Miss Jones, Mr Ryan and Mr Holmes

As you know, this week, as with the past three weeks, we are trit-trotting in step with the FEAST of FABULOUSNESS that is our Build Your Book Month.

And I wanted to pick up on something that my colleague (and fellow author) Laura Starkey said yesterday:

A story isn’t about what happens; it’s about how what happens changes the people in the story.

Now that feels like a worthy truth. Elizabeth Bennett is a quick-witted, high-spirited and confident lass. But she’s also young. She’s a bit naïve. She’s a bit quick to make judgements and over-confident in the judgements she makes. Stuff happens (Darcy! Wickham! Dreadful vicars! Stupid sisters and elopements!) And – she grows up. She matures. She gets her man.

Yes, on the one hand the story has to do with who hitches with whom, but the reason why that particular story did so well is that we felt the characters change – Lizzy changes (and matures), but so does Darcy. So does her dad. Wickham doesn’t change, but that’s his moral failure, the reason why he can’t exit the novel a winner.

And, OK, Jane Austen is widely thought to be Quite A Good Writer, but countless other authors play by the same rules. Bridget Jones’s Diary uses the same basic story … and Bridget matures. So does her version of Darcy. (But not the can’t-change Hugh Grant.)

You can’t really find a decent romance, or even a half-decent one, where Laura’s Rule doesn’t apply.

And it’s not just romances. It’s true of plenty of spy novels (think Spy Who Came In From The Cold). It’s true of literary novels (think Handmaid’s Tale.) It’s true of plenty of kids’ books and fantasy novels and, in fact, most novels you ever pick up.

But …

Well, I think Laura’s Rule isn’t universal, or at least not quite.

In big geo-political thrillers, it seems slightly flippant to care about whether Jack Ryan does or doesn’t change. Surely what’s important is, ‘Does the world get blown to bits, yes or no?’ I mean, it’s likely that Jack Ryan has some feelings about that. He’s generally an ‘ideally, don’t destroy the world’ kind of guy. But his feelings are surely very secondary, even to the reader.

Then there are book series to consider.

Most romances don’t beget sequels. Happy Ever After endings are slightly let down by an ongoing series. (No one wants “Lizzy Bennet: the Divorce” or “Lizzy Bennet and the Raunchy Footman”.)

But crime novels often, often, often have sequels. Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Philip Marlowe, Jack Reacher. These books have a basically stable central character. The stories are about those people doing what is effectively their day job. You don’t expect Holmes or Marple or Reacher to end the novel much changed by what’s happened. On the contrary: you expect them to do the exact same things in the next book and the next and the next.

But Laura’s Rule contains a basic truth and it’s one that can be weirdly overlooked.

Here’s an extract from Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell – a much-praised kids’ book:

The kraken [a sea monster] gave a shriek of rage like a cat on fire. Then it seized the boat, and the entire structure was flung up into the air, cracking and splintering as it landed again on the waves. Ratwin was hurled into the water; Mal and Christopher were thrown sideways, to left and right. He hit the cabin wall, and she struck her head as she landed on the deck, and lay unconscious.

The kraken twisted its great head to look: for one beat, it hung there in the water, blinking its huge grey eyes. And then the kraken reached out, and plucked Mal bodily from the boat. Nighthand lunged after her, knife in hand.

‘No!’ he roared.

‘Mal!’, Christopher yelled.

The kraken laid her on a piece of driftwood, as carefully as a child laying down a doll. And then, before Christopher could understand what had happened, its ten tentacles fired towards them and the whole boat was crushed and pulled beneath the surface. The suction dragged Christopher down into black whirling chaos.

For what felt like minutes he spun, over and over in the churning sea. He fought, his lungs shrieking back to the surface. A piece of wood, part of a table rocked on the waves; he hauled himself on to it. There was sea-foam everywhere, he could see nothing; but there, suddenly, was Mal. As he watched the driftwood bucked and she slipped from it eyes were closed, and she was falling.

So in fewer than 250 words, we have a boat being destroyed, a girl (Mal) being seized by the kraken, an attempted rescue (by Nighthand), some weird thing with Mal being laid down on some floating driftwood, the whole boat and Christopher being pulled down onto the depths, a fight back up to the surface, climbing onto a tabletop – then seeing Mal, but losing her again.

That’s a LOT of action (and, surprisingly, no fewer than three semi-colons. My entire Fiona Griffiths series contains one semi-colon, and that came via a quotation from Wikipedia.)

But is that action more exciting or confusing?

To me, it’s basically confusing.

In part, that’s because so much happens so damn fast. For example, a big burly warrior (Nighthand) charges after the kraken with a knife. Well? What happens? We have no idea. Does Nighthand make contact? Did he inflict any damage? Does the kraken even notice? Is Nighthand dead? Lost underwater? We have no idea. The questions aren’t even addressed.

But also, there’s not a moment’s pause for emotional reaction.

Some little bits we can surmise.

So when Nighthand roars, ‘No!’ and charges around with a knife, we can tell he’s upset at the kraken taking Mal. The same goes for Christopher’s exclamation.

But then the kraken destroys the boat completely. What’s Christopher’s reaction? We don’t know. How does he feel about this? We don’t know.

He’s then sucked down into the abyss. We know his lungs shriek. (Duh, he’s underwater, course they do.) But we don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling. Is he thinking, ‘Oh crap, this is it.’ Or, ‘I must swim upwards and find Mal.’ Or, ‘I wonder what’s for supper?’ We have no idea, except that the last possibility seems improbable given the circs.

And then he gets to the surface (no moment of phew!), and clambers onto something floating (no moment of double-phew!), and then he sees Mal, apparently in one piece (no triple, super-big phew!) – and then she’s gone again.

What does all this tell us? Well, it doesn’t tell us that Katherine R is a bad writer – she isn’t – just that this passage needed a more switched-on editor.

But it does tell us that action is only explicable via emotion. Without the ‘reaction shots’ to guide us, it’s hard to know what we should be feeling when. And even a vast amount of on-page drama can feel flat without constant emotional reflection.

Laura’s Rule, remember, says:

A story is about how what happens changes the people in the story.

And the trouble with this Rundell passage is that the people didn’t seem changed, even as all that chaos was happening around them. We saw and felt no emotional impact, with the result that the scene, which should have been amazing, felt flat.

So in my Fiona books, I don’t expect Fiona to be hugely changed overall by the events of the story. She’s a series character, so she moves from one book to the next largely the same, except for some general growing up, getting more senior, acquiring and losing boyfriends and so on.

But as things happen, she reacts. “A kraken has destroyed my boat: I feel scared.” “I’ve swum to the surface and found a tabletop: oh good, I feel relieved.” That sort of thing, but without the krakens.

All this also means that as you plot the events of your book, you’re effectively plotting an emotional sequence at the same time. The two things need to work in parallel, always.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Action & Reaction

Nice easy one today.

Find a kraken in your story. Have it pull a boat underwater. Show your characters’ reactions.

If you lack a kraken, or your kraken has a crack in, find any other action moment in your story and give us that, 250 words or so please. We’re focusing less on the action itself and more on how it feels to the characters experiencing it. When you’re ready post in Townhouse.

Got that? Then get crackin’.

Til soon.

Harry