After about eight months of working through my second novel, I find myself five long chapters in and at a narrative impasse. Unlike my first novel manuscript (a thriller that I had to plot out meticulously to make sure it all worked together), I wanted this story to flow out of the characters as I get to know them. I have scenes in my head, a bit of an ending, and a decent grasp on who they are and what drives them as characters.
The challenge that I now have is one of scope and tension.
Originally, my plan was for the story itself to take place over the course of maybe two or three years. It’s a romantic comedy, so I wanted to give the people what they want and let young beautiful people fall in love and have a happily ever after.
I still might. In fact, either way I go, I am intentionally writing what I hope will be a crowd pleaser. Something that goes where you want it to go, even if it takes some time and unexpected turns getting there. If you know me and that seems odd to you, all I can say is that age changes you and sometimes the best thing for the story is to let it go where it wants to go.
Back to scope and tension and whether or not I should pivot in my approach.
Scope and storytelling
As a writer, one of the most important parts of writing is scope. How much time does the story take? How wide or narrow is the lens through which the readers inhabit the story? How many characters? How many settings? Does it all take place at one time, or does it sweep across multiple periods of time?
This is usually one of the first things I decide when setting up a story. It’s a predetermined limiter that drives storytelling decisions for the entirety of the project. I think of the difference between Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. One takes place in a matter of days, the other over multiple generations. For each of those to be written the way they were, they needed the scope. War and Peace couldn’t be told in a few days and Metamorphosis wouldn’t work over generations.
I think I’ll stand behind this statement: Scope is the first thing you should determine when writing a story.
Ted talk over.
When I started my current WIP novel, I had a particular scope in mind. But then, probably while in the shower, I had an idea that would change everything. What if I told the story over the course of multiple decades in the character’s lives? What if instead of years, it was a lifetime?
Well, needless to say, it changes things, and right now I’m at a point where I need to choose to pivot toward the new scope or continue on my path. I’m 60/40 toward pivot right now, but to do so I would have to write a believable 80’s, early 2000’s, 2010’s and current time.
You may be wondering why I would put myself through this when I already have decent momentum on my current path. Well, that leads me to my second challenge: tension.
Tension and storytelling
A story without tension is not a story. There has to be some type of obstacle, villain, or challenge keeping the protagonist from getting what they want. That tension is what moves the story forward. Although scope is still the first thing I think you should decide when writing, defining what drives tension is probably the most important thing you decide when writing a story.
It’s why I think the villain makes or breaks the story. In my current story, as I got deeper into it, I was struggling with the thing I thought would create the proper tension. Without giving much away, the initial tension to my current novel was going to be a combination of a secret shared and timing that never worked out.
My first clue that I would struggle with this as I got into the story should have been the simple fact that I had two ambiguous things driving the tension. Ambiguity doesn’t work with storytelling, and usually you want one villain. If you ever watched season 2 of True Detective, that was the storytelling problem that made it pale in comparison to season 1. They never picked a bad guy and the story fell apart because of it.
I don’t want to make the same mistake. It pains me to have to go back right now and rewrite parts of the story to fit a different timeline, but I think I might have to pivot.
Have you ever run into the same problem? Did you pivot or not?