Story-Telling: The Complexity of Simplicity

I'm almost finished with my first draft of Keeper of the Creatures and I'm going back to change scenes, not because they fail to contribute to the plot, but because they aren't truly what the characters would do. I'm realizing the need to add more tension to the plot and cut away everything that fails to contribute to the story. I am realizing, yet again, why it is difficult to craft a story. See, I can spin language pretty well and if I'm not careful, I will sweet talk my way around a story and create something that feels very literary, while failing to engage the reader. Toss in some humor, maybe some wit, and it starts to feel readable. But it's not. It's a fancy, redesigned box on the same store-brand Oreos. On some level, story-telling is simple. Create characters that people like, engage them in a conflict-driven plot and put them in a setting that people would want to visit. At that point, a theme pretty much takes care of itself. It's simple. However, it is also painfully difficult to do the simplicity well. Take the easiest part, developing a setting. Seems easy. However, every good setting has to be an escape for the reader. Even the most realistic settings have to come at the reader from a different angle.  It's why magical realism has such an appeal. On the other hand, even the most fantastical places have to maintain a sense of realism, or they become corny. Hogwarts works, because it gets cold and drafty and people die. That balance is tough to pull off, especially when a setting has to be consistent. Creating characters is even tougher. They have to be distinct enough from one another in their descriptions and their dialogue and yet, take this to the extreme and they become caricatures. There's also tension in the fact that the reader needs to discover who they are and yet nobody wants to read a ton backstory. The characters can't be passive. They have to do something. And it's been hard for me to remember that every character is doing something even when the others aren't around. People respond to sympathetic protagonists and yet we also need flawed heroes, or the stories feel too Disney. I'm finding the plot to be the hardest to write. Here, it's because the plot has to be intricate and yet it also has to be tight. The sub plots have to propel the story forward. Also, the plot has to be the result of the actions of characters and there have to be actions that are too much for any character to handle. A good plot is filled with tension. The bottom line is that it's easy to write a novel. It's much more difficult to tell an engaging story.