Heroics

Thinking out loud here — feel free to pull up a chair, grab the popcorn, and watch the juggler and the sword swallower. I’ve screwed up my courage and read through my editor’s comments and suggestions for Book 3 of my four-volume epic, and it has quickly become clear that some major rewriting is in my future. But if my heroine is a round peg and plotted fiction is a square hole, what am I to do about that?

You can buy any number of books on how to develop your plot. They’ll all tell you more or less the same thing: Your hero must be confronted by a difficult, emotionally charged problem, and must take action — usually, several actions — to solve the problem. The first thing the hero tries should not work. His or her first attempt should, if possible, make the problem worse.

It’s not difficult to see why plots work this way. If the problem is not difficult or emotionally meaningful, the story will be boring. If the hero sits around and waits passively for someone else to solve the problem, readers will get irritated with the hero. And if the hero’s first attempt to solve the problem works just fine, the problem was too easy or the hero too ridiculously superhuman.

This is not a formula, exactly, it’s just the logic of human psychology. If you’re writing character-oriented literary fiction, both the problem and the actions may be a lot more subtle, but literary fiction in which there’s no emotionally charged problem — in which everything is fine and dandy — is going to be just as boring, if not worse.

Turning to my epic, the premise of the story is that a 17-year-old girl is the hereditary ruler of a distant land, but doesn’t know it. The distant land is currently being ruled by some really nasty people who are causing great suffering. So the god who is worshiped there (or what passes for a god in the fantasy world of the story) has bestirred himself to make the girl aware of her heritage and/or destiny. The god sends her charging off to get rid of the bad guys and restore order in the land of her birth.

So far, so good. Emotionally charged problem, major obstacles. But how is a 17-year-old girl whose only job training is sweeping the floors and washing the sheets in her uncle’s inn supposed to lead a revolution?

The heroes of plotted fiction all tend to be stamped out by the same cookie-cutter. They have personal quirks, to be sure — one plays chess, another quotes poetry, a third is riddled by phobias — but when push comes to shove, they’re tough. They take charge. They’re good with their fists. (Well, except for Donald Lam, who tended to get beat up a lot. That was his quirk.)

My heroine is not Joan of Arc, and I don’t want her to be! I more or less decided that there were going to be no sword fights in this story, and no pitched battles where men in armor flail away at one another. That sort of story is too crude to interest me. So I have this innkeeper’s niece, and she has no military training and no experience being a leader. She doesn’t know how to write stirring pamphlets or make public speeches. She doesn’t know how to conduct a covert operation without getting caught. Plus, she’s a 17-year-old girl in a fairly standard male-dominated society. Give orders? Who is going to salute, click their heels, and obey a teenage girl’s orders?

My editor’s complaint, and it’s entirely correct, is that in Book 3 my heroine is too passive. Things happen to her. Other people suggest actions, and other people carry them out. This is not good plotting. But she damn well isn’t Joan of Arc. She’s kind of a pushover for rescuing people who need help — that’s the quirk of personality that leads her off on this mad quest. But leading a revolution is well beyond her skill set. The god who gave her the problem (that would be me) has chosen badly.

Can I give her the kind of personality that will enable her to win through? Sure — it’s all just words on the screen. I can do whatever I like. But then she’ll be a different person, and I’ll have to go back to Book 1 and start over, because everything else will change.

Thank you for listening. We return you now to your regularly scheduled broadcast.