![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ten pounds of story in a five-pound sack
Apr. 19th, 2018 11:14 amI can't say a lot about the work I do for Legend of the Five Rings because I signed an NDA. But the most recent round of brainstorming for a fiction has me reflecting on what this job is teaching me about making sure that the material I write pulls as much weight per word as possible, and I want to discuss that a little. So let's see what balance I can strike between specificity and deliberately vague generalities!
The context here is that I have a fairly strict word count for each of my fictions: 3000 words max if they're going into a pack, and 3000 with some wiggle room if they're being published on the website. That is . . . not a whole lot. And the story of L5R is so sprawling that even with a bunch of writers producing a bunch of fictions, making sure that everything gets mentioned and explored and moved forward means we can't afford to waste words. It isn't enough for a given fiction to do one thing; it needs to do at least two, more like three or four, as many as we can stuff in there at once. Ten pounds of story in a five-pound sack.
Take the one I've got on my plate right now. The original query from the person I work with Fantasy Flight Games was, "Are you willing to write a story about Character and Group? Something to flesh them out."
Me: "Sure! What do you think of Scenario?"
FFG: "Sounds good. Maybe you could work in how Character feels about Key Theme, and also expand a bit on Group's Main Focus."
Me: "I lean toward having Character feel this way about Key Theme, because that lets me make a contrast with Previously Mentioned Backstory Character. And for Group, maybe Side Character says XYZ -- that adds depth to their personality because of Probable Reader Interpretation. Heck, I could even put in Callback to Other Plot A, in a way that layers in some ambiguity."
FFG: "Great!"
Me: "OOOH. And -- just spitballing here -- but given the timing, what if we say that Side Character also has Information about Other Plot B, which of course they interpret in Particular Way?"
FFG: "Go for it. But maybe spin it a bit more to the left to emphasize Aspect."
Me: "Awesome. I'll have an outline for you shortly."
It could have just been a story about Character and Group. It probably would have been a perfectly fine story. But the more we can build up these elements, expanding on some things and contrasting with others, making callbacks to previous material and introducing points of linkage in all directions, the richer the fiction becomes.
Not all of this will stand out, of course. Sometimes the work the fiction is doing is fairly subterranean, and only somebody who's digging into the craft of it will notice that, for example, we're spinning that last bit to heighten a particular flavor. The overall effect is there, though, and in the long run it pays off: you can poll the readership and they'll agree that Character Q would never do a particular thing, without you ever saying that outright, because you've put enough data points on the table that they can extrapolate as needed. Things become three-dimensional; they feel interconnected. The world feels real.
In my novels I have a lot more room to work with, but it's still a good lesson to bear in mind. Why just have two characters converse with each other, when their conversation could also be making metaphorical allusions to something from earlier and enriching the reader's understanding of someone else not present for that scene? Why solve conflicts one at a time, when the solution could be taking out two problems, creating a third, and sending a fourth in an unexpected new direction? This is pretty standard advice for writing, but I feel like the level to which I'm doing it here is higher than usual, and rewardingly so.
Sustaining that over the long run is tough, of course. On the other hand, this is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it will get. So I'll keep pumping narrative iron.
The context here is that I have a fairly strict word count for each of my fictions: 3000 words max if they're going into a pack, and 3000 with some wiggle room if they're being published on the website. That is . . . not a whole lot. And the story of L5R is so sprawling that even with a bunch of writers producing a bunch of fictions, making sure that everything gets mentioned and explored and moved forward means we can't afford to waste words. It isn't enough for a given fiction to do one thing; it needs to do at least two, more like three or four, as many as we can stuff in there at once. Ten pounds of story in a five-pound sack.
Take the one I've got on my plate right now. The original query from the person I work with Fantasy Flight Games was, "Are you willing to write a story about Character and Group? Something to flesh them out."
Me: "Sure! What do you think of Scenario?"
FFG: "Sounds good. Maybe you could work in how Character feels about Key Theme, and also expand a bit on Group's Main Focus."
Me: "I lean toward having Character feel this way about Key Theme, because that lets me make a contrast with Previously Mentioned Backstory Character. And for Group, maybe Side Character says XYZ -- that adds depth to their personality because of Probable Reader Interpretation. Heck, I could even put in Callback to Other Plot A, in a way that layers in some ambiguity."
FFG: "Great!"
Me: "OOOH. And -- just spitballing here -- but given the timing, what if we say that Side Character also has Information about Other Plot B, which of course they interpret in Particular Way?"
FFG: "Go for it. But maybe spin it a bit more to the left to emphasize Aspect."
Me: "Awesome. I'll have an outline for you shortly."
It could have just been a story about Character and Group. It probably would have been a perfectly fine story. But the more we can build up these elements, expanding on some things and contrasting with others, making callbacks to previous material and introducing points of linkage in all directions, the richer the fiction becomes.
Not all of this will stand out, of course. Sometimes the work the fiction is doing is fairly subterranean, and only somebody who's digging into the craft of it will notice that, for example, we're spinning that last bit to heighten a particular flavor. The overall effect is there, though, and in the long run it pays off: you can poll the readership and they'll agree that Character Q would never do a particular thing, without you ever saying that outright, because you've put enough data points on the table that they can extrapolate as needed. Things become three-dimensional; they feel interconnected. The world feels real.
In my novels I have a lot more room to work with, but it's still a good lesson to bear in mind. Why just have two characters converse with each other, when their conversation could also be making metaphorical allusions to something from earlier and enriching the reader's understanding of someone else not present for that scene? Why solve conflicts one at a time, when the solution could be taking out two problems, creating a third, and sending a fourth in an unexpected new direction? This is pretty standard advice for writing, but I feel like the level to which I'm doing it here is higher than usual, and rewardingly so.
Sustaining that over the long run is tough, of course. On the other hand, this is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it will get. So I'll keep pumping narrative iron.
