Once my dad read a manuscript I’d written, and he wondered if the plots weren’t a little too dramatic. Dickensian, he called it. Did I, he wondered, really mean to make such tragic, permanent things happen to my characters? This might surprise you if you read my books (and if you don’t, let’s just say they’re more character-heavy than plot-heavy, as a rule). But lately I’ve had cause to wonder if the ideal book pitch isn’t swinging back Dickens’ way.
Not that I’m some literary novelist (don’t be ridiculous), but I really enjoy reading (and writing) quieter stories where WHAT HAPPENS is not so important as the people to whom it happens. I tell my writing classes, “I don’t care what happens until I care who it happens to.” (Because I love to break rules about ending sentences with “to” and also because I mean it.) What if I’m the minority?
I am in my classroom now, so I can’t look for this book that I’m thinking of, but a few years ago I read a delightful middle-grade novel that was so unsubtly Dickensian that I laughed my way all the way through it (like I was supposed to). Is that the way I should be structuring my stories’ plots and conflicts? Strange benefactors, the creepy elderly, cartoonish villains with angular knees and elbows, all the orphans, death lurking around every corner?
{UPDATE: The story is called SOLOMON SNOW AND THE SILVER SPOON. It’s adorable.}
These are the thoughts. No answers. Ideas and wonderment and more and more thoughts.
(2) Comments for this blog
I think you can have character-driven stories amidst a big, bold, plot too. Those are my favorites and what I think I *try* to write. Even recently with Interstellar, which to me is the ultimate in huge save-the-world stakes, the story is really about a father’s relationship with his daughter. I’ve read many popular books with high action and don’t care one lick what happens to those characters. Character comes first, imo.
I think you can have character-driven stories amidst a big, bold, plot too. Those are my favorites and what I think I *try* to write. Even recently with Interstellar, which to me is the ultimate in huge save-the-world stakes, the story is really about a father’s relationship with his daughter. I’ve read many popular books with high action and don’t care one lick what happens to those characters. Character comes first, imo.