Do I have to…

I’ve seen quite a few new writers come near to wrecking their work by trying to follow well-intentioned advice about what must go in a story. Oddly enough, the two most common pieces of story-wrecking advice are diametrically opposed.

The first is: “Your main character must change and grow in the course of the story, due to the events of the story, or your readers won’t care about him/her.”

Nope.

James Bond doesn’t change and grow over the course of the series, let alone any one book. Neither does James Kirk. Oh, and your main character doesn’t have to be named “James” in order to not-change; Sherlock Holmes is just as obnoxious after he goes over the Reichenbach Falls as he is before.

There are “marvelous journey” novels, in which the only change the main character appears to undergo is an increase in the sense of wonder and appreciation with which they view the world. It is, in fact, entirely possible to write a story that has no main character at all. Olaf Stapledon’s classic Last and First Men, which is a history of humankind over a million-plus years, is a good example. So are Joanna Russ’s “Useful Phrases for the Tourist,” and Diana Wynne Jones’ The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. Admittedly, this kind of thing is a tour de force, hard to pull off and nearly impossible for a given author to repeat, but it has been done.

The second is: “Your story must start with a memorable hook and contain lots of physical action and/or sex, or your readers will lose interest.”

Again, nope.

How many first lines of books can you remember? Probably quite a few. There are the classics – “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And there are the terrible – “It was a dark and stormy night…” Now, how many books have you read? Probably a whole lot more than the number of first lines you remember, even if you limit yourself to your top hundred favorites.

As for physical action – OK, if you have characters, they pretty much have to do something, even if it’s dusting or stopping after work to get take-out, and technically, that’s physical action. That sort of everyday activity isn’t what most writing advice folks mean when they talk about action, though, and there are quite a lot of stories that don’t contain shoot-outs, fistfights, car chases, battles, or anything resembling them. Stories that have characters, even.

In short, the writer doesn’t have to do much of anything specific in every single story ever, except write it. In a given writer’s specific story, however, that may not be true. Jones’ Tough Guide could not have been written with a main character or action; her The Dark Lord of Derkhelm, which covers the same material in a more traditional story form, could not have been written without them. The first book is a parody showcasing the repetitive tropes in modern epic fantasy adventure novels; the second tries to demonstrate the negative impact such tropes have on real people who are expected to live by them. They’re different kinds of books.

And the things a writer has have in a particular story depend on what kind of story it is. The vast majority of writing advice starts from the assumption that the writer is aiming for a particular type of story, usually one that the person giving the advice thinks is “good.” If you don’t happen to agree with the advice-giver about what is “good,” or if that isn’t the kind of story you want to write today, you can ignore the advice without any problem.

But before you walk away, there are two questions I recommend asking yourself.

First, “If my story isn’t the sort that needs X (X being whatever it is you’re being advised to include whether it’s a character who grows or a clear statement of the story theme), what sort of story is it?” Because every story needs something – it’s just not the same thing for every kind of story. If you want a James Bond type of action adventure, you need a rapid pace and a clear, solid action plot, regardless of what else goes into the story. If you want to write a classic whodunnit, you need a certain structure – if the reader knows from chapter one who the murderer is, you don’t have a mystery, you have a thriller of the how’d-they-catch-him variety. If you want to write a Romance, the romantic relationship has to be center stage, regardless of what other important things are happening in the story.

The second question is “Regardless of whether or not this story needs X, would putting it in make the story cooler/more effective/more interesting/more fun? Or would it destroy what I want to do?” Taking a stock main character (such as the traditional action-adventure hero) and giving them more realistic relationships and emotional reactions to the events of their story – allowing them to grow and change because of what they are doing – can make for a much more powerful effect…if that’s what you want to write. But you are allowed to not want to write that character or that story, even if someone else thinks it would be much better than whatever you do want to write.