Plots: fiddleheads and fern fronds
I’ve been playing with some major plot revisions on my work in progress, after getting feedback from my editor and agent. My story, as it stands today, has a lot going on. It’s full of action and allusions to even more action that happens offstage. Just as things get interesting in one part of the story, we speed off to another. So I’m pondering whether I need to cut things out… slow things down… simplify.
I basically served my editor and agent a big bowl of fiddleheads. And I’m wondering whether this story ought to be a single lovely fern frond, instead.
Haven’t heard of fiddleheads? They are curled-up baby ferns, gathering their fern strength before they pop out into big fronds. Some people like to boil and eat them in the spring. I tried one once. It was sort of like a brussels sprout. I remember that the texture was very dense. That makes sense, given that I was eating an entire fern frond in a single bite. I also remember being a little freaked out by eating baby ferns!
So when’s a novel like a bowl of fiddleheads? When it’s full of densely-packed events, a whole series of them. So much is going on that the story can feel a little jumbled, or intense. But you’d be hard-pressed to get bored-at least, when the author does a good job cooking up those fiddleheads.
On the other end of the spectrum is a novel that takes its time: a single fern frond. The plot lingers over each small detail, each little leaf that makes up one lovely frond. Some readers might find that the story is a little too slow, or that they’re skipping past the quiet details that help to build the plot and establish characters. But even a single fern frond can have lots of little leaves. A well-done “frond” story doesn’t have to be boring.
Either approach can work. Take a look at one perfect contrast in two best sellers: Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS (a big old bowl of fiddleheads) versus J.K. Rowling’s HARRY POTTER series (one lovely frond after another). Both tales are a boy’s coming-of-age set at a secret, exclusive academy for budding magicians. What Grossman does in one book takes Rowling seven. Grossman packs interesting details into the stories but sometimes manages to encompass an entire year at the Brakebills academy in a few chapters-while Rowling, of course, takes an entire volume for each year of Harry Potter’s education at Hogwarts. Both authors manage to turn out engrossing stories that have me reading while I’m drying my hair, eating my lunch and putting my shoes on. I wouldn’t want to see either approach changed.
Perhaps market explains part of the contrast between those two stories. THE MAGICIANS is a story sold as adult fiction while HARRY POTTER is of course marketed, first and foremost, as a book for children ages 8-12. Maybe younger readers demand that we slow down and examine each detail, and go with a deliberate and predictable pace. Adults are less jarred by sudden jumps in timeframe, and less patient with detail. The implication for YA writers? Maybe we need to land somewhere in the middle.
I haven’t decided whether my story is a single fern frond, a bowl of fiddleheads, or somewhere in-between. But understanding the difference between the two is a step in the right direction.