This first part will discuss: When does the story take on a life of its own?, and part 2 will attempt to do an honest assessment of how well I applied it to my creation process. For those of you who like my art, want to know a bit of my thought processes, or just want to know how the story came about, this is for you.

There’s a lot to review with book 2 given it’s almost double the length of book 1. Book 1 was extremely condensed due to me trying to fit the limitations of traditional publishing at the time, so several plotlines and quite a bit of world-exploration were cut out in favor of the plot. Book 2 was definitely a chance for me to stretch my legs and explore a bit more about the world beyond just the plot, so there’s more to talk about. Additionally, Book 2 developed in ways I did not expect, being almost wholly unplanned.

As always, the following is just my opinion. You may disagree with me on certain things, and I certainly invite the discussion! I don’t mean for it to be treated as scripture given I’m just cataloguing my own thoughts on the topic. My goal is to actually come back to this in the future and have new perspective on it, as that will be how I determine my growth as an author.

So without further ado, here’s the main topic of this Behind the Pages, Part 1.

When does the story take on a life of its own?

Storytellers will have different answers, but here’s mine: When you lose control of them.

Just don’t forget to reel them back, as I'll explain.

I often describe Below the Heavens not as a story I’m telling, but just a story that’s already happened and one I’m recording. (Hence why I can identify with the Scholars of the Fallen Star Pavilion.) Yes, as the storyteller I’m still weaving individual bits of my imagination together into a coherent story, but the reason it took me multiple rewrites of the first volume was because it didn’t have that sense of “life” in it yet.

And while others who participate in the art of breathing life into things will have their own way of judging whether they’ve achieved that state, I had to ask myself how I personally knew I’ve accomplished it. And the answer is when they wrestle free of my control, and the characters, plot, or world demand something of me that I have no choice but to put in. The characters are now driving the plot, free of the invisible puppeteer strings that I, their creator, have put on them, and doing things their own way in a way that makes sense to them.

At that point, I’m not really driving anymore. The characters are behind the wheel, driving the car known as the plot on the road known as my world, Below the Heavens. I’m just the writer chronicling the events.

(Quick note: If you haven’t read Below the Heavens yet, hi! This is not written to be spoiler free, as I like to talk about my philosophy and thoughts on the creation process by examining my own work, the creation process, and why/how I arrived at the final manuscript.)

LOSING CONTROL

The broad strokes of Book 2: Beyond a Broken Horizon are almost wholly unplanned on my part. The Festival of the Hero was supposed to be a quick 1-2 chapters of Molam shoving Fiery One’s egg into the Great Bonfire to make the rebirth happen. Afterwards, a few chitchats, then off to Oasis we go. Sands Under a Silent Sun was originally supposed to be Book 2 instead of Book 3.

As you can tell, that didn’t happen. When scoping out what was going on, I asked myself what each party wanted to do, particularly the opposing party’s goals and more importantly, what they’re actively doing to achieve their goals.

An inactive antagonist is a story aspect I often find unpalatable. Can you imagine how boring the Lord of the Rings would be if there were no Nazgul hunting down Sam and Frodo? Just following a meandering journey of the Fellowship of the Ring as they figure out how they want to reach Mt. Doom, with little pressure from Sauron’s forces because they’re easily distracted? Yeah, just take your time delivering the One Ring, it’s not like Sauron can move!

(Uh, spoilers for those who don’t know the Lord of the Rings story, I guess?)

So I took at look at what the Empire is up to. The primary antagonist is sleeping it off, sure. But there’s others, and they’re not a bunch of headless chickens. They just happen to need to oversee an Empire, but they have a plot-relevant objective too: wanting to present Flangel’s Ring to their Prince. (Now that I’m doing this write-up, I realized there’s a lot of parallels with LotR, particularly all that hullaballoo over a Ring. I swear this is a happy coincidence!)

And that’s when I lost control of the story. The Empire of the Sun’s characters demanded their side of the story be told too.

WHAT’S IT LOOK LIKE TO LOSE CONTROL?

Well then. Assuming the antagonist forces aren’t the type to wait around for results, they’re going to act. And since what they want is either Nettie or the Ring, and both are in ZhiXia City where our main protagonists are, we have the makings of a conflict.

Excellent, we love conflicts. Non-slice-of-life and non-power-fantasy stories are exactly that: conflict. In fact, this is what I tell almost all worldbuilders who want to tell an epic story: pick the most important conflict in history and start there. The “interesting times” are horrendous times for the ones who have to live through it. Look at how some of the most popular stories for us today are about the World Wars or other famous power struggles in history! Can you imagine if Dune had no conflict? Ah yes, just have an easy transfer of power over an entire planet, go collect some melange, become buddy buddy with the Fremen, get high on spice-coffee with your new pals, and casually wake up from your psychedelic trip and realize you became Padishah Emperor.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

(Uh, spoilers for those who don’t know the Dune story, I guess?)

Where was I? Right! The characters are driving the plot-car on the road-world. In this case, the Empire’s faction is in charge now, and it’s their agency that breathes life into them. The author’s job is now to realize this is the interesting timeline, and it’s time to just be an observer of the ride. (Insert meme: Look at me. I am the storyteller now.)

CHARACTER, PLOT, AND WORLD AGENCY IS FOUND IN DOING WHAT THEY WANT, NOT WHAT THE AUTHOR WANTS

There’s a fine balance between making components serve the story, and having the components come together to become a story. I firmly believe that all stories that feel alive fall into the latter.

Side note: there is absolutely a place for tight stories by storytellers who can correctly wrangle together multiple components together to fit their vision of the story. In fact, most of the good horror films fall under this, as those are primarily plot-driven stories which characters participate in. The problem is when the plot demands certain aspects, the storyteller is forced to make a few telegraphed moves. If done well, they don’t ruin the suspension of disbelief, but in-service-of-the-plot hijinks are often forced. A good example: horror movie character does something so stupid you want to shout at them through the screen. There can be no better decision than running down into the cellars to hide from a serial killer.

Characters with agency are trying to influence their own direction in your story. When they come to life, they’re not puppets at the storyteller’s whim. You can’t just make them do what you want anymore; if it’s not aligned with what they want, they will fight you tooth and nail to get to what they want. For readers, it becomes painfully obvious even if they can’t quite explain why the plot feels contrived or a character’s decision feels forced. Kind of like watching a cat “walk” after you put socks on their paws — it’s still a cat, it knows how to cat, but whoo boy it is not cat-ing.

And here’s why most authors have difficulty with this or choose not to do it: it is very hard to herd cats.

We’re storytellers at the end of the day: our audience expects us to tell a coherent and interesting story. The less control we have over the story, the more likely we risk losing our audience. You can actually see this often in movies, where the script is mercilessly cut down and edited for the plot to take precedence over all else. This is why authors tend to keep a tight leash on their cats; it makes the herding significantly easier.

But as we all know, cats are going to cat. You can leash one, but its participation level is not always one of compliance. A determined author can drag an uncooperative character through a contrived plot, but then no one is happy — not the character, not the author, and the reader must hold their nose because they can often tell what’s going on.

SO WHAT’S THE BALANCE?

Yeah, how should a storyteller herd their cats?

After all is said and done it’s still necessary. The plot does often take precedence over anything else because that’s what we’re here for. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of characters doing uncharacteristic things to get to our story destination. The art, then, is found in figuring out how to frame and design the plot so that we arrive as naturally as possible. In short, storytellers are still trying to do top-down design while convincing the readers that it’s all bottom-up.

From the storyteller’s perspective, your storytelling loop should look like:

* I know where I want to go, destination-wise, but I cannot walk there myself

* So I have these characters and gave them a car

* And as they drive, these plot points are our rest stops, but the characters know nothing

* How do I get them to drive to the next stop without the reader knowing there’s a Google Map guiding them? Which character is most likely to make a set of decisions that will drive us there?

And from the reader’s perspective, the journey should be like:

* These characters are making decisions unique or understandable for them, based on their own goals and/or philosophy

* And through their actions or inactions, cause certain consequences to happen in the world around them

* Which forces other characters or entities to act, either in response or in tandem

* This set of, ideally, interwoven activities with a push-pull interaction between multiple conflicting parties, leads the reader with them to the next plot point

I think this balance of light guidance is the crux of how you achieve living, breathing characters that feel real. Many storytellers should have a good example of how a plot point felt contrived and forced, and it took them many iterations to fine-tune those scenes so it felt natural. As an example, it can be as subtle as shifting a fight to the night so it ends at daybreak, meaning some people were drawn towards the dawn and naturally get embroiled into a new mess.

My final bit of advice to writers (for now) is to remove all traces of your interference, and you do that by doing anything you can to avoid directing the characters. Don’t take the wheel of the car! Add redirections in the highway and roads; construction zone here, detour here, oh no the car’s carburetor broke down… now we need to go to that gas station there which totally does not look like the next plot point… you get the idea.

And for readers, make it a little game for yourself! When you realize the scene has changed and/or there’s a new plot development, ask yourself how we got there. Ideally, your first instinct is “oh, XYZ caused this new thing to happen” and not “well it looks like we have to do this next even though it makes no sense, so it’s happening I guess.”

Applying it to my work

Well, here’s where the spoilers start going into overdrive! You’ve been warned! Part 2 will discuss how book 2 was quite character driven and I had so many cats to herd all of a sudden. It will discuss how three different categories being active drove each of the main arcs:

* Characters — The Empire of the Sun’s Titled Ones actively wanted to find Nettie or Flangel’s Ring, thus giving us that lengthy battle with the OutCast

* Plot — Constantly “active” as it’s more of the conveyor belt. Honestly, a conveyor belt metaphor for how you can tell stories is pretty good, someone remind me to talk about that sometime.

* Worldbuilding — Surprise, surprise, other people exist and, given a reputable person’s long life, they’ve had a lot of time to make unexpected enemies too.

Finally, to whet your appetite, Part 2 will discuss - spoiler alert! you’ve been warned! - : Why I almost went through

with killing off the Whale of ZhiXia.