone if you take the cheap way out. So, what’s the way to accomplish these goals? How can you give the reader an idea that they know what is going on? By making sense. If you make shit up, it usually doesn’t make much sense. “Crap, I’ve written my hero into a corner. Wait, I’ve got it! If you say ‘bambino’, they esplode!” An extreme example, I’ll admit. Let’s try something more sensible. “My hero’s dropped his sword! And he’s not wearing armor. What’ll I do?!” Hint: don’t have him catch the sword. This looks cool until I put the book down to get a glass of milk. Then the fridge logic kicks in, and I remember that a sword is a wedge. What do wedges do? They wedge things apart. Like hands. Not to mention that, um… you know… this: gravity + human strength > human strength. Duh, author.

Sure, fantasy writers make things up. But they also do this thing called “being consistent”, which is a lot harder for most people to grasp. It’s not any less work to make stuff up than to use real stuff. It may even be harder. You don’t have to suspend disbelief for a story set in New York. But in Random Fantasy Kingdom #127?

Yes, readers, fantasy has to make sense, too—just its own kind of sense.

So, to sum up: Make sense, not shit. And have a little more respect for fantasy authors.

More on “Respecting the Reader” later.

**I’d like to thank Limyaael for making my point for me.

 

Magic’s Price

Or, On More Principles Tricks of Good Fantasy and How Authors Screw Up The Third Principle of Good Magic

Now, those of you in the know have probably noticed there was something missing in my previous post on balanced magic. That’s right, the most abused principle of good magic systems: The Principle of Appropriate Cost. Oh, and its corollary The Principle of Suitable Sacrifice.*

The most widely used excuse for poorly balanced magic systems is the “cost” of magic. Cost can be physical energy, physical backlash (as in Lackey’s brilliant cost of… headaches?**), life essence(whatever that is), actual years off of life, powered by nebulous energy which may or may not be renewable or unending, blood, human and animal sacrifice, deals with spirits or demons, and many others. After “limits”, cost is the most badly abused balancer in fantasy. Why? Because a lot of costs don’t really “cost” anything. Maybe, if the author is feeling really reasonable, cost can limit the duration or strength of magic, but it’s still transient. The mage is back after some bed rest and a good meal, ready to go at it again. Or they just snag the nearest ley-line.

Another form of abuse is one that violates my First Law of Delayed Gratification, which most simply translates to “the sooner, the better”. Sure, years off your life sounds bad, but it’s a long way into the future. For example, how many teenagers do you know who would sacrifice ten years of life in the future for the chance to fly or throw fireballs now? Or get whatever wish they want most met? How many adults like that do you know? Probably enough to understand my point. Just like a newly married couple handing over their first-born child. “That’s okay. We don’t want kids.” Right… Readers like costs now, or at least costs that they know about. Writers, don’t wait too long to bring on the pain. Or we will bring on the wall.

There are all sorts of great costs that magic could have, but authors afraid to really hurt their characters will not use them. Happily-ever-after is fine, but have them earn it. There’s no conflict in an obvious decision, authors. Characters should suffer, have regrets, feel guilty, make tough choices. And while we’re at it, no fake costs. No fair bringing a character back to life after they’ve sacrificed it to drive the magic. No, Ms. Lackey, not even once. Or as a ghost. Paid costs should stay paid–unless the magic is undone in return… and it matters that it is.

Another thing that is commonly ignored is external costs. That is, the cost to other people of the character using their magic. Call up an earth quake to trap the villains in a rockslide? What about the village a mile down the road? Is it still standing after? Magic nuke that destroys the enemy? What about the innocents caught in its path? Burn down the vineyard the enemy is hiding in? How is the owner going to pay his taxes? Everything has consequences, and those consequences have consequences. Drain this node and the one down the road, and how will the next village’s magic dam stop the flood? But now we’re leaking into logical effects. More on those later.

Summation: Make your costs cost—permanently.

*As in, headaches don’t make fire.  And sacrificing squirrels doesn’t defeat the Dark Lord.  Now, the hero(ine)’s Love Interest… that could do it.

**I love Lackey, really. Not the best fantasy I’ve ever read, sure, but I was using light sarcasm; I don’t bite.  And she gets it right, sometimes.  Lavan Firestorm, anyone?

Next post: On Setting Limits and Why Breaking Them is Bad. Bad. Bad!

 

The Inverse Law of Utility and Understanding

(and many other First Laws Principles of Good Fantasy)

One thing I mentioned in my previous post but did not expand upon was my “Inverse Law of Utility and Understanding.” That is:  “A character’s ability to solve a conflict with magic is inversely proportional to how well the character understands said magic.”  (I’m looking at you, Eragon!)  Basically, the more you know, the more you fuck up. 

 

It’s the corollary to Atsiko’s First Law of Magic. Which reads: “An author’s ability to solve a conflict with magic is inversely proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” Because I am egotistical like that… and meta.  Basically, this Law says that the more a reader understands your magic system, the less you can get away with the less useful it will be in solving conflicts(, because you will be working within more limits).  Instead, you will have to rely on your characters’ actual heroic traits.*  In a paradoxical turn of events, my law and Mr. Sanderson’s are equally and simultaneously true.  I think mine is more useful from a plotting standpoint, while Mr. Sanderson’s is more useful from a construction standpoint.  Keep his in mind when you make your magic, and keep mine in mind when you use it.

 

What makes Atsiko’s Law relevant in fantasy is the Sliding Scale of Magic vs. Science.  (Some of you may have guessed already that I’ve spent too much time on TV Tropes lately.  I blame it on NaNoWriMo.)  Basically, the more you explain a magic system, the more of a pain in the ass it is to actually do something “magical” with it, or do anything at all, really.  (Science is not omnipotent.)  For authors who want their reader to experience a sense of wonder in their stories, this is a rather undesirable trait. 

 

It can also lead to “necessary” info-dumping–and plot holes.  The plot holes arise when an author wants to do something freakin’ awesome previously forbidden.  But here’s a little secret.  Readers will forgive anything as long as it fucks something up later.  They love that.  Let’s call it delayed consequences gratification.  Just don’t wait too long, or the book will already have hit the wall.**

 

Which leads us to our next writerly trick: the invisible rule.

 

That’s right.  Hidden rules.  Because hidden rules rule.  One of the best ways to create a mysterious and yet satisfying plot-buster magic system is to have rules and not tell anybody.  Seems counterintuitive, right?  If we don’t know the rules, how will they know you have them?  Doesn’t matter.  See, in the real world, we learn the rules by observing and formulation hypothesis.  We then apply these as laws until something disproves them.  You can do this in fantasy, too.  Of course, it’s much harder.  You have to avoid really big flashy stuff until the necessary rules have been introduced–but still meet the criteria for Retroactive Consistency we established in the last post.  For skilled plotters only.  But see Atsiko’s First Law.

 

Now we can address the two major ways in which you can create the illusion of balance through construction, without hemming yourself in with restrictive rules.  This is where you keep in mind Sanderson’s First Law and what you want your magic to do.  Here are your two main tools:

 

1. The Principle of Limited Application—the magic is not applicable to any situation, and can only meet a few, clearly-defined needs.  Robin Hobb’s magic in Soldier Son has limited applicability.  It cannot throw fireballs, or summon lightning, and while it appears quite flexible, it almost always approaches conflict indirectly.  No stand-offs here.  The “Great Ones” must find other ways to achieve their goals.  Allows for a greater sense of mystery.

 

2. The Principle of Limited Effect—the magic can apply to a broad range of situations, but there is a limit to how much power can be thrown at the problem.  Lackey’s magic system in Velgarth has limited effectiveness.  Some mages are more powerful than others, and even though you can do pretty much anything with it, if your lightning doesn’t pierce the opponents shields, you aren’t going to damage him.  Allows for a greater sense of tension.

 

Now, many authors use a combination of mysterious and scientific magic in their stories.  The more mysterious the magic is, the more the Principle of Limited Application is used to keep magic in check.  The magic is a step on the road to solving the conflict, but it requires the character to use other skills and assets to ultimately solve the problem.  Scientific systems can get away with a broader application, but they tend to rely more on the Principle of Limited Effect.  Yes, the character can throw a fireball, but you’re not going to obliterate the foe in one go.  Both of these Principles deal with solving the conflict, but the means to the end are quite different, and a reader can be happy or unhappy with both types of magic.

 

But there’s another writerly trick that allows you to have mystery and avoid deus ex machina.  The goal here is to create the illusion of logical progression, by adding an extra assumption just before the fact; ie, trick the reader into believing you foreshadowed this all along.  Word-games work great, as Tolkien proved.  “I am no man.”  (Any tropers out there have probably figured out I fall somewhere on the right of this, in regards to my view of “clever” fantasy authors.)

 

 

 

*Atsiko’s First Law of Protagonists:  “Magic does not make you a hero!  Or, magic does not make you Speshul, Snowflake–good character does.”

 

**Atsiko’s First Law of Delayed Gratification:  “The less gratification is delayed, the more gratifying it is.”

 

 

Next post:  On More Principles Tricks of Good Fantasy, or How Authors Screw Up The Third Principle of Good Magic