How do you write a story with many things happening —all seemingly unconnected?
That’s the problem I hit full force into with the TEC series.
It wasn’t something that I realised would be a problem when I started.
I just assumed people would be happy to experience the story, as long as it was interesting enough. They would collect up the clues and details as things progressed. Who cares if the plot has disconcerting elements that run parallel…
But it seems that isn’t good enough.
At least not based on the ‘user testing’ I’ve undertaken.
It seems I have a weird brain.
People don’t like complexity if it doesn’t [appear to] add up to something.
And I can’t convince readers that it will all be ok in the end. Because that isn’t a platform an author gets —not directly. And I can’t give it away at the beginning, because that’s not what mysteries do.
So comes the tricky part of making even elements that are disjointed, or disconnect, appear as if they have some kind of relation. At least in a much more obvious manner.
That has been my key learning on writing TEOWAD:EP1, EP2 and EP3.
Because there are a lot of threads.
And because I don’t want to annoy my readers.
And because some of the threads are in flashback.
Whilst others are in a different cadence all together.
Some might even be in another spacetime.
What I have discovered so far isn’t rocket science (Ed: how would you know?), it isn’t anything groundbreaking (Ed: again, have you done much of that recently?), it is probably completely obvious.
However… I have approached this writing in the same way I do everything —when building on my lonesome— which is to go back to scratch, break it down, and build up, slowly, over a long time.
Essentially it’s doing two things:
Gradual introduction.
Multiple hints and motifs that hark back in echoes of other places.
The danger with the first is that people start to forget certain things. I have no idea yet if I’ve got the balance correct, in terms of frequency or cadence.
The danger with the second is to infer with a heavy hand. Which can give too much away, or even appear repetitive. Or, it’s making things too subtle and what I’m aiming for doesn’t work.
My beta readers seem to have noticed some elements, whilst lost others. I’ve been surprised each time a different person reads, because they pick up different things whilst missing other elements. Perhaps that is natural (Ed: yep, as I said, you have no clue what you are doing). And then we hit into the subjective nature of everything… which is why ‘user testing’ can only go so far.
As other people have written, building a story for a reader is about trust. Especially when it comes to a series. People have to trust the author to a degree that they aren’t going to be left high and dry, or baffled in bohemia.
But how can they trust a new author?
And… it seems it isn’t only one level of trust.
For each of your levels that your book exists at, the same trust needs to be there.
Now that is an undertaking.
TEOWAD will definitely be appreciable on a purely action-based level, a spectacle.
It will be enjoyable for the balance (hopefully) between humour and darkness.
It will also be resonant on the emotional side —at least as much as my head will allow.
There will be noticeable patterns that some people will pick up.
And it will have the building overarch that I really hope someone beyond myself will realise, but this is the area where I’m mostly thinking my skill as a writer will let me down. I’m not a writer. I can (and would love to), perhaps, call myself a storyteller. But I have come to realise that being a writer is so many things more than I ever first thought.
And I’m not good enough.
But hopefully I’m at least good enough to —just about— get the idea across.
An idea I’ve had for a very long time.
So long, in fact, it goes back to a time where my brain used to wonder how a world would work if rather than moving through it, the world itself rolled. Like some stepping creature on a ball. Clearly, it can work if there is only one creature, but as soon as you add more it is a concept that breaks. It’s the kind of notion that a school kid thinks about.
The kind of mad ideas I see now in both my son and daughter.
But this other idea has stuck with me, through decades. It’s an idea that doesn’t break. And it has always interested me. It is still quite, quite mad, but hey, show me something in the world today that isn’t a few notes short of an advertising jingle.
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