It’s Simple, It’s Complicated, It’s a Novel
By Donald Maass | May 4, 2022 |
How nice when a novel boils down to one simple idea. Oh, my life as a literary agent gets easy! Pitching becomes a breeze. Everyone from editors to reviewers are happy too. There’s little to explain. No one needs to be sold. The story sells itself. The premise rings like a starting bell and the horses are off and galloping away. The novel has practically written itself in our brains.
Except…
High concept novels have instant appeal but reading a novel doesn’t happen in an instant. There are hundreds of pages to fill. With what? That’s where this business of writing fiction starts to get complicated. A good idea gets you going but going where? How do you hold readers’ attention for so many pages? How do you keep readers immersed? How do you not disappoint?
And what about the flip side? Suppose you are writing a novel that you can’t easily explain? What if it’s complicated from the get-go? What if there’s no pitch, no log line, no elevator, no reductive copy that can capture your story? What if what you’re capturing is life itself in all its shades of gray and nuance? What if being complicated is the whole point?
Either way, how are you supposed to make your sweeping novel simple when you’ve got ten minutes or less to sell it on that awful day while sitting across a tiny table from a literary agent in a room packed with other whiz-bang writers pitching their novels at top speed? It isn’t fair. Anyway, isn’t fiction supposed to work against our Tweet-short, Insta-blip culture in the first place? It’s long form, for god’s sake. We’re supposed to get a lot out of it, not get done with it in as little time as possible. Right?
So, should fiction be simple or complicated? If a novel is simple to explain doesn’t that make it hard to spin out at sufficient length? If it’s too complicated to explain does that make it too murky for readers to grasp? Hey, let’s be honest. No one wants to write Finnegan’s Wake. At the same time, no one wants to write an Aesop fable. (Try putting that in your query e-mail, eh? My 423-word epic tale captures a universal truth for the ages. Good luck with that one.)
Breathe. High concept novels have wisdom to glean from irreducible fiction. At the same time, complicated stories can benefit from finding within themselves the simple truths that are the secret source of their power. Simple story ideas need to get complicated. Complicated novels grain force if, when all is read and done, they can be summed up simply.
Let’s make this idea easy…and at the same time complex.
The Simple Business of Impact
Novels are about characters and what we remember most about characters is what they are like. They intrigue us. They entertain us. They surprise us because we never know exactly what they’re going to do or say. They can be stuck in place but nevertheless journey. They can change but somehow remain exactly like us. We relate to them no matter how different their times or circumstances. We wouldn’t want their problems but their lives are so dramatic that we wish we could be them, or at least speak or dress as well as them.
There is a difference, however, between protagonists and secondary characters. Main characters generally present us with a complexity that makes them feel real and fascinating. Secondaries, by contrast, can be written to single out a human drive or foible. Think Mrs. Bennet, Hermione Granger or Eeyore.
Antagonists, too, can be complex and understandable or, the other way around, simple and beyond understanding. Overall, I find that antagonists are the most memorable when they present us with a puzzle. When we don’t understand villains, we somehow cannot let them go. We are compelled to create their origins stories. Think Mrs. Danvers, Nurse Ratched, Hannibal Lecter or the Wicked Witch of the West.
Society as a whole is in reality a complex construct, but in stories it can break down into stark divisions. At the same time, what is society except a collection of simple human hopes, fears and behaviors? Any one of those can seize control of mass numbers of people and, in story terms, can turn disturbing when those human traits grow predictable, ugly and/or unstoppable. Think Oliver Twist, 1984 or To Kill a Mockingbird.
Sometimes an author’s intention is broad and encompassing, for example in sagas and epics. It’s not wrong to want to show us a lot but what unifies and simplifies a sprawling story? If the perspective is not a single character seen over time, it then is either successive generations or a kaleidoscope of points of view. Whatever the case there is a lens, or there are multiple lenses, focused on a simple question, such as: Who am I? Who are we? What makes this place the place that it is? The answers are multifold but without simple driving questions to unify vast experiences we will quickly feel lost.
Another way to unify a sprawling or a sweeping experience is to build it around a single objective or event. Odysseus had many adventures but his main goal was to return home. Hamlet muses at length about the human condition but, really, he has just one job to do. Mrs. Dalloway, meanwhile, has much to tell us about a woman’s experience but all of it is told in the span of one day. Jay Gatsby represents the excesses of an entire decade but the true excess is his simple desire to win back his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, which he does with tragic results.
Novels that encompass all of society are often built around simple and singular tragedies, injustices and crimes. The clash of cultures in A Passage to India, for instance, is filtered through an alleged assault and the subsequent trial. The Hate U Give obtains its drive from one police shooting of a Black teenager. Always there is a protagonist caught squarely in the middle of conflicting social forces.
When a story intention grows as grand as capturing the human condition, the effect can be strong when it causes us to look in a mirror. Mirrors come in many forms. Robots and cyborgs. (The Foundation series, The Murderbot Diaries.) Apocalypse. (On the Beach, The Stand.) Last one alive. (I Am Legend, Bird Box.) Survival. (Lord of the Flies, The Life of Pi, The Martian.) War. (Too many examples to mention.) Social survival. (The Handmaiden’s Tale, Beauty Queens.) Ghosts. (The Turn of the Screw, Beloved.) Svengali characters. (The Magus, The Secret History.) Articles of clothing. (Pearl earring, red slippers, traveling pants.) An animal. (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Warhorse.) Philosophy, faith. (The Stranger, Siddhartha, The Prophet.)
Baseball. Chess. Quilting. Clubs. Grand Central Station. The list goes on. The point is that a subject as broad as life itself is best approached through a tight focus. The narrower the window, in a way, the wider the view. It is of course not enough just to have a cool idea. A simple concept or focus is only the center of gravity around which a thousand complications and nuances will orbit. Without that center, though, the gyre widens and widens until it flies apart.
Complex stories are also punctuated by high moments. Atticus’s summation to the jury in the trial of Tom Robinson. “Reader, I married him.” Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her sister’s place in The Hunger Games. The deaths of Beth March, Lenny Small, Alaska Young, Johnny Cade. (“Stay gold, Ponyboy.”) The meaning of “the silence of the lambs”. The twist in Gone Girl. High moments are emotional punches and hoorays. A complex story can come down to just those, the highly human, ticking seconds of living that makes us who we are—and which make a complex story ultimately simple.
Does any of what we’ve been thinking about today have a use in your WIP?
Practical Complexity and Simplicity Made Simple
- What contradiction inherent in human nature does your protagonist embody? Show each side at work.
- What single human trait does one particular secondary character represent? Exaggerate that and show us how. When is this character the most inflexible? When does this character become harmful, comic or exasperating?
- How is the main problem facing your character one that none of us would ever want to face? Make it more agonizing.
- How is the main problem facing your protagonist one that, in one way or another, faces all of us? Make it, in one way, more ordinary.
- Got an antagonist? Twist that character in some way that is maniacal, extreme or evil. Don’t tell us why, but do give that character more power and scope. What’s the worst thing he/she can possibly do?
- Your protagonist may not know it, but he/she is on a universal human quest. For what? What does it take to answer that question, find that self, or arrive at that place? Add experiences that put your MC on that road, through its twists and turns, and finally to a destination as unsought as it is important.
- What is the one simple thing your protagonist must do? List everything that makes that impossible, then add a few challenges more.
- What is the object, idea, group, or place around which your protagonist’s story revolves? Make it central enough to serve as your novel’s title and icon cover image.
- Can you compress your story’s timeframe? What can you invert? In what way can the storyteller (that’s you) manipulate the tale to conceal, falsely foreshadow, create a pattern, work a trick, or in any other way play with the reader’s head?
- The social forces at work in your story world also work directly on your protagonist. How? What conflict does that create? What tragedy results?
- What in this story world is the mirror to our human nature? What is the microcosm? How central to the novel can you make that element? Can you focus the whole novel around it?
- Somewhere in the story, wring our hearts. Say, I love you. Say, I forgive you. Say farewell. Cause us, your readers, to exclaim: Ah ha! Oh no! Get away! Ha, he had that coming! Please, please, please! Never again, not in a million years! Now I’ve seen everything! All is lost! Praise God, it’s a miracle!
- What’s the worst mistake that your protagonist can make? Uh-oh.
- What is the most heroic thing your protagonist can possibly do? Go ahead. Now more than ever, we need heroes.
Simple story concepts spin off complex developments. Complex stories have at their heart a simple human truth. Having either firmly in hand will make the writing process easier. Simple? Complicated? A novel is both—and so is writing one.
What is your simple story idea which will turn complex? Or, inversely, how is your complex story underpinned by a simple truth?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
As always, lots to think about.
Think, yes, but then write!
I’m glad I stumbled on the complicated book/simple idea dichotomy very early in my writing process, even though it happened completely by accident. I was wanting to write a big sprawling coming-of-age epic, generally being a fan of coming-of-age epics, and decided to think back on my favorites as part of the research.
So, The Prydain Chronicles. Taran learns to be a kinder, deeper person while he develops himself as a badass hero. Earthsea. Ged gains great power, learns the horrors of bearing it, and eventually gives it up. The Name of the Wind. Well there’s this guy named Kvothe, and…
And…
Um. Maybe it’s been a while, and I’m just not remembering?
So I started rereading the novel, and put it down. And picked it back up again, and put it down. And again. And again.
Huh.
It seems that what originally kept me reading was the pleasure of seeing what was over the next hill, and when there wasn’t an overt overarching something I could articulate, its reread value evaporated instantly.
And I did not want to replicate that.
I settled on giving my book a clear progression. Huckleberry Finn and Jim get on a raft and travel down the Mississippi, Jason and the Argonauts sail across the known world to fetch a Golden Fleece, and my Bronze Age Greek accountant gets stuck with a terrible boss, and this awful boss tells him he has to assess the taxes for the twelve wealthiest families in the country before he can get paid.
Plenty of room for sprawling misadventure on the way to and from these families’ estates, plenty of room for character growth as our protagonist has to deal with umpteen numbers of people…but since this was my first time around the block, I knew it would be too challenging to pull off an idea on the strength of character growth alone.
So: It’s like Heracles, but taxes. And there’s this poor lonely guy who is as kind as as possible to others, and gradually develops the strength to let them love him back.
I used to think (and teach) that fiction ultimately is about one of two things: love or death. Now I’ll have to add a third fundamental basis for a story: taxes. Seriously, I love that story idea. How epic…and yet how simple.
Your post today supports what I’m doing with my novel: one major event that flows out and affects the lives of other characters, changing them, making them size up their own actions. And I smiled when you re-created the “meeting the agent” moment. A few years ago I did an oral pitch and in seconds, the agent said angrily that she would never think of even considering my book, because of the past history of the antagonist. Okay. She has that choice. I walked away, wondering. Then later I reread one of your comments: “don’t restrain her.” Thanks, Don. Querying soon.
Ah. The stone and the pond effect? Terrific. Can’t wait to hear more. Or less, in a query I suppose. Regardless, speed on! Glad there’s been something useful in my comments.
Don, you’ve outdone yourself. I hope all the readers of today’s post realize the depth of reading and industry experience required to boil down such a complex topic into one blog post, and again into these provocative questions. This one’s a keeper.
Coming from a highly perspicacious observer of fiction craft as Kathryn Craft, that’s a big compliment. I appreciate it, too. I usually pull together my posts in about three hours. This one took all day!
First of all: What Kathryn said. Bigtime. But then you had to go and say this?
I usually pull together my posts in about three hours.
Okay, now I *really* hate you! :) Mine take me freaking days to write!
Great post, Donald.
I’m with you, Keith. God, I hate this Moss guy.
Ahem.
The simple truth at the heart of my latest: We are driven by impulses we barely recognize, but they ultimately lead us toward a greater devotion to those we truly love.
Hey Don — Sustaining food for thought, as always. I’ve made my peace with complexity, and the quest for the simple truths that come of it. I’ve decided I’d rather strive to have a deep and lasting impact on dozens than instantly appeal to thousands, only to be quickly consumed and forgotten. I suppose the real immortals are those few that have instant appeal *and* make a deep impact. Alas, that one’s not for me this time around. But hey, who knows–maybe the dozens will include a few beyond my friends and family. Fingers crossed, and onward!
Here’s to epic sweep, and those willing to make the journey. Thanks for keeping us thinking and striving.
I’m not sure that you’ve abandoned the idea of simplicity in your epic. Vahldan’s volume, anyway, sprawls but is unified, ask me, by the central questions, Who am I? What am I supposed to do? Several characters frame those questions for him along the way. He is cautioned, tested and loved. And in the end becomes the leader that only he can be. Epic, yes, but with a gravitational center.
I haven’t written in over a year. Don, your questions are baiting me to revisit my WIP and see what motivating questions my secondary characters can pose to my MC. I’m intrigued with what she might find out about herself.
Thank You for the post this morning Don.
One of your bullet points that stood out to me and how it relates to my WIP is this: “What is the object, idea, group, or place around which your protagonist’s story revolves? Make it central enough to serve as your novel’s title and icon cover image.”
The working title for my WIP is ‘Randy The Good Liberal’ and I think it matches the basic idea of the story.
BTW per your suggestion, i read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Talking To Strangers’ and it’s helping with the deeper ideas in my WIP, so thanks again for that.
The Good Liberal. Ha! Love that. Echoes of Swift, Cervantes and Pratchett? No sure, but I can always count on one thing in your writing: it will be original.
The story I’m working on right now is sprawling over generations but at the heart of it is that these story people cannot save themselves, try as they might, they end up worse off. The help is literally a Deus ex machina. Still trying to figure it out but really enjoying daydreaming and writing it.
Hi Don: I like what you say about antagonists in this post. “Twist that character in some way that is maniacal, extreme or evil. Don’t tell us why, but do give that character more power and scope.” I have a question though. You say “Don’t tell us why …” the villain is extreme or evil? I’m not clear on what you mean exactly. Doesn’t the protagonist or reader need to know the motivation of the villain? Can you explain further? (I am rereading your 5 Steps to “Empowering Antagonists” in your book The Fire In Fiction. Always so helpful!)
Great question. There is a tendency in contemporary literature to explain antagonists. I understand why, yet the most memorable villains of all time do not have back stories. I think that is because an adversary explained has less force. When I teach antagonist development, I ask writers not to dive into the antagonist’s history but to build the antagonist’s case. Not psychoanalyze the villain but rather justify him. When bad guys have “right” on their side they are both scarier and more real. A villain’s motivation is better rooted in his beliefs than in his past. Does that help?
Yes, and thank you, Don. As always, your insights are so meaningful.
Don, I don’t know if your comment helped Paula, but it sure as heck helped me! Thaanks!
“A simple concept or focus is only the center of gravity around which a thousand complications and nuances will orbit.”
There it is, in a single perfect sentence: the reconciliation of two seemingly contradictory principles into the essence of what makes a great story, Wow. I’m ordering the coffee mug with that sentence engraved on it.
Barbara, I’m glad you pulled that sentence out. I seemed to have glazed over it. The image of the complications “orbiting” the central concept gives it an organized feeling.
Thanks, Barbara. Sprawling stories work when they have a simple question at their center. Simple concept stories work when the simple idea spins off many questions and complications. Yeah, pretty easy when you look at it that way. And yes, Paula, I agree. This dual way of looking at story structure can keep a novel organized even in the messy middle and muddy fourth draft stage. Appreciate your appreciation!
“Ah ha! Oh no! Get away! Ha, he had that coming! Please, please, please! Never again, not in a million years! Now I’ve seen everything! All is lost! Praise God, it’s a miracle!”
Don, can I borrow this for my Aesop’s fable pitch, filtered through the Shakespearean chorus of literary critics (who are all on their third drinks) as the voices?
To come, the second passage, after their fourth drinks, with more cowbell. Everyone who exits will be pursued by a bear.
Your post today was superb.
More cowbell! Yes! Ha-ha! Seriously, in a song arrangement a cowbell on all four of a four-beat measure (as opposed to the two-four snare drum rock beat) provides instant forward drive. A lesson for fiction. The literary critics in your piece may be a satiric device but they’re on to something.
Don, thanks for sharing these insights. The questions you pose in this post will help me to sharpen the characters and the story in my WIP. My premise centers on addressing the political polarization plaguing our country. I approached this by focusing on the concept of triangles. My main character is an aspiring politician who involved in both a political triangle and, potentially, a love triangle. The story takes place during the 2016 election period. My belief is that people of good will should try to meet in the middle, but I try to get this point across without being preachy. Your post today could not have been more timely. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom on WU. All the best to you.
In fiction, three is a power number. Three wishes. Three riddles. Three tests. However, I see that I must add something to that: triangles! Thanks in return for that. It’s going into my bag of story tricks.
Don, back in the 80s I sent you a query. Don’t even remember what my WIP was, but it was rejected. Fear not. I don’t give up. So here I am again about to send another query about another novel, a murder mystery, the victim being the Mother Superior of a religious order. Time is 1965. Many crises and turning points in the world. My protagonist has lost his faith. Stuck in a convent to find the killer. I’m fearful, but older for sure, and wiser, I hope. I’ve read your book “The Emotional Craft,” and LOVE it. You’re so kind and encouraging even if you have to be brutal by nature of your career. Happy to have found this spot to drop in and say hello again.
As someone whose 9-to-5 job is writing back cover copy and catalog copy (boiling down the essence of sprawling fictional stories into 150-200 words that will persuade you to buy it and give it a whirl) I am keenly aware of this dichotomy. Some stories have plotlines that are easy to sell. Some…don’t. But I like writing the copy for those that are difficult to sum up far more than those that are easy.
In fiction writing, I am all about the BIG question focused through the singular character/conflict/experience. I’ve been watching some great videos by Dan Blank about defining your creative voice and figuring out the best ways to share that with your audience in terms of marketing and making connections and that has helped me realize a fundamental truth about why I write the kind of stories I write. Ultimately, I think they each contribute to this larger urge to understand what makes a particular person the way they are. All the things that go into them throughout their life to make them the person you see at THIS particular time in their life, and where they are going from there after the events of this particular story change them (for better or worse). So, all the complexities that make up one person, one organism, or one family or one friendship. The BIG inside the little. All the causes that contribute to the one effect.
Thanks for all the food for thought (and fuel for writing) as usual.
I write children’s picture books. Thanks for this post. It helps me wrap my head around the big that I need to compress into a 500 word or less story.
Just had to tweet one great line from the many great lines in this clip-and-save piece: “When we don’t understand villains, we somehow cannot let them go.” Thinking of some real-life villains I won’t mention here, but substitute your own to see the power of this in real life. Thanks for spending a day on this one. (Am adding it to my WIP in Scrivener, to ask and answer)
In The Secrets of Story, Matt Bird says that you should write a story that’s simple enough to leave room for characterization, and I agree with this. The last novel I wrote was a multi-POV sprawling mess. Compared to that, what I’m writing now is like holding a magnifying glass up to story to see it in its more focused, concentrated form. It is not a simple thing at all to do that though, like trying to trap a rainbow.