Balance

Working with plots is a balancing act. And it’s not a teeter-totter balance, where one side goes up when the other goes down and you just have to get the weight exactly right on both ends to make it level and steady. No, plots have to balance in multiple directions at once, like a hanging mobile with ten arms of different lengths holding multiple different objects that all have to be in equilibrium.

Even if you just look at the internal balance of a story, there are an awful lot of moving parts that have to work together with the plot. First and most obvious are the things that are closely related to the plot and the way it’s presented – things like pacing and character motivation, the balance between action and dialog, the effects of viewpoint choices. The catch is that all these things not only have to balance against the plot arc(s), they have to balance against each other. And that balance has to be achieved in the context of the story focus.

For example, a story that focuses on the main character’s identity and self-discovery could be written either as a deeply psychological, internally focused story that involves lots of dialog and emotional scenes, or as a story where the character keeps getting into situations that force them out of their comfort zone, resulting in the discovery of unexpected strengths and/or weaknesses.

To put it another way, a high school student dealing with an emotionally strained family situation while trying to decide between going to college (as the family wants) or trying to make it in country music (as the student wants) is just as much a journey of identity and self-discovery as Bujold’s The Warrior’s Apprentice, in which the hero gives the impression of having been shoved off-balance at the top of a steep hill, so that he has to keep his feet moving faster and faster in order to avoid falling painfully on his face.

Both types of story need balance, but the balance point is completely different for each one. Throwing an action-style car chase or some ninjas into the high school student’s story would work about as well as inserting a long, intensely internal, emotional conversation into the middle of a battle scene…which is to say, not at all.

But there’s another aspect of story balance that is external to the story itself. Plots are patterns of events. The most effective patterns are frequently also the most shopworn – they’ve been used and re-used so many times over the millennia that simply recycling the pattern one more time is too predictable to be enjoyable. Yet altering the pattern too much can quickly move the story into territory that is unrecognizable … and therefore less effective.

Finding a working balance between “fresh and new” and “familiar” is no easier than balancing action-adventure with psychological realism, or a brisk pace with depth and clarity. The balance point is different for every author and every story, and for every new treatment of an old, familiar story. Even relatively straightforward retellings of classic fairy tales like “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” vary enormously in terms of their focus – on the trials of the prince, on the difficulty the princess has adjusting to the future, on the guilt felt by the “good fairies” when they realize the consequences of saving the princess, on the stepmother’s struggles to establish her children in a world that’s not kind to single mothers, on the effect the story has on minor characters caught up in the events. And that change in focus changes the relationship of all the other elements of the story – it has to, to make the plot work, even though the skeleton of the plot is exactly the same as it has always been.

Tweaking fairy tale plots (or hunting up a dozen totally different retellings and reading them all back-to-back) is a reasonably useful way to get a feel for what has to be done to make a plot balance when the author changes things. Make Sleeping Beauty a vampire, and the other elements of the story change: the “good” fairies only saved the princess by making her one of the undead, and the prince looks a lot more like an enthralled victim than a heroic rescuer. Make Cinderella a modern would-be punk rocker, whose ambition is to be in the band playing for the ball, rather than dancing at it, and the plot has to adapt – if the fairy godmother is granting Cindy’s wish, then her happy ending is a spot in the band and the prince bankrolling their first big tour. Make Snow White a clone, being raised by the Wicked Queen, and there’s no way the Queen is out to kill her … but being hauled back to the castle to be used as spare parts for her “mother” is much creepier, and that crystal coffin looks an awful lot like a cryo-chamber…

Change one major element – one character, the background, the focus – and everything else has to change to keep it in balance. Even when the element you’re altering is a minor one, the plot will need adjustments and tweaks. And like a hanging mobile, every adjustment begets more adjustments and it takes forever to get it all right. When you succeed, though, it’s worth it.