Tag Archives: story

Story Logic vs. The Laws of Physics: Part Two

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Last time, I talked about how speculative fiction frequently defies the laws of physics, and how fans sometimes like that and sometimes hate it. So how can writers break the laws of physics without irritating their audience? Like I said, it seems to vary from person to person (a phenomenon I call the Personal Logic Threshold). Based on my experiences as a fan, however, I believe a few guidelines can maximize a storyteller’s success in this area, where most fans are concerned:

  • When breaking the laws of physics, do it in such a way that it matches the overall tone of the story. If you’re writing a silly space opera that resembles fantasy more than hard science fiction (i.e. Star Wars), fans are more likely to forgive technological inaccuracies or physically impossible action scenes.
  • Generally, resist the temptation to defy physics in order to give your characters an easy out from conflict. Remember, this also depends on what kind of story you are trying to tell (see #1). Are you George R. R. Martin, who writes gritty realistic fantasy in which people facing death cannot hope to escape by, say, using magic martial arts moves? Or are you Brandon Sanderson, who writes such RPG-inspired action scenes as part of the fun? The latter will have more leeway.
  • Any way in which a story world defies physics (as we know them) can be improved by foreshadowing it, long before it becomes crucial to the plot. If you show a character flying when the fate of the world is not at stake, then the audience knows that human flight is possible in that particular story world, and won’t get confused or angry when it happens during the climax. Picky fans with a lower PLT might quibble about the specifics, like Sheldon does in the clip from my last post. But they won’t be surprised or befuddled, which is worse.

There is one more aspect to this topic that I should mention. In the end, like with Superman, story logic matters the most. Being faithful to story logic means the writer must satisfy the audience’s needs for a good story, and understands that those needs may trump certain physical realities—and that, especially in the case of speculative fiction, defying those realities may be a selling point for a large portion of the audience. But this doesn’t mean the characters should be able to defy physics at will with no foreshadowing whatsoever, especially as a way to escape the conflicts they face. In fact, it generally means the opposite. (Refer back to guideline #2, as well as my post on Story Structure.)

In the end, since everyone has a different Personal Logic Threshold, you’ll never be able to satisfy everyone in the audience when you defy the laws of physics. From what I can tell, you can please the most fans by trying to tell a satisfying story, and not breaking physical laws without any sort of foreshadowing or explanation for doing so.

To conclude, I am now going to contradict everything I just said, and point out that sometimes, this whole conundrum doesn’t really matter. Back in my college days, I was a fan of a sports anime called The Prince of Tennis. (I still am, in fact!) The story is about a twelve-year-old tennis prodigy who moves from America to Japan and joins a middle school tennis team. It starts out as you would expect: the main character meets a lot of talented tennis players, and they play a ton of tennis matches. Some of these characters have “special moves” that stretch a tennis expert’s sense of disbelief, but nothing too major, at first. By the time of the show’s second incarnation, however, the characters are hitting tennis balls so hard that they shatter concrete walls on a semi-regular basis.

This, as I hardly need to point out, is not physically possible.

So do I care about this, as a fan of the show? Not at all. For me, the absurdity is part of the fun. I will admit that, as a former tennis player, I often burst into laughter during certain scenes. Sometimes, the “upgraded” versions of the characters’ moves cause me to raise a perplexed eyebrow. But in the end, I love the show because it’s campy and ridiculous. I enjoy it because they shatter those concrete walls. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to watch it.

(In case you don’t believe the part about concrete walls, or how closely this show can resemble Dragon Ball Z at times, here’s the opening sequence from the newest season, which aired last year. I offer no justifications for the saxophone, the pirate, or the glowing tennis ball, either.)

This brings me to my final point: if your audience is having fun, they are much less likely to care (or even question) if your story defies the laws of physics.

Why, exactly, do I enjoy the absurd parts in a show like The Prince of Tennis? I’m not sure. For one thing, I expect a sports anime to be over the top. More importantly, I’ve grown to have so much affection for the characters that I don’t care how many times they twist the laws of physics. I just root for them to be awesome, to grow and change during the course of the story’s conflicts. If they do that by playing supernatural tennis, I don’t mind.

But that’s me. I know plenty of people who don’t like the show, for exactly that reason. The show is really popular, though, especially in Japan—to the point where it’s still ongoing, even though it started as a comic book all the way back in 1999. (Clearly, then, I’m not the only one who doesn’t mind!)

So as a writer, I always try to keep in mind what sort of audience I want, and what their needs might be. Am I writing for a guy like Sheldon, or someone more like me? Would I overlook a certain story development, if I read it in someone else’s novel? (Would Sheldon overlook it, if he’s a part of my target audience?) Does it match my story’s tone? And if all else fails, is it awesome in a story sense?

If the last answer is yes, my target audience will probably overlook a moment that breaks the laws of physics—even if it’s not foreshadowed or explained. They might even love it. Meanwhile, fans with different needs will look for stories that satisfy them elsewhere.

Story Structure – The Key to a Novel

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I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write a novel. Specifically, the prewriting stage—how to research, how to outline, how to create characters. These days, I view prewriting as the most important part of my process. If I do enough work before I start to write, my drafts are solid. If I don’t, the manuscript will need more revision later on. (Sometimes a lot more. As in, a complete rewrite from beginning to end. Which is not fun, let me tell you!)

So what is the most important part of prewriting? For me, it’s story structure. That’s what I call the central arc of a novel. Story structure is not world-building or plotting. It guides the plot, and shapes it—but it’s much bigger than that.

Story structure looks something like this…

My protagonist wants [fill in a goal or desire].

To achieve [that goal or desire], they will [a list of actions the protagonist takes during the story to get what they want; the more specific the better].

When they take these actions, the protagonist will encounter the following obstacles or complications: ____________________________________.

At the story’s climax, the protagonist achieves [the goal or desire] by doing this: [one final action].

Bonus question: The protagonist would not have been able to take that final action earlier in the novel, because ________________________________.

Those are the fundamentals of story structure. Some people call it different things (the protagonist’s arc, etc.), and I’ve seen other ways to chart it. But more or less, that’s what it looks like. As you can see, it’s pretty basic! Why is this important?

Story structure is the skeleton of your novel. If you do it right, this structure should guide everything your protagonist does—which in turn determines how other characters react to them. It also helps ensure that your novel has a satisfying conclusion. Readers like to see protagonists achieve what they set out to do at the start of the story (or not achieve it, if your story is a tragic one!).

I’ve also found that this structure is helpful for keeping me on track while I’m drafting. If I start to feel lost, I just go back to my notes about what my protagonist wants. It helps me decide what they should do next—whether or not that action makes sense for them, and whether or not it helps achieve their goal. Which means story structure can help me avoid these mistakes:

  • Having my protagonist do something that doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t match up with their goals/desires.
  • Writing a scene that doesn’t advance the story in any way.

In other words, story structure helps me decide what’s “in character” for my protagonist, and whether or not a scene is needed. It really helps cut down on revision time! If I plan this structure out in advance, I don’t have to cut as many scenes, and I don’t have rewrite them to better fit the protagonist’s motives.

That’s why I think story structure, more than anything else, is the key to writing a good novel. A story is a series of events. A well-written story is one in which those events are driven primarily by the protagonist’s desires, all leading up to a climax where the protagonist achieves (or doesn’t achieve!) what they want.

Well, that’s it for now. I plan to add a second part later on, with a few tips and examples. But I hope this is a helpful starting point, for any aspiring novelists out there. If you would like to explore the topic in more detail, I highly recommend Wired For Story by Lisa Cron. I’ve read a lot of books about writing in the past five years. This is one of the few that teaches how to write on a story level, and the advice is essential (yet so easy to understand that I wondered why I hadn’t heard much of it sooner).