The Plot Thickens

[rowyn]

A comment from level_head yesterday about "Man vs Nature" stories, where the central conflict revolves around people struggling against natural forces, reminded me of a couple of books that I've read. In them, the author posited a type of magic/psionics/whatever wherein certain people had the ability to prevent natural disasters. The world itself was rife with natural disasters, so there was a ton of demand for these services.

I thought this was a pretty neat concept, allowing for a class of people with powerful, protective abilities but not ones used in combat. However, while the books were about some of these supernaturally endowed people, the plots of both novels revolved around conflicts with other people and uses of their powers that weren't covered by the initial set-up of the book.

This strikes me as a very common thread in books: whatever conflict is presented at the outset of a novel is not the real conflict of the book. Some mystery or twist will reveal itself partway through to change the direction or the nature of the story. If the story at the outset seems to be "who will win this big race?" then later on it'll turn out to be about the people who are trying to fix the results of the race, or the lesson that protagonist needs to learn about the importance of winning, or that the trophy for winning the game contains a hidden doomsday device, etc. You get the idea.

And I wonder: is this an inevitable feature of novels? Is it particularly hard to tell a good story that's also straightforward, that's simply about winning the race, or catching the killer, or rescuing the princess? Or does the plot have to thicken from there, to make the story something new and unexpected?

Comments

[telnar.livejournal.com]

One way to get a variation on the "man vs nature" theme is to include an intelligent adversary who is long dead (and has no living allies). That allows the heroes to try to outthink their opponent, but the tension comes from the (more or less) naturally occurring problem rather than from direct conflict.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I like it.

Those ideas combine into "Man versus a world of gray goo" (nanobots). They may not be exactly hostile to humans intentionally, but their automatic behavior can still be deadly as they simply do what they do.

And what they do can be interesting indeed. Michael Crichton took a shot at this in Prey, but I thought that the concept deserved a rather more developed story. An entire planet, long since given over to this created ecosystem.

The book could be called Intelligent Design. ];-)

===|==============/ Level Head