First time for anything

Another interesting “why” question that really bothers some writers (but not others) is “Why haven’t these characters already solved this problem?” Or, on occasion, “Why hasn’t somebody already solved this problem?”

Story problems that depend on external events frequently have clear and obvious reasons why the characters (or somebody) haven’t solved the problem long before the story ever started: Nobody knew about the problem until Chapter One. The problem didn’t even happen until Chapter Two (you can’t start solving a murder until the murder has actually been committed). The problem wasn’t terribly urgent until Chapter Two (everybody knew the dam needed maintenance, but it was expensive and they kept putting it off until the minor earthquake actually cracked it…). Nobody had the key item or the necessary skill needed to solve the problem (you have to find the One Ring before you can throw it into the volcano; you have to be able to ride a bicycle at considerable speed before you can even enter the Tour de France, let alone win it).

External-event problems aren’t always obvious from page one, or even from within the first few chapters. In a good many of my stories, the protagonist spends roughly the first third of the book finding out what the problem really is – they know something is wrong, but not what, and definitely not how bad it is. Once they figure out the real problem (it’s not that your sheep is lost, it’s that a dragon ate it … and the dragon is still very hungry and going to come back for dinner as soon as it finishes its post-snack nap, and dinner is going to be the entire village, which doesn’t have any way of fighting it), the protagonist has to figure out what to do about it (Kill the dragon? Evacuate the village? Provide the dragon with an alternate food source? Tame it? Convince it to become a vegetarian?), which takes the middle third of the book. And the final third is implementing whatever solution they came up with in the middle third (which never goes perfectly smoothly).

Internal story problems – ones that depend on the character learning something, having an epiphany, adjusting to new circumstances, or wanting something that isn’t particularly unusual or significant on its own – are different. Backstory and motivation are more important. Readers don’t wonder why the police detective didn’t solve Samuel’s murder last year; Sam was still alive and kicking then. If the central story problem is that the police detective hates her job, has always hated it, only went into the profession to please her parents, and isn’t good at what she does, and the solution is for her to quit and get a job in the theater, which she loves … it raises the question: why has she kept doing this for the past 20 years? Why didn’t she quit ages ago?

The thing is, problems of this sort only every look simple and logical from the outside … and it’s not an external problem, it’s an internal one. The writer can make the solution a total no-brainer, from a logical viewpoint (the character has a fat savings account; her controlling parents have died in a car crash, thus freeing her from the fear of disappointing them [or of being nagged about her choices]; the department is having budget cuts and she’ll get a big severance bonus if she quits now; her college best friend now runs a theater and has an opening that would suit her [and really needs the help]), and the character may still have problems making the leap from the familiar, though unhappy, status quo to the shiny, perfect new position. It’s not the external circumstances that are holding her back, though it might initially appear to be. It’s her internal ones.

The other thing is that for everything and everyone, there is a first time it happens. We expect certain things to happen at certain points in a person’s life – a six-year-old who is nervously getting ready for first grade is not unexpected, but it would be surprising if they were going off to their first year of college (or even if they were worrying about it). Conversely, it would be surprising to have a modern fifty-year-old character just starting school (less so if they’re going back to college, but still a little unusual). Usually, it’s the surprising things that need or want explanations or justifications.

Some writers find it easier to come up with external explanations for why their protagonist is suddenly going back to school, founding an activist movement, or quitting their job; others find it easier to work out internal motivations for the changes. External changes tend to also answer the question “Why haven’t they already done this?” – it’s because they didn’t have the external thing (money, time, skill) they needed in order to do it. Internal changes can be more difficult to work out, but are often more powerful as a result. A character who wins the money for college on a lottery ticket is not nearly as interesting (to me, anyway) as a character who has the money but who has to nerve up to actually use it on college, in defiance of a parent or significant other who doesn’t want to lose control.