Plot and structure do not come easily to many writers. So much is obvious from the number of posts in writers’ forums from people who want to write, but are unable to begin, or have developed characters and wonder what to do about them. In my own case, a sense of story only came after I diagrammed a couple of dozen of my favorite plays and novels to see how scenes connected to each other. However, some of the secrets of plotting only become obvious after I observed and labored to do my own plotting. One of my recent lessons was to know when not to over-elaborate. Without a sense of when enough was enough, I was apt to produce what I call Scooby-Doo plots – structures that failed because they were more clever than strictly necessary.
I first recognized the potential problem in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy. Leckie is an accomplished writer, with a real gift for characterization, and her topic – an AI who in the past has operated space ships struggling with the limits of being in a human body – was perhaps the most original premise of the last decade in science-fiction. Unfortunately, though, Leckie chose to add a culture that uses “she” as the indefinite pronoun. The choice was a pithy comment on a still-current linguistic debate, but when added to her former AI character was smply too much in the same novel. When I should have been focused on Leckie’s AI character, I found myself wondering how that use of pronoun might have come about. What history created it? How did it influence the culture? A whole second novel could have been written around that single detail, but in three books, I got very few hints of any answers to such questions. It was as though Ursula K. LeGuin had created the hermaphodites of The Left Hand of Darkness, and then only talked about their civics. I had to give Leckie full credit for ambition, but the execution frustrated me.
Recently I finished Leckie’s The Raven Tower – and, so far, she appears to have the same thing. Her idea to treat gods as a species, immortal but always changing and adapting in their symbiosis with humanity is brilliant. But, once again, one good idea is not enough for her. She has to have one point of view in the second person, a difficult perspective that always seems to me the ultimate in mansplaining, with a narrator telling the “you” being addressed things they already know. Once again, I found myself swinging between admiration and extreme irritation.
Leckie can, of course, do what she wants, and the awards and nominations she has collected make my opinion easy to dismiss. However, I mean no disrespect. What I am saying is that her way is not my way, with the addition that it should not be most writers’ way, either.
I wish I had made this analysis of Leckie’s work a few weeks ago when I was trying to get my characters out of a fantasy town without being arrested. I am a long time admirer of Avram Davidson and his elaborate plots, and I thought I would celebrate their departure after several chapters by having three groups who were looking for them all appear at the same time, only to run into an unexpected fourth. In other hands, this premise might have been a wonderfully chaotic romp. In my hands, though it was too much handle, perhaps through inexperience. I tried several times, and I just couldn’t realize my intentions, not without far more pages that the importance of the scene would justify. Finally, after talking with my critique partner, I eliminated all but one of the pursuing groups, and got on to more important events.
Thanks to reading Leckie, I now realize my mistake. In the future, I resolve to attempt no more Scooby Doo plots, and to eliminate over-elaboration altogether.
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