About Straying Sparingly
Post 461:
Here’s some facts. You’ve got to fill pages. Churning out books ain’t a walk in the park, even under the most auspicious circumstances. Anyone who’s a producer of finished material knows it’s not an exercise for the fluttering heart or the brain given to wandering reveries. Ideas. Characters. Plot. Conflict. Goals. Obstacles.
There’s the backbone.
Every creator is going to approach their backbone a little different. Characters at the core. Plot at the core. If you’re one of those noble intrepid types, style is at the core.
Choose. But choose wisely.
And after all that painstaking, back-making work, you’ve still got to fill pages. Experience always teaches me new things, but so far it’s taught me that many pages will fill themselves. For instance: A character needs to go from here to there—a love interest has to form or crumble—an enemy is forced to rear its head in order to give a protagonist something to do—when it comes to this stuff, there’s work to be done, but it’ll get done without too strenuous an effort.
Most times. Oh, they’ll be days. There’s always days. The days when the bloody story looks right back at you, when the only words you read are This sucks! Quit!
Let’s assume you’ve tiptoed through all that already. What else do you include in your literary masterpiece?
Side quests. I’m calling them side quests, because that’s a thing in video games. If you play a lot of RPG’s, you know what I’m talking about; the extra stuff. Things that aren’t absolutely integral to the story, but certainly fit within the whole operation. When you play a game, you don’t have to do the side quests. When you’re writing, you need a few, but not too many.
I think it’s best to employ side quests when a character needs beefing up. We don’t quite know what sort of personality someone has, so we put them in a situation outside the main narrative and see what happens. It can be argued that if it goes to the character, it’s not a side quest at all. I can see that.
Let’s stay there, actually. If you’re writing something that’s a little off the narrative beaten path, make sure it ties back in some way to the main story.
I’ve read some amateur stuff that wanders all over the place. It’s a mistake that rookies with passion make. It’s a mistake that self-indulgent writers with too much talent make as well. We’re all in danger. That said, you can’t be afraid to tread those grounds.
Writing isn’t a game as much as it a war. The occasional crazy flanking mission can tilt the struggle in your favor, but every session can’t be the Charge of the Light Brigade. Get your troops in position. Make good tactical decisions. Think of everything. Then think of it again.
Sounds like a blast, right? Not usually. It’s just work. It’s just war. Keep to the road when you can. Stray sparingly. Stay crazy. Cheers wonderful people. See you after.
