Character and genre
Jan. 9th, 2018 04:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm trying to figure plot structure for the long and rambling world exploration I poured into Scrivener the other day. But I'm on here instead of in Scrivener, because it has so many buttons it feels too important for scribbly bits. Which is sort of opposites of what it's trying, but I'll figure it later.
I have a character, Dana, and a place she starts, this world being bored and lonely, and a place they finish, a whole other world with magic and so forth where they get a found family and them trying to put their love life in order ends up changing the world. At one point they have to control the choosing of the next Queen in order to have a chance to get their husband back. It gets a bit epic.
And I read enough fanfic I keep thinking of it in terms of pairings, how I'd tag it if it went on Ao3, which due to my habit of lightly sanding the serial numbers off to populate a world it pretty much could. But then the story goes Dana & Rip (or Rip/Dana unrequited), Dana/Valor, Dana/Cold/Heatwave, Dana/Eo!Wells, Dana/Sara, Dana & Kira from a whole other canon. Maybe some others if I get bored and they're pretty. Which... isn't how series go on Ao3 at all. Like, you either pick one endgame pairing to keep going through all of it, or everyone there for the romance gets annoyed in turns. Love triangles with lots of angsty choosing, or preferably endgame OT3, sure, but not just a whole string of relationships while they figure out what they want.
TV shows do the string of relationships thing. Different seasons, different beloveds, until they play out that angle and either change the partner or change their personality (I say thinking Buffy and Angel, Riley, Spike - they kept changing who they were and how they related to Buffy, because the first angle was Done). And the thing is I have seen the ship wars. It's a perfectly reasonable way to do story, illuminating different aspects of the protagonist as they go along, but it doesn't half annoy subsets of fans.
I think there's a romance reader assumption about leaving with the one you came with. Or just, readers get introduced to one set of characters, and they want to see how it works out for them. So if you start a story where the point isn't so much which monogamy they end up in but more the empire they build along the way, how do you signal that, when you're still planning to make romance a central feature? Or do you just accept you're going to annoy a lot of people, and get on with changing things?
I can start it with Dana meeting their husband. That's a perfectly reasonable opening scene even. But then Dana will go wandering off with other loves, as will their husband, and not in the way you get where it's a parade of unsuitable suitors to highlight how well they should fit. The relationship web is going to stay. And all with varying degrees of romance and sex and family and politics involved.
So the story is doing its own thing, and as well as a problem of audience expectation, that's giving me problems with the structure.
I think that's because Dana's basic problem isn't romance, it's more ... how to structure their found family so it's stable and long lasting and doesn't mind them wandering off on adventures for ages at a time. Like, that's a tricky one. I don't see a problem with having a partner in every port, except there's time and money management issues, and stuff about reputation and if people expect you to keep your word given what they can see of your love life. And a lot of people have jobs that take them away from their kids for long stretches, I went to boarding school and my idea of normal on this one is probably an outlier, but in any given society there's expected social structures for raising children, and things that are meant to give them the requires stability.
So if Dana's baseline is being used to sailors in the family, and personally planning to explore the new world and go poking around for treasure in rpg adventurer fashion, then making that mesh with the social expectations of anyone they might have a family with is... potentially tricky.
And while it is physically possible to bring babies on digs with you, it is far from advisable. Especially when demons and undead are actually expected.
So who they marry and so forth is a necessary subset of that, but getting married doesn't resolve the actual problem, especially if who they marry and who they have a kid with are not the same. And for assorted reasons they'll need an extra person to actually have the baby, so, while it will be tempting for some chapters to marry the woman and make a simple family unit, that is not where I was going with that bit.
And then there's the tension between the simple socially expected version, any of the many of them, and the sprawling complexity that is the average life, let alone the adventurer model.
And like, one big reason Dana's life isn't simple is because they don't drop everything and decide family is the most important thing. They decide their studies, which are a bit indiana jones as study goes, are the most important thing. Babies remain as baffling to them as ever, even after they have one, so they keep wandering off and sending presents home. There's an awful lot of stories that are dedicated to portraying that behaviour as Wrong. And I think that's boring. Kids need someone, they don't specifically need a very distracted someone who vaguely approves of their existence but finds them stressfully boring. Not even if that someone is biologically connected. There have to be other models for the people who just aren't going to get any good at parenting. It can't be selfish to not want to do the standard thing, there has to be other ways to do. Like sending money home. And boarding school. Which goes a bit wrong in several specifics, mostly bullying and loneliness and not having alternatives to go to, but in general is just a way of keeping the kids together so they all get their needs met at once, which seems like it ought to work. Also a small community would have all the isolation problems anyway, just with a different adult to child ratio and age group mix. But if all the kids together are being looked after the same, and that meets minimum requirements, then lots of the adults can do other things, which seems efficient and reasonable.
If the whole thing is set in vaguely medieval magic land then all the kids are going to be following their parents around learning how to do their job from a very early age, and 95% of them are going to be farming. Which still involves spending all your time with your kids, but with a lot more child labour. Not the most awesome model.
I mean if the problem is how to get a baby raised while you pursue a career in academia, fantasy land edition, that's a very different tour of the unsuitables than a simple romantic partner. Dana can marry a Scholar but it won't solve the childcare arrangements. Not the early years anyway, boarding school is very much assumed for later.
I've read Bujold so I know how the story goes when they're doing a trial run of raising a disabled child together. But if there's a lot of different expectations for a lot of different ages, there's a lot of different stories to negotiate.
Like, romance with someone from a different religion is one thing, deciding how to raise your kids is quite another.
I think the first bit of the story starts when Dana realises that there is a baby on the way and figures they have about six months to persuade the mother they should be part of the kid's life. So they set out to be Respectable. In a whole new society in a whole new fantasy world with magic and very different arrangements for some things. Bumping into different definitions of Respectable can keep the story going for ages. And the they'd get almost to baby time and realise they'd set out to impress some vague idea of society at large, but they actually need to be real specific about impressing one woman, and they've screwed it up bad. So they set out to fix it with Drama and doing something big to win them over? But the woman in question is so done of Drama they are anti impressed.
... so somewhere very near the end of the book and pregnancy it occurs to Dana to just ask. I mean, it would be a much shorter story if they ask at the start, since the answer isn't anything particularly fairytale. I dislike miscommunication plots though, so, it could be Dana heard it at the start but thought that was too simple and went all Extra instead? And then the plot is learning to listen to your potential partner rather than society at large.
Yes, better.
Like, if the list is just like, become legal citizen with a job and a place to live, and Dana sets off to basically build a palace full of rich stuff, that's the sort of thing someone panic about unexpected baby could do, because everything has to be Perfect. Except the mum well knows there is no Perfect, they just wanted someone to bump along with. And like, Dana gets stuck on getting into Society and on the lists for all the best schools, but the mum is more concerned with having food on the table every single day? Dana taking big risks to impress would be counterproductive.
And basically Dana is making a big nest and being all 'look at my shiny life, look at my feathers, don't you want a piece of this?'
but the mum is like, nope.
but decides they can still visit on weekends as long as they pay child support.
which isn't exactly the ending they thought they wanted, but gets them both what they actually want.
... but I don't know if readers will be happy with it, because all the other stories are a different shape.
But having a kid who someone else looks after while you get on with your career seems like a happy ending to me.
And all that peacock bit in the middle means meeting people who are interesting and fit in the life Dana is actually building, so that romances out pretty good.
... it means their future husband is more or less a partner in trying to impress the mother of their child, which is a different shape of happily ever after. Lets raise students together and leave early years to others...
Which may not be a Respectable dream but seems like a practical one.
I think that bit of rambling told me where one novel starts and ends. Covers five or six months, main tension between Respectable Expected and what protagonist actually wants, kind of sticks with a main romance but without that being the point exactly.
Don't know if anyone will want to read it.
I mean the trying to be impressive involves a lot of messing around with magic and rifts and demons and stuff, so it will also have a plot sort of plot, but knowing what the characters actually want is what to hang the adventures on, so.
Shall see if I actually get anything written.
I have a character, Dana, and a place she starts, this world being bored and lonely, and a place they finish, a whole other world with magic and so forth where they get a found family and them trying to put their love life in order ends up changing the world. At one point they have to control the choosing of the next Queen in order to have a chance to get their husband back. It gets a bit epic.
And I read enough fanfic I keep thinking of it in terms of pairings, how I'd tag it if it went on Ao3, which due to my habit of lightly sanding the serial numbers off to populate a world it pretty much could. But then the story goes Dana & Rip (or Rip/Dana unrequited), Dana/Valor, Dana/Cold/Heatwave, Dana/Eo!Wells, Dana/Sara, Dana & Kira from a whole other canon. Maybe some others if I get bored and they're pretty. Which... isn't how series go on Ao3 at all. Like, you either pick one endgame pairing to keep going through all of it, or everyone there for the romance gets annoyed in turns. Love triangles with lots of angsty choosing, or preferably endgame OT3, sure, but not just a whole string of relationships while they figure out what they want.
TV shows do the string of relationships thing. Different seasons, different beloveds, until they play out that angle and either change the partner or change their personality (I say thinking Buffy and Angel, Riley, Spike - they kept changing who they were and how they related to Buffy, because the first angle was Done). And the thing is I have seen the ship wars. It's a perfectly reasonable way to do story, illuminating different aspects of the protagonist as they go along, but it doesn't half annoy subsets of fans.
I think there's a romance reader assumption about leaving with the one you came with. Or just, readers get introduced to one set of characters, and they want to see how it works out for them. So if you start a story where the point isn't so much which monogamy they end up in but more the empire they build along the way, how do you signal that, when you're still planning to make romance a central feature? Or do you just accept you're going to annoy a lot of people, and get on with changing things?
I can start it with Dana meeting their husband. That's a perfectly reasonable opening scene even. But then Dana will go wandering off with other loves, as will their husband, and not in the way you get where it's a parade of unsuitable suitors to highlight how well they should fit. The relationship web is going to stay. And all with varying degrees of romance and sex and family and politics involved.
So the story is doing its own thing, and as well as a problem of audience expectation, that's giving me problems with the structure.
I think that's because Dana's basic problem isn't romance, it's more ... how to structure their found family so it's stable and long lasting and doesn't mind them wandering off on adventures for ages at a time. Like, that's a tricky one. I don't see a problem with having a partner in every port, except there's time and money management issues, and stuff about reputation and if people expect you to keep your word given what they can see of your love life. And a lot of people have jobs that take them away from their kids for long stretches, I went to boarding school and my idea of normal on this one is probably an outlier, but in any given society there's expected social structures for raising children, and things that are meant to give them the requires stability.
So if Dana's baseline is being used to sailors in the family, and personally planning to explore the new world and go poking around for treasure in rpg adventurer fashion, then making that mesh with the social expectations of anyone they might have a family with is... potentially tricky.
And while it is physically possible to bring babies on digs with you, it is far from advisable. Especially when demons and undead are actually expected.
So who they marry and so forth is a necessary subset of that, but getting married doesn't resolve the actual problem, especially if who they marry and who they have a kid with are not the same. And for assorted reasons they'll need an extra person to actually have the baby, so, while it will be tempting for some chapters to marry the woman and make a simple family unit, that is not where I was going with that bit.
And then there's the tension between the simple socially expected version, any of the many of them, and the sprawling complexity that is the average life, let alone the adventurer model.
And like, one big reason Dana's life isn't simple is because they don't drop everything and decide family is the most important thing. They decide their studies, which are a bit indiana jones as study goes, are the most important thing. Babies remain as baffling to them as ever, even after they have one, so they keep wandering off and sending presents home. There's an awful lot of stories that are dedicated to portraying that behaviour as Wrong. And I think that's boring. Kids need someone, they don't specifically need a very distracted someone who vaguely approves of their existence but finds them stressfully boring. Not even if that someone is biologically connected. There have to be other models for the people who just aren't going to get any good at parenting. It can't be selfish to not want to do the standard thing, there has to be other ways to do. Like sending money home. And boarding school. Which goes a bit wrong in several specifics, mostly bullying and loneliness and not having alternatives to go to, but in general is just a way of keeping the kids together so they all get their needs met at once, which seems like it ought to work. Also a small community would have all the isolation problems anyway, just with a different adult to child ratio and age group mix. But if all the kids together are being looked after the same, and that meets minimum requirements, then lots of the adults can do other things, which seems efficient and reasonable.
If the whole thing is set in vaguely medieval magic land then all the kids are going to be following their parents around learning how to do their job from a very early age, and 95% of them are going to be farming. Which still involves spending all your time with your kids, but with a lot more child labour. Not the most awesome model.
I mean if the problem is how to get a baby raised while you pursue a career in academia, fantasy land edition, that's a very different tour of the unsuitables than a simple romantic partner. Dana can marry a Scholar but it won't solve the childcare arrangements. Not the early years anyway, boarding school is very much assumed for later.
I've read Bujold so I know how the story goes when they're doing a trial run of raising a disabled child together. But if there's a lot of different expectations for a lot of different ages, there's a lot of different stories to negotiate.
Like, romance with someone from a different religion is one thing, deciding how to raise your kids is quite another.
I think the first bit of the story starts when Dana realises that there is a baby on the way and figures they have about six months to persuade the mother they should be part of the kid's life. So they set out to be Respectable. In a whole new society in a whole new fantasy world with magic and very different arrangements for some things. Bumping into different definitions of Respectable can keep the story going for ages. And the they'd get almost to baby time and realise they'd set out to impress some vague idea of society at large, but they actually need to be real specific about impressing one woman, and they've screwed it up bad. So they set out to fix it with Drama and doing something big to win them over? But the woman in question is so done of Drama they are anti impressed.
... so somewhere very near the end of the book and pregnancy it occurs to Dana to just ask. I mean, it would be a much shorter story if they ask at the start, since the answer isn't anything particularly fairytale. I dislike miscommunication plots though, so, it could be Dana heard it at the start but thought that was too simple and went all Extra instead? And then the plot is learning to listen to your potential partner rather than society at large.
Yes, better.
Like, if the list is just like, become legal citizen with a job and a place to live, and Dana sets off to basically build a palace full of rich stuff, that's the sort of thing someone panic about unexpected baby could do, because everything has to be Perfect. Except the mum well knows there is no Perfect, they just wanted someone to bump along with. And like, Dana gets stuck on getting into Society and on the lists for all the best schools, but the mum is more concerned with having food on the table every single day? Dana taking big risks to impress would be counterproductive.
And basically Dana is making a big nest and being all 'look at my shiny life, look at my feathers, don't you want a piece of this?'
but the mum is like, nope.
but decides they can still visit on weekends as long as they pay child support.
which isn't exactly the ending they thought they wanted, but gets them both what they actually want.
... but I don't know if readers will be happy with it, because all the other stories are a different shape.
But having a kid who someone else looks after while you get on with your career seems like a happy ending to me.
And all that peacock bit in the middle means meeting people who are interesting and fit in the life Dana is actually building, so that romances out pretty good.
... it means their future husband is more or less a partner in trying to impress the mother of their child, which is a different shape of happily ever after. Lets raise students together and leave early years to others...
Which may not be a Respectable dream but seems like a practical one.
I think that bit of rambling told me where one novel starts and ends. Covers five or six months, main tension between Respectable Expected and what protagonist actually wants, kind of sticks with a main romance but without that being the point exactly.
Don't know if anyone will want to read it.
I mean the trying to be impressive involves a lot of messing around with magic and rifts and demons and stuff, so it will also have a plot sort of plot, but knowing what the characters actually want is what to hang the adventures on, so.
Shall see if I actually get anything written.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-09 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-14 06:36 am (UTC)