How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (14 page)

Having said that, I must also point out that to be taken seriously as a writer, and not just a writer of speculative fiction, you must be able to draw interesting and believable characters; and most stories are improved when the author is skillful at characterization. But only when the story is
about
the transformation of a character’s role in his community do you have a true Character Story.

The structure of a Character Story is as simple as any of the others.

The story begins at the moment when the main character becomes so unhappy, impatient, or angry in his present role that he begins the process of change; and it ends when the character either settles into a new role (happily or not) or gives up the struggle and remains in the old role (happily or not).

Just as mystery readers give authors a little leeway at the beginning to establish the detective and the situation out of which the murder arises, so also the readers of character stories will accept the narrative equivalent of an “establishing shot.” After all, if we are to care whether the character succeeds in changing, we must understand what it is he’s changing from.

But, with rare exceptions, you should still begin the story as close to the point at which the character begins to attempt to change as possible. Few things in fiction are more tedious than reading a Character Story that begins many years-and many pages-before the character actually attempts to change his life. The author may be doing a lovely job of showing us the character’s past and letting us in on his thoughts and feelings, but we keep waiting for something to happen, asking, “Why am I reading this? So
what?”

This is not because we want adventure-no car chase is required. All we need is a sense of direction, a sense that the character is in motion. I have read many a student story in which it’s not until page ten—or twenty, or fifty-that we finally get a sentence like this: “That was the day when Albie decided he had had enough.” By then it’s too late-the attempt to change will usually seem too feeble for the long build-up that preceded it.

The character’s attempt to change doesn’t have to be a conscious decision; it can be an inadvertent move, an instinctive seizing of opportunity. The character can find himself wondering, “What did I do
that
for?”-or thinking, “Why didn’t I do that
long
ago!”

Characters in the other kinds of story
can
change, too, though they don’t have to. You can embed Character Stories as subplots within Milieu, Event, and Idea stories, but in that case the characters’ changes are not the climax of the whole work, not the signal to the reader that the story is over, that the tension of the tale is now released.

Even within a Character Story, the main character is not the only one who will change. Since a person’s role in a community is defined by and defines his relationships with other people, a change in his own role will change theirs, too. Much of the plot in a Character Story rises out of the other characters’ resistance to change. Often the climax will involve the

final battle between characters in their war to establish incompatible identities. Think of
The Barretts
of
Wimpole Street,
in which Elizabeth Barrett’s love for Robert Browning makes her become so dissatisfied with her role in her father’s family that she decides to leave. But her father is unwilling to allow any such change in any of his children-it would
require him
to go through more self-redefinition than he is willing to bear. The story ends when Elizabeth cuts loose and leaves; we see that she has successfully transformed herself, and we also relish the forced transformation in her tyrannical father’s life.

The Barretts
of
Wimpole Street
absolutely follows the structure of a character story: No matter how many characters are in flux, the Character Story begins close to the point where the main character begins to attempt to change his role, and ends at the point where the struggle ends.

If the transformation of character is what you care about most in the story you want to tell, then identify which character’s changes trigger all the other transformations. That’s your main character, and your story begins when he just can’t take it anymore.

The Event Story.
In the Event Story, something is wrong in the fabric of the universe; the world is out of order. In the ancient tradition of Romance (as opposed to the modern publishing category, this can include the appearance of a monster
(Beowulf),
the “unnatural” murder of a king by his brother
(Hamlet)
or a guest by his host
(Macbeth),
the breaking of an oath
(Havelok the Dane),
the conquest of a Christian land by the infidel
(King Horn),
the birth of a child of portent who some believe ought not to have been born
(Dune),
or the reappearance of a powerful ancient adversary who was thought to be dead
(Lord
of
the Rings).
In all cases, a previous order-a “golden age”-has been disrupted and the world is in flux, a dangerous place.

The Event Story ends at the point where a new order is established, or, more rarely, where the old order is restored, or, rarest of all, where the world descends into chaos as the forces of order are destroyed. The story begins, not at the point where the world becomes disordered, but rather at the point where the character whose actions are most crucial to establishing the new order becomes involved in the struggle.
Hamlet
doesn’t begin with the murder of Hamlet’s father; it begins much later, when the ghost appears to Hamlet and involves him in the struggle to remove the usurper and reestablish the proper order of the kingdom.

Macbeth is
eccentric in that the main character is the source of the disorder rather than its opponent. Yet it doesn’t begin with the murder of the king, either; it begins much
earlier,
when the witches first put the improper thought of becoming lung into Macbeth’s mind. And it ends when, after much struggle to reconcile himself with the chaos he brought into the world, Macbeth is killed, thus restoring a proper order.

Because the story concerns the restoration of the proper order of the universe, it’s not surprising that Romance traditionally concerns itself with grand peopleroyalty, nobility, heroes, even demigods. But this is not necessary. Think of Megan Lindholm’s superb fantasy
The Wizard of the Pigeons;
the hero is a wizard, yes, but he is also a Seattle streetperson living on garbage and the occasional handout. Lindholm draws the real Seattle street life very convincingly; yet her hero is no less concerned with the fact that an enemy has crept into his modest, orderly little “kingdom,” sowing confusion and threatening destruction.

And the disorder in the world can be even more subtle, the character even less obviously heroic. Jane Austen’s
Emma
concerns a woman who acted on bad advice and refused to marry the man who would have brought her happiness. This private decision is nevertheless a violation of the natural order of the universe in which Emma lives; she herself becomes then a disorderly force, sowing difficulties in the lives of others until at last she realizes she made a mistake and marries the man she should have married in the first place. The story begins at the point where Emma becomes involved in the disorder and ends where order is restored.

Almost all fantasy and much-perhaps most-science fiction uses the Event Story structure. Nowhere is it better handled than in Tolkien’s great trilogy.
Lord of the Rings
begins when Frodo discovers that the ring Bilbo gave him is the key to the overthrow of Sauron, the great adversary of the world’s order; it ends, not with the destruction of Sauron, but with the complete reestablishment of the new orderwhich includes the departure of Frodo and all other magical people from Middle Earth.

Notice that Tollden does not begin with a prologue recounting all the history of Middle Earth up to the point where Gandalf tells Frodo what the ring is. He begins, instead, by establishing Frodo’s domestic situation and then thrusting world events on him, explaining no more of the world situation than Frodo needs to know right at the beginning. We only learn of the rest of the foregoing events bit by bit, as the information is revealed to Frodo.

In other words, the viewpoint character, not the narrator, is our guide into the world situation. We start with the small part of the world that he knows and understands and see only as much of the disorder of the universe as he can see. It takes many days-and many pages-before Frodo stands before the council of Elrond, the whole situation having been explained to him, and says, “I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.” By the time a lengthy explanation is given, we have already seen much of the disorder of the universe for ourselves-the Black Riders, the hoodlums in Bree, the barrow wights-and have met the true king, Aragorn, in his disguise as Strider. In other words, by the time we are given the full explanation of the world, we already care about the people involved in saving it.

Too many writers of Event Stories, especially epic fantasies, don’t learn this lesson from Tolkien. Instead, they imagine that their poor reader won’t be able to understand what’s going on if they don’t begin with a prologue showing the “world situation.” Alas, these prologues
always
fail. Because we aren’t emotionally involved with any characters, because we don’t yet
care,
the prologues are meaningless. They are also usually confusing, as a half-dozen names are thrown at us all at once. I have learned, as a book reviewer, that it’s usually best to skip the prologue entirely and begin with the story-as the author should also have done. I have nevernot oncefound that by skipping the prologue I missed some information I needed to have in order to read the story; and when I
have
read the prologue first, I have never-not once-found it interesting, helpful, or even understandable.

In other words, writers of Event Stories,
don’t write prologues.
Homer didn’t need to summarize the whole Trojan War for us; he began the
Iliad
with the particular, the private wrath of Achilles. Learn from Homer- and Tolkien, and all the other writers who have handled the Event Story well. Begin small, and only gradually expand our vision to include the whole world. If you don’t let us know and care about the hero first, we won’t be around for the saving of the world. There’s plenty of time for us to learn the big picture.

Deciding
which is which. How do you know which structure your story should follow? The fact is that most stories could be made to follow any of these structures. The most important thing is that you must end the story that you begin. If you promise a Character Story by the way you

begin your tale, then your story can only achieve closure by having the main character end his attempt to change his role-not by solving a mystery! And if you promise an Idea Story by beginning with a vital question, you can’t achieve closure by having a character find a new role in life.

Still, there is almost always a best structure for a particular story. You often can’t find it until you’ve attempted a draft and find yourself bogged down only a few pages or chapters into it (often a pretty good sign that you’re using the wrong structure, beginning at the wrong place). Chances are, that early exploratory draft will end up being thrown away-but not too soon! First, read it carefully, not to fix up the prose or correct minor story flaws, but rather to discover what you like best in it.

What did you spend the most time on? Were you fascinated with the main character’s unhappy relationships with other people? Then you may need to structure it as a Character Story. Did you devote a lot of time to exploring the world, showing its wonders and oddities? Then perhaps you need to structure it as a Milieu Story, bringing in an outsider as the viewpoint character. Or is it the grand events, the disorder in the world that interests you? In that case, you need to identify who it is that will end up restoring good order to the world and begin with his or her first involvement in the struggle against disorder.

One thing, though, that you must beware of, and that is the natural tendency of novice writers to automatically structure all their stories as Idea Stories. Judging from student and workshop stories over the years, both in and out of the field of speculative fiction, I believe that most stories that fail do so because the writer, having thought up a neat idea for a story, then structured the story so that it leads up to the moment when that neat story idea is revealed.

This is fine, of course, when the story really is about the struggle of a character to find the answer to a question. But it’s terrible when it’s the readers, not the characters, who are doing the struggling. The mystery in these cases is not a single question-Who killed this man? Why does this large planet have such low gravity? Instead the questions are more basic. What’s going on? Why am I reading this?