A Tale of Two Stories

I’m in Florida, recovering from the last of the launch parties (I guess I can have a launch month) and working my tail off to meet my deadline for Secret Society Girl two. The party was amazing and I’ll be posting about it as soon as I have some pictures, but now I wanted to discuss a blog post that was a long time in coming.

There’s a very popular book out that I didn’t much care for. People keep recommending it to me, but it wasn’t really my thing. I’m not alone in this. For every person I’ve heard of who absolutely adores the book, I’ve met others who weren’t such big fans. This, of course, is pretty standard. Tastes vary. But in every conversation I’ve had where this book comes up, and I point out to the fan what I perceived to be its flaws, they don’t disagree with me. They just love it anyway. This has resulted in an intense analysis of what is really my problem with the book. In a case such as this, I wonder if it has something to do with the popularity? Is it sour grapes? No.

I think I’ve finally hit upon it. This book, like mine, has a core theme of “normal person caught up in an extraordinary situation.” I love these books. I love the superhero-type books too, but let’s leave that out of this for a moment. In these types of books, the normal person has two options: they can either let shit happen to them, or they can go out and do shit.

This book that I don’t care for is of the “let shit happen to them” variety. It’s a glorified tour through the extraordinary situation as seen through the eyes of the protagonist.

Once I started thinking of it in this manner I was able to understand what I didn’t like about a lot of classic stories. For instance, I was never all into Alice in Wonderland. Sure, I love all the crazy creatures, but I wasn’t a huge fan of Alice herself. Compare that to, say, Dorothy, who also found herself in a strange and wonderful world, but instead of being led about by the nose, actually went on a little quest.

My favorite Harry Potter book to date is the third one, Prisoner of Azkaban. In this book, Harry is very proactive. He makes all the choices that lead him to his climax, and when he messes up, he goes back in time and makes them again. In Chamber of Secrets, which was my least favorite until we hit number 5, at which point, all bets are off, you have a “hero” who basically stands in a room and waits for Faulkes (who might as well have been renamed Deus-ex-machina) to do everything for him.

I’ve been thinking a lot about point of view since I heard Emily Giffin speak at the RWA Conference. She is living proof about how important it is to pick the right character through which to tell your story. This is not a question of first person or third person. This is a question of what makes your protagonist someone interesting enough to put in this situation.

Agency is a very important concept in fiction. it comes from the Latin word “ago” which means “to do.” Story is what happens when your characters do things. Not when they watch things happen. When they do things. Plot happens because of a choice a character makes in a given situation.

When you have a very normal character in a very extraordinary situation, there is a strong temptation to just let things happen to her. Let her be swept along in the tide of all the extraordinary things. Let the extraordinary people around her start making her decisions for her. I guess it works, but for my money, the really unforgettable stories are when the ordinary person overcomes these forces and makes decisions for herself. Maybe they’re the wrong decision, but at least they’re decisions.

I’m currently rewriting a scene in SSG2 because the original formulation of the scene did not give Amy, my heroine, enough agency. She was mostly watching as others around her acted. My book is filled with strong, pro-active people. I don’t want them disenfranchised. But my heroine is my heroine for a reason. They can do things, but not to the extent that it will beggar my heroine of agency. If it does, she becomes a tourist in her own story.

Can you write the tourist stories? You bet, and some people will probably love them. But that’s not what I’m here to do.