Entry tags:
Leaning into your premise
Just FYI, my latest book as Zoe, Dancer Dragon, is out on Amazon now.
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There's something I've been thinking about lately, after some conversations with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija about ... well, it didn't even start out about writing at all; it was just that she was looking for books set in circuses and observing how few books with circuses in the title and/or on the cover are actually ABOUT CIRCUSES. And then we got to talking about it, and now I'm seeing examples everywhere of books (and movies, TV shows, etc) that promise to be about something interesting and then disappoint because they don't lean in. There's a circus on the cover, but only one chapter is set there, or the whole book is set there but it might as well be anywhere because they never really do circusy things.
It's intriguing to me how often books/movies do this, and how I've never actually seen this (as such) in any advice I've ever read -- lean into your premise, your setting, whatever's unique about your characters. Use it. I guess it's sort of a Chekhov's gun kind of thing (that everything in the book should serve an eventual purpose) but it's not exactly that. It's more like, if you're going to put ghosts in your book, why not use them to do uniquely ghosty things rather than just floating onstage for their one moment? If your protagonist is a con artist, she shouldn't solve problems like a normal law-abiding person would! I think a number of the works of fiction that have disappointed me have done it because, on some level, they were failing to do this. I can remember being annoyed, for example, with books that tell you about somewhere fascinating the characters might go, but never actually take you there.
(Insert obligatory disclaimer that it also depends on what an individual finds interesting; some people will be there for the detailed descriptions of dressmaking and some really wish you'd skip the dresses and get straight to the murder, etc.)
But honestly, even if it's not something the reader is actually into, I think that writing it so that it fills the page makes it interesting. I could not have cared less about either sailing or the Napoleonic Wars, but Patrick O'Brian's books are wall-to-wall both of those things, and they actually make me care about page after page of nautical terminology and blow-by-blow descriptions of battles, because he cares. You can practically feel the creaking of the deck under your feet.
... And you know, like anything else, not everything interesting has to appear on the page; maybe being stuck somewhere the protagonist finds dull is the plot. But I mean, even there, the reader shouldn't be bored, reading it; the dullness of the setting should fill the page until it becomes fascinating, like the vivid grayness of Dorothy's Kansas. The issue is when, as a reader, you find yourself thinking, "Why did you even tell me about that interesting thing if you weren't going to show it?"
To be fair, Dancer Dragon probably could lean in a lot more than it does. If readers are reading it for detailed descriptions of ballroom dancing they're probably going to be disappointed. On the other hand, there's definitely dancing in it; it's just really more of a thing the plot wraps around than the main plot. There's also the problem that what I know about ballroom dancing could fill a very small thimble with room left over.
I got some negative reviews on the first book in the series, Bearista, because it didn't have enough coffee shop in it! I mean, you wouldn't think coffee shops are something that people reading a romance novel would really care about, but they actually did; the premise promised a big dude working in a coffee shop, but we actually only got a couple chapters of that before Plot Happened and he ended up exiting stage right pursued by bears (literally). In retrospect I think the book those readers wanted to read would have been a fascinating book, and maybe I should write that book eventually.
Anyway, I don't really have a point here so much as ... I don't think this should be treated as any kind of a hard-and-fast rule, but it's another tool in the toolkit for editing and tightening a flabby plot. If your story feels flat, maybe you need to lean into the premise a bit more.
--
There's something I've been thinking about lately, after some conversations with
rachelmanija about ... well, it didn't even start out about writing at all; it was just that she was looking for books set in circuses and observing how few books with circuses in the title and/or on the cover are actually ABOUT CIRCUSES. And then we got to talking about it, and now I'm seeing examples everywhere of books (and movies, TV shows, etc) that promise to be about something interesting and then disappoint because they don't lean in. There's a circus on the cover, but only one chapter is set there, or the whole book is set there but it might as well be anywhere because they never really do circusy things.It's intriguing to me how often books/movies do this, and how I've never actually seen this (as such) in any advice I've ever read -- lean into your premise, your setting, whatever's unique about your characters. Use it. I guess it's sort of a Chekhov's gun kind of thing (that everything in the book should serve an eventual purpose) but it's not exactly that. It's more like, if you're going to put ghosts in your book, why not use them to do uniquely ghosty things rather than just floating onstage for their one moment? If your protagonist is a con artist, she shouldn't solve problems like a normal law-abiding person would! I think a number of the works of fiction that have disappointed me have done it because, on some level, they were failing to do this. I can remember being annoyed, for example, with books that tell you about somewhere fascinating the characters might go, but never actually take you there.
(Insert obligatory disclaimer that it also depends on what an individual finds interesting; some people will be there for the detailed descriptions of dressmaking and some really wish you'd skip the dresses and get straight to the murder, etc.)
But honestly, even if it's not something the reader is actually into, I think that writing it so that it fills the page makes it interesting. I could not have cared less about either sailing or the Napoleonic Wars, but Patrick O'Brian's books are wall-to-wall both of those things, and they actually make me care about page after page of nautical terminology and blow-by-blow descriptions of battles, because he cares. You can practically feel the creaking of the deck under your feet.
... And you know, like anything else, not everything interesting has to appear on the page; maybe being stuck somewhere the protagonist finds dull is the plot. But I mean, even there, the reader shouldn't be bored, reading it; the dullness of the setting should fill the page until it becomes fascinating, like the vivid grayness of Dorothy's Kansas. The issue is when, as a reader, you find yourself thinking, "Why did you even tell me about that interesting thing if you weren't going to show it?"
To be fair, Dancer Dragon probably could lean in a lot more than it does. If readers are reading it for detailed descriptions of ballroom dancing they're probably going to be disappointed. On the other hand, there's definitely dancing in it; it's just really more of a thing the plot wraps around than the main plot. There's also the problem that what I know about ballroom dancing could fill a very small thimble with room left over.
I got some negative reviews on the first book in the series, Bearista, because it didn't have enough coffee shop in it! I mean, you wouldn't think coffee shops are something that people reading a romance novel would really care about, but they actually did; the premise promised a big dude working in a coffee shop, but we actually only got a couple chapters of that before Plot Happened and he ended up exiting stage right pursued by bears (literally). In retrospect I think the book those readers wanted to read would have been a fascinating book, and maybe I should write that book eventually.
Anyway, I don't really have a point here so much as ... I don't think this should be treated as any kind of a hard-and-fast rule, but it's another tool in the toolkit for editing and tightening a flabby plot. If your story feels flat, maybe you need to lean into the premise a bit more.
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ETA: And also, the problems that go wrong usually incorporate the setting to a very large degree. It would be much less interesting and exciting if you got a few chapters telling you all about the airport and then the entire plot took place in one small room!
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Colleen McCullough, who wrote The Thorn Birds was actually a neurologist, but her novel was such a success that she retired from neurology to more to Norfolk Island and write full time about her true research love, which was the early Roman Empire. Those books are absolutely crammed with detail, and also well-written, until she gets up to Julius Caesar as an adult whereupon he becomes a terrible Mary Sue!
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