Story vs ?

In my time as a writer, I often get asked: What's more important to you - character or plot? This has always been a bit of a head-scratcher for me, because my writing process means that character is plot. If your writing process doesn't mean these two are so deeply entwined as to be impossible to separate, this does not mean there's anything wrong with your process. (I swear my process posts are 1/3 process and 2/3's "this is my process and everyone has a different one" >.<)

I've never been asked whether story is more important than a novel, because I think most readers consider them almost the same thing. I suppose you could say "is plot more important than novel", but actually, that really doesn't make a lot of sense either, as stated.

HOWEVER (you knew there was a however in all this), in my earlier posts about MMORPG games and the structural choices that pretty much dictate how story is delivered, I've been considering the concept of story.

Story is at the heart of a novel, but it is definitively not a novel. One could argue that a novel exists to tell a story, and I would agree with this. But if you give a dozen writers the basic story and set them loose to wreak havoc on it, by the end of their dozen novels, you would have a dozen very different books; the weight on the story elements, the choices that express them, the characters that enact them, etc., would be individual.

Story in this case is not plot outline or outline; it's the basic story around which a book is wrapped.

"I have a great idea for a story" is something all writers have a) said or b) heard. A lot. But the idea for a story, the idea ofa story, is in no way an actual book. For people who have never struggled through the writing of a novel, it's a fairly easy mistake to make: it's a great idea and people will love it. People read for story. (This is also true; people do read for story).

But it's the telling of that story in a greater context that gives the story weight and meaning; that lets it grow and breathe from the seed of its start. There is a lot to writing a novel that is more than story, and the handling of story - our ability to communicate it to readers - is what defines failure or success.

You might be able to sketch out the bones of your great story in five minutes. We're going to take a 100k (minimum and yes, I know I could not reach a number that low) run at it. We'll create the characters that carry the story, discover their circumstances and how they walk into the line of that story creating ripples and waves and transforming the story as they go--making it, in the process, their own. We're going to create the world that both contains that story and justifies its existence.

People who feel that story is the only important metric--that anything else is somehow just chaff or scutwork--are people who have never written a novel. It's not, it's never, just about the story; without every element of the writing of it, the story is not alive. It is not organic. It's a clever idea.

This doesn't mean that there aren't great story ideas; there are. But those ideas exist in a vacuum without the writing of it, the work, the thing that transforms it from idea to book (or novella, etc.).

And frequently, our great ideas become walls of why did I ever think this was a great idea? writer angst as we attempt to take that seed and make a book of it. It doesn't actually prevent us from feeling the doubt and the certainty that we're failing--that's just writer-brain at work, sadly.

There has to be a story, yes. Absolutely.

But the story is the start of it. Someone can have a great idea for the perfect cookies. Or sweater. Or painting. But the work that gives it weight and value is not the inspiration, but the, ummm, sweat.

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This post is mirrored from https://michellewest.ca/

I find it hard to have a conversation on Patreon, and have created a WordPress Patreon only blog to make it easier for me to find new comments and respond to them, sometimes at length.

This post is https://michellewest.ca/2022/01/17/story-versus-book/; you should be able to hit Login with Patreon, and should be able to read posts there at the same levels you can read them here.

I'll answer comments here as well if this is your preferred format, but probably not as expansively (which might be a good thing!).