Having trouble figuring out why I keep having trouble.

[Bramandin]

The plan from when I was beginning is here. The part I'm stuck on is in the critique section. While I'm pretty sure that I don't have to slavishly follow an established plot structure, especially with the possibility that I found the wrong one, that I'm having problems indicates that there is a problem.

It's not letting me post images for some reason, but https://www.sffchronicles.com/attachments/90430/ is Dan Harmon's Story Circle and I'm also looking at the plot embryo from 9 Story Structures to Plot Your Next Novel - Bookfox Oh, they're pretty much the same thing in different words.

• You: Harry is an orphan who lives in a cupboard under the stairs. He feels odd and out of place.
• Need: Harry wants a sense of belonging. When he receives mysterious letters and finds out he is a wizard, he wants to learn all about this new world that he’s from but never knew about.
• Go: He goes to Hogwarts and is sorted into Gryffindor.
• Search: As he adapts to the wizarding world, Harry develops his character by finding friends (Ron and Hermione) and foes (Malfoy and Snape).

So the Need and the Go in my story is immediate and it goes into the exposition part as a wind-down from meeting Truck-Kun. (It's as much of a portal fantasy as Wizard of Oz or HHGTTG.) I'm in part 4-5 where he pretty much has what he wants until he develops new ones, but it feels like Adapting to the Unfamiliar Situation is mainly going to look like an info-dump of the cultural differences between Blackrock where he was and his new home of Tarmin Pass. The conflict is faux paus until he wants friends and the only one willing to be friends with an outsider is the elf kid.

If I try to plug this into the hero's journey, it feels better to treat Tarmin Pass as a prologue of the ordinary world and returning to Blackrock as crossing the threshold. His call to adventure is when he meets the Gandalf/Merlin who asks him to go back.

 

[therapist]

Firstly, i've spent many days toiling over the outline to my current WiP and still can't quite crack it. Outlining is hard.
I tried to read your linked post with your story outline but had trouble understanding it. Can you try and simplify it? Boil it down a bit more?
Also do you have an idea of what your ending is? Is it the orphan returns to help free the other orphans from some sort of villain?

 

[Bramandin]

Can you try and simplify it?

I can simplify.

• Radley is barely scraping by as an orphan. Leti is a monster that snuck into the coal-mine he lives in and kidnaps him.
• He meets elves who get him cleaned up and then he gets apprenticed into one of the clothing shops.
• This is the part I'm stuck on, but he settles into his new life.
• It's awkward for him. He's an outsider, he has to learn how to read, his master works him hard but not unreasonably so. I haven't locked-in if his master is against it and why, but Radley tries to learn magic and never gets good at it.
• I also want to do a bit like Name of the Wind where the Radley's story pauses for mythology/history stories. Other than that, it's maybe a bit like To Kill a Mockingbird where the protag is associated with someone who'll be talked about while the protag won't make the main history books.
• Eventually Radley meets a Gandalf-like figure who asks him to go back to Blackrock to investigate their Luck Goddess.
• I wasn't planning on making the leaders of Blackrock villainous, just xenophobic and resistant to change. However I could make them aware that being oppressive tyrants is no longer necessary and they're preserving the status quo because they're comfortable.
• What happens beyond disrupting the society of Blackrock is foggy right now.
• For the ending, Radley doesn't stick around to deal with the consequences of disrupting Blackrock's culture.

The original fanfiction I was using as a guide was a lot more optimistic in that Radley had an entire pack of orphans to save, but I'm thinking that the situation makes it so that even if a handful are being generated per year, very few last long. Even setting up a practice of selling them into slavery to the traders is an improvement. In the original fanfiction, he becomes the matron of the orphans that he rescued.

 

[therapist]

Sounds like you've figured out plenty of good plot points here. If I was outlining this, this is what i would do to help fill the gaps and tie the story together.
At the start when we meet radley scraping by as an orphan, give him a concrete goal that he can achieve at the end. And make it something that can be accomplished in Blackrock, so when he is asked to return to investigate the Goddess, he can also accomplish this goal.
I would make investigating this goddess a key piece to this goal, maybe it uncovers something about the mythology and magic that Radley struggled with earlier. It would help if something Radley learns from the elves help him in his final actions.

Sorry if this was vague, just trying to visualize the story structure.

 

[Bramandin]

At the start when we meet radley scraping by as an orphan, give him a concrete goal that he can achieve at the end.

I can't think of a goal for young Radley beyond just surviving long enough to get proper work. The story hints that he wouldn't have made it. Instead, he was saved by a deus ex machina before I get 700 words in. (I don't think it's necessarily worse to have divine intervention rather than plot armor. When watching a Charlie Chaplin flick, it's still funny even though you know he's standing in just the right spot to go through a window when a house-front falls on him.)

I identified a bit of a theme in that the story reinforces nurture over nature. His friend was an elf that grew up in a human society so he's not like other elfi. The brother was human, but he's also mixed-culture because he was in an elf family. Radley spends enough time away from Blackrock to not accept the status quo there after seeing a better way.

So the concrete goal is not Radley helping himself, but rather his own kind. I think the most similarity between Radley when he leaves and Radley when he comes back is hatred of the Luck Goddess.

Also Kishōtenketsu came up in my Youtube feed and I understand it a bit better, so I might try to do a "with conflict" version.

 

[therapist]

I can't think of a goal for young Radley beyond just surviving long enough to get proper work.

So the concrete goal is not Radley helping himself, but rather his own kind.

That works, and ties nicely in with the theme. I would show at the start that Radley's own kind both need and deserve helping, but Radley isn't yet ready, capable, or willing to tear down the status-quo to help them. That allows for a solid character growth arc.

What happens beyond disrupting the society of Blackrock is foggy right now.

I don't see why anything needs to happen beyond that. In hero's journey, him disrupting the blackrock status quo is the last segment, the 'return with elixir' or in Dan Harmons sotry wheel, it is step 8: change. "The change could be a personal one; it can be change to the world around them. In the instance of a movie or long story, it would be both."

 

[Bramandin]

That works, and ties nicely in with the theme. I would show at the start that Radley's own kind both need and deserve helping, but Radley isn't yet ready, capable, or willing to tear down the status-quo to help them. That allows for a solid character growth arc.

I don't see why anything needs to happen beyond that. In hero's journey, him disrupting the blackrock status quo is the last segment, the 'return with elixir' or in Dan Harmons sotry wheel, it is step 8: change. "The change could be a personal one; it can be change to the world around them. In the instance of a movie or long story, it would be both."

It's more that Radley won't see their need until he goes back. His personal change is pretty much the story. Also, when I said I didn't know beyond him disrupting the culture, I meant that I'm not sure yet what that will look like, just that he's equipped to do it.

 

[Toby Frost]

My first question would be "What is this book about?" I don't mean underlying themes or character development, but the story itself, the basic movement of the narrative. The Lord of the Rings is basically about a group of characters on a mission to destroy a magic ring while a war breaks out around them. The Name of the Rose is basically about a monk solving a mystery in a medieval monastery. Both have huge digressions, but that's what it boils down to.

I'm not getting a clear sense of that in this story. It feels as if it is basically "Stuff happens to Radley". Obviously, when you're at the bottom of the social scale, actually doing stuff is much harder than when you're the king, but there are plenty of stories about street-urchins and the like trying to improve their position and so on. I think you've got two main problems: (1) Radley seems very passive and (2) the story doesn't have a clear objective.

There are stories where the story is something vague like "John finds a place in the world" but in fantasy, I'd usually expect something more dramatic.

 

[Bramandin]

I need to reread To Kill a Mockingbird but I think the middle of my story is pretty much the same thing. As I recall, the most interesting things happen around the protag instead of to her in a slice of life. It might also be a bit like My Petition for More Space which is about a guy standing in line (nut-to-but and shoulder-to-shoulder) and wool-gathering about the dystopian world that he lives in in-between conversations with the people pressed on each of his four sides.

It's a fantasy setting, but his story in the middle is probably more of a "rags to middle-class" story. Is there a non-Superman version of the Moses story where he's fostered by humble people? Mine probably only starts as a Moses story because it spends so much time on his foster-life and I wasn't planning on his people wanting to be led to someplace better.

I just wandered out to the living room and heard a new version of "The Boxer" and Radley's story is pretty much an inversion.

Radley is at a very passive point in his life. An actual quote from an earlier bit is "Just because it was the choice they made (for him) didn’t mean he should do the opposite." A kid that's beyond the boundary-testing phase won't purposefully make a choice that will get him punished unless there's something he feels is worth it. A normal non-anxious person who has just won the lottery will be happy and be free of want for a little bit because they have the idea that all of their wants are met; they're certainly not going to tear up their ticket or refuse the money without a compelling reason.

Radley will have opportunities to but heads with his master Kerwin as he gets more comfortable. Kerwin doesn't want him associating with the only people willing to be friends with him, I could make Kerwin against Radley trying to learn magic if I just come up with a plausible reason, Radley might get invited through the portal and have to sneak out to go because Kerwin said no.

The book version of Lord of the Rings didn't hold my attention, but I suppose my story is more like if the first 2/3 was dedicated to living in the Shire and the last third was getting the Ring elsewhere. Ouran Host Club lets Haruhi's focus wander across all of the available boys until someone trying to take Tamaki away forces her to realize her choice in the last few episodes of a 26-episode series.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think To Kill a Mockingbird works because Scout is too small to change anything, she's quite funny, and she's observing interesting/sinister things that she can't really understand, and we have to interpret.

I just don't think I would read a book with a passive lead whose only problems are "teenage stuff", and I'm not sure how many people would be happy with such a thin plot. Almost every really good book I can think of involves a character making important decisions. Even a book like 1984, which has a very weak hero, involves him making definite decisions. Really mild comedy stories tend to involve the hero making some kind of life-changing decision, even if it's just talking to someone or standing up to a colleague, etc.

 

[sule]

Radley is at a very passive point in his life.

Passive protagonists can be done, don't get me wrong - but it's very hard to hold the reader's attention. "Borrowing" from Brandon Sanderson, a good main character usually has three main "sliders" that can be adjusted by the author: Sympathy, Proactivity, and Competence. For readers to like a character, the slider usually need to be balanced: i.e. -the less sympathetic you make a character, the more proactive and/or competent they need to be to interest the reader. Radley, to me, sounds like someone who is not very competent in his new world (which is fine in a "strange world"), but this, in my opinion, means that he cannot also be passive. Things can happen to him, sure, but he needs to have something driving him to do things. He can't just wait around for things to happen to him, unless you want to make him comically sympathetic to make up for his lack in the other two sliders (which isn't usually a good choice for a protagonist).

Since Radley is an orphan, I, as a reader, would totally buy it if Radley had a desire to "master" the ins and outs of his new world in order to survive in it. Maybe he's worried that, if he doesn't earn his place, he'll be kicked back out in his old world. Maybe he wants to show Kerwin that he can belong in this place. Maybe he feels he needs something that he can only get by staying in this new place. Radley can learn about this world in an active way, which could be much more interesting to the reader,

For example (which you've mentioned as an inspiration before): the middle of The Name of the Wind is not about "Kvothe goes to school and stuff happens to him." Kvothe has a couple of desires driving him: 1) His desire to investigate the Chandrian, and 2) His desire to learn the Name of the wind and the magic system. These sometimes conflict with or are overshadowed by 1) His need to survive and 2) His need to test the reader's patience, but they are, for the most part, the things that drive the story along.

What does Radley think he needs, and how does that sometimes create conflict? Example: Kvothe's desire to investigate the Chandrian (and learn from the master of magic) also makes him need to remain at school, which causes him to take out predatory loans and do strange jobs to make the money he needs to keep his spot on the rolls.

 

[Bramandin]

I just don't think I would read a book with a passive lead whose only problems are "teenage stuff", and I'm not sure how many people would be happy with such a thin plot.

Aha, I think my problem is that it's been a long time since anyone has forced me to read a book like that. Sofar, I only wanted to participate in my mom's bookclub once because they keep choosing dull-sounding books where nothing magical happens. (I think that fantasy and sci-fi used to not be mainstream because Babysitter's Club used to be the hot thing, not Percy Jackson.) I recently read Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce and while magical things happen, a similar story could be told without magic; I probably wouldn't have bothered if there wasn't magic, though turning it into a gaslight/steampunk setting might have held me.

Maybe he's worried that, if he doesn't earn his place, he'll be kicked back out in his old world.

There is that. I'm pretty sure I didn't post this, but Radley says that he can mend and Kerwin asks for a demonstration. Radley nodded, but he was suddenly nervous. What if he wasn’t good enough? He’d seen mending that was pretty, but hunters cared more about the fix being solid. He also has the named motivation for trying to be Kerwin's apprentice. steady employment might be better than going to Blackrock to scratch for his meals.

I feel like he can have moments where he is fawning instead of actively struggling. It's been a while since I read Harry Potter, but I don't think he's kicking and screaming as Dursley rows them out to the lighthouse, and then Harry's staring at his watch so he can wish himself happy birthday in the middle of the night instead of trying to get to the rowboat to run away, even though he's ignorant that Hagrid is coming to rescue him the moment he's legally ten.

I don't think I have access to Name of the Wind unless I buy my own e-copy, but the story seems to spend a lot of time in Tarbean where Kvothe might have asked for a Chandrian story from the teller but he's not moving forward on his quest. I forget why, maybe it's because he doesn't look old enough yet or doesn't have a good plan? Did he also start with wanting to learn the name of the wind, because it seems like he didn't know it was possible until he was at the school.

Radley is at a point where his need for survival is met, but he's eventually going to feel safe enough to want more from life, like friendship, pursuing interests, security from industrialization destroying the livelihood he's apprenticing for... I just watched a video where the author spent as much time choosing a hobby for a character as their name; I think it was to humanize them or something.