Fiction is Not Chess
Given the number of chess pieces and their allowed moves, the number of unique, sensible chess games is estimated to be 1 × 10^40. That would be:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Scientists have given a name to that number: ten duodecillion.
It's difficult to grasp how large that number is. To help you picture it, imagine the number of cubic inches needed to fill a sphere the size of Earth. Now, multiply that number by 20 trillion. That's about ten duodecillion cubic inches.
It’s astonishing that only six types of pieces can make that many unique chess games.
This is what the movie industry is doing to us: churning out an innumerable number of films with predictable, stock characters.
To drive my point home, watch the following scene. I warn you: it is difficult to watch. You’ll get the point in less than 10 seconds. Then you must endure the scene for another 3 minutes and 34 seconds. Every cringeworthy line in the scene is on-the-nose:
Don’t do this to your readers! Or to anyone in your life.
Contrast the above scene with the following from another movie:
The second scene creates mystery. Is the young girl about to be in trouble? Is the old man good or evil? Is the young girl good or evil? What is happening? Questions make the scene interesting. This is what your readers want.
Fiction is not a chess game. Fiction cannot exist when readers can predict what characters will do based solely on their assigned roles: rude, snappy, short-sighted, or happy-go-lucky. Do not create the following stock characters in your stories:
The bully
The friend
The nice neighbor
The mean neighbor
The nice classmate
The mean classmate
The nice teacher
The mean teacher
Instead, create the following lifelike characters:
1. Friends who are sometimes bullies for reasons unknown to the main character.
2. Nice but fickle neighbors who are awkward at times.
3. Classmates whose behaviors change in baffling ways.
4. Teachers who frustrate the main character because they’re inconsistently demanding.
“In literature, only trouble is interesting.”
-- Janet Burroway
Where is organic, natural-feeling trouble found? It comes from the character’s needs. For example, examine the following two scenes. What are their needs? What is troubling them?
Notice that Will says the painting's coloring concerns him until the psychologist says it was a “color by numbers” painting. Then Will says the colors are fascinating. Why is Will a jerk?
Inside every soul on earth is another person crying for something and never getting it. By nature, we are all searching, trying to be enough, trying to be who we believe we can be.
This is how people who are honest with themselves feel. This doesn’t make us bad people. It makes us people who, no matter our circumstances, keep trying to be better and make a bit of progress. And if we’re lucky, we can inspire someone else along the way.
I’ve just described the ideal character.
Rich characters are real people facing extraordinary circumstances who inspire the rest of us to do better. Or the opposite: inspire us not to do what they do to avoid their self-poisoned trauma.
An ideal character may appear different from us on the outside, but on the inside they’re identical to us.
I’m going to make a claim that I dare you to refute:
A story cannot be dull if it contains whole
and vibrant characters.
Let me help you to disagree with me. Here are excerpts from three movies known to be slow and sometimes accused of being uninteresting, while having exceptionally well-defined and rich characters:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1963)
Meet Joe Black (1998)
The Others (2001)
These movies have simple stories the directors deliberately stretched out, as if they wanted them to be as slow as possible. Yet they don’t feel slow. Why? Because the characters are the story, not the plot.
The director of The Others composed the movie’s musical score before filming began. Then he played the score during shooting so the actors could better portray the feelings he wanted.
Ideal characters
Ideal characters want the same things you want:
Trust
Hope
Solace
Survival
Respect
Purpose
Security
Revenge
Courage
Assurance
Vindication
Recognition
Acceptance
Redemption
Advancement
Understanding
Wants and needs
In real life, do you believe you’ll eventually get what you want, or do you believe your wishes are hopeless? Embody those same feelings and concerns in your characters. Or, if your life is perfect, choose your brother's or cousin's feelings and concerns.
I’m not speaking of the events in your life, but how you (or your brother or cousin) feel about those events.
Your first chapter
After you write your first chapter or two, go back and see what your characters want but don't get. If they don't want anything, you may move on to Chapter 3. But at some point, you'll have to understand their needs and add them in. Otherwise, you won't have a story anyone will want to read.
Advanced chess
How fun would it be if chess pieces could evolve throughout the game, overcoming their weaknesses and becoming more sophisticated and less predictable?
How about this: Allow pieces to absorb other pieces on their side. For example, a queen can absorb her own knight, allowing the queen to move like a queen or a knight for the duration of the game. The queen absorbs the knight by capturing it as she would an opponent's piece. With this new rule, the opponent must protect his own pieces as well as his opponent's.
It’s too bad I’m not running the world. It would be a much more fun place to be.
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