How do I keep from getting ahead of myself?

[meretia]

I have a novel I've been working on for a little while. It's sort of complicated. Trying to explain it I feel a little bit like I'm doing one of those slight-of-hand tricks where they walk you through it nice and slow and then go "aha! But where did the coin go?"

Okay, so. The main question the protagonist is trying to find in the story is "what happened to Secondary Character A?" The basic premise is that there’s a fantasy world where characters live who are the embodiment of archetypes and tropes--the Hero, the Pair of Creepy Villains, etc.--alongside the real one. My main character, Fox, owns a New Age bookstore and is a psychic. She gets pulled into the other world's political shenanigans when the Warrior Woman enlists Fox to find out what's become of her gentleman friend, the Knight in Shining Armor. Last place anyone saw him was coming out of Fox's store and she read the cards for him, so she must know something (which, of course, is all news to her).

My problem comes with the first chapter I wrote. I'd just meant it to be a good hook into the story, but it sort of vaguely answers the question, though that isn't obvious at the time. Where did he go? He was kidnapped by the Villain and the Turncoat. Their motivation is a lot more complicated than it first seems--it looks like a simple ransom at first, but they're working for somebody else, who is attempting to rearrange the political power structure in the trope world--and I feel like I ought to keep writing that subplot more than I am.

As the story sits, the first chapter is the White Knight going to meet with some folks who turn out to have bad things planned for him, though it isn't clear in that chapter what they intend or why he's there. It isn't until chapter three or four that the Warrior Woman brings Fox to her offices and says pretty much "look, my boy's missing and you're going to find him." There's a lot more going on than they know about--the Knight was trying to get away from his present situation and really, really bet on the wrong horse when he tried to get someone to help him leave. He made a deal with the Villain (I don't even know what yet) and didn't find out until it was too late that he'd been double-crossed. After the first chapter, I don't go back to that subplot until somewhere near the middle of the story, where the Knight has somehow escaped and knows that pretty much everyone is in a lot of trouble. I don't want to let the plot out too early, because there's no real suspense if the reader sees everything that's happening right from the beginning, is there? But on the other hand it seems like it would be sort of frustrating/annoying/disappointing for the reader to jump right from "they got him" to "oh no, he's loose, that's no problem now!"

I'd been playing with the structure of the story such that major revelations come in the chapter after the main characters figure out the most likely answer. For example, the Knight isn't the only trope to disappear. Fox finds this out when she and her companion go looking for the Wise Woman for advice only to find that she's gone too. Then in the next chapter, it's back to the Knight wherever he's being held and the same gang who grabbed him are also holding the Wise Woman for whatever reason. I'm just not sure that if I keep that up, that "oh, that's not good. What happened?" "This happened!" structure for the whole story, that it would work well. I can sort of see where it might fall into the "protagonist is always right" trap and be annoying. And while I'm alternating storylines between chapters, I'm not quite sure how long is too long to spend with the subplot. I think every other chapter would be too often and would be jarring, but I think more than two or three in the main story before checking in on the subplot would be spreading it too thin.

I'm not sure. Does it sound like it ought to work as is, or should I change it somehow? How do you keep from giving away too much of your stories too soon?

[edited to include specifics of the story]

Comments

[bliumchik]

It's hard to tell without seeing the specifics, as both methods have been done alternately well and badly. However to go direct to your final question, I am a fan of Cryptic Clue POVs - occasionally have a little bit from the point of view of somebody near the villains who can only see a little piece of the whole, and have that add up so the reader gradually gets a sense of what's happening over there. It doesn't have to be a whole chapter.

And I don't think Protag Is Always Right will be a problem if the trail they are following is both plausibly difficult and entirely logical, and they go off on one or two red herrings.

[meretia]

Heh, and here I'd been leaving out the specifics because I thought it would be more confusing to get into all that.

As the story sits, the first chapter is the White Knight going to meet with some folks who turn out to have bad things planned for him, though it isn't clear in that chapter what they intend or why he's there. It isn't until chapter three or four that the Warrior Woman brings Fox to her offices and says pretty much "look, my boy's missing and you're going to find him." There's a lot more going on than they know about--the Knight was trying to get away from his present situation and really, really bet on the wrong horse when he tried to get someone to help him leave. He made a deal with the Villain (I don't even know what yet) and didn't find out until it was too late that he'd been double-crossed. The actual plot between the Villain and the Turncoat and all is deeper than the simple ransom it first appears. They're working for somebody else, who is attempting to rearrange the political power structure in the trope world. After the first chapter, I don't go back to that subplot until somewhere near the middle of the story, where the Knight has somehow escaped and knows that pretty much everyone is in a lot of trouble. I don't want to let the plot out too early, but it seems like it would be sort of frustrating/annoying/disappointing for the reader to jump right from "they got him" to "oh no, he's loose, that's no problem now!"

But as to the chapter structure I was thinking of, for example. The Knight isn't the only trope to disappear. Fox finds this out when she and her companion go looking for the Wise Woman for advice only to figure out that she's gone too. Then in the next chapter, it's back to the Knight wherever he's being held and he finds that the same gang who grabbed him are also holding the Wise Woman for whatever reason. I'm just not sure that if I keep that up, that "oh, that's not good. What happened?" "This happened!" structure for the whole story, that it would work well.

[bliumchik]

Oh, I see. Well in my opinion it depends on how well/naturally you do the actual writing of it, but you're right that doing it with every chapter might be too neat. It's really down to your judgement though - write it whichever way you feel works and then after you're done and it's with beta readers, let them know that that is one effect you want thoughts on.

[sweet_sparrow]

I feel like I ought to keep writing that subplot more than I am

This may be a stupid question, but have you considered that maybe the story would work better if you turned that into the main plot?

Like bliumchik said, it's hard to tell without seeing the specifics, but if you feel it is/should be more important than it at the moment, that might be worth asking yourself.

That's not to say that the ideas you sketch out won't work because they can, when well written. bliumchik makes all the points I could make, actually. It might be worth it for you to look at stories with structures similar to the ones you want to use/try out and see how those authors tackle them and why they do(n't) work for you.

Mind you, I'm a very strong believer in free-writing and couldn't outline to save my life. (Well, I could outline, but the chances the story would turn into something more than remotely resembling the outline are negligible.) So that does have a strong bearing on my opinion and methods.

There's no reason why having two plots alternating should be jarring per se, though. If they're equal plots and end up intertwining with one another sooner or later, I doubt it'll be a big problem. It might be (a little) jarring at first, but readers will probably settle down into it after the first chapter/scene or two of it happening. Leastwise as long as it does something useful for the plot of the story you want to tell.

(ETA: I fail at DW codes... *fixes*)

[magycmyste]

Sorry, I'm horribly late to this.

So, to make sure I have this right, the two storylines you're talking about involve 1) Warrior Woman and Fox trying to find out what happened, and 2) The villains and their captives - White Knight and Wise Woman?

I think bliumchik pretty much has it covered, but it also sounds to me like instead of two storylines, what you have here is multiple POVs for the same storyline - at the very least, it sounds like the two are very connected.

One book that I thought did this well was Patricia C. Wrede's Snow White and Rose Red (granted, I first read this back in middle school - this was the book that bridged me over from fairy tale collections to contemporary fantasy. I still love it, but that could be nostalgia talking). But it felt like the book flowed well between the scene and POV changes (I think the scenes followed at least four different parties: the sisters and their mother, the prince searching for his brother, the two magic researchers, and the fae conspirators. Each party took separate actions - some knowing what the others were doing, and some not - that ultimately twined together to resolve everything.

Also, one way I've found to keep from revealing too much information is simply not to use the POV of the character who knows everything (or at least, what you don't want the reader to know). Obviously, that works better if you're using multiple points of view instead of just one. If you've only got one point of view you're working with, then you need to work with what that character knows and doesn't know.

::grin:: not entirely sure if any of that had to do with anyhting your asking, but I hope something in there helped.