Craft Decisions #2
If you haven’t started the book yet, this won’t hit quite the same way. If you have, and are feeling a bit of the vertigo from the back and forth timelines, this will hopefully provide some perspective on that particular craft decision.
One of the things I noticed when I was a reader and not an author, is that certain characters never seemed to get their own point-of-view. And in many cases they were some of the most interesting characters in the novel. For lack of a better word, I will call these characters the ‘masterminds’. Think Tywin Lannister as a great example, or The Mule in Foundation. You are able to see these characters fleshed out through the eyes of others, but you never occupy their minds.
As a reader, I didn’t give it much thought, other than to notice the pattern. When I began to write, it quickly became clear to me what the underlying reason was. If you live in the head of the character who sees the whole room, who is one step ahead of the other characters and is the one pulling the strings, how do you possibly create suspense for the reader? And so you are left with what in many ways are the most sophisticated characters, the most impressive ones, left only half-formed, in the incomplete eyes of those who watch their actions but by their nature can’t understand their true intent.
This did not sit well with me. I wanted to tell a story with characters like this, the ones who strove the hardest, who pushed themselves to be that person in the room. I was telling a first person narrated story though, and the issue was obvious to me within the first few chapters. The solution that I came up with is the structure of the series that you will see.
You will see the journey in whole, but you will not see it in sequence. At times, you will live in the present, in the eyes of the characters who you do not yet understand. And then you will find that perspective will change, and the present will become the observer, the one who watches, who tries to make sense, but who is not yet capable of true sight.
And at the same time, you will see the past begin to take shape. The events that led to the moment you are witnessing. The human journey that the mastermind walked, before they were the puller of strings, before they had learned the lessons that such positions require. If I do it right, you will feel the weight of those moments, the tradeoffs that were made and the consequences of those actions. And the character you observe in the present will be the one who you have walked with in the past, the one whose eyes you can inhabit, as the story unfolds around them.
I hope to make you yell at the pages, unwilling to believe that the character would take the actions that they do, but knowing deep down inside that they must, that they walk the path that the world requires. If I pull it off, I want you to be able to carry that same frame into your life. To look at those around you, those whose pasts you have never seen, whose shoes you have never walked in. And to look at their decisions with a new light.
This won’t mean that you agree with their choices, in fact, I rarely do. It won’t mean that you think they are justified. What it might do though, is create just enough space for grace. The ability to let another soul wander the world in the way it feels it must, making decisions that cost it regardless of which way it turns.
Each time we leave room for grace, we make the world one that can forgive, that can nurture and teach rather than seek to dominate and control. So forgive me, if you will, the whiplash that you may find yourself feeling as you jump from the present to the past, and even the future. The journey was intended, the destination was the point.
When you see through another’s eyes, you see those parts of yourself that you close out. The parts most in need of sunlight. The parts that will hold you back until you learn to face and overcome them. The parts we all carry for far too long.
Much love as always,
Nick