One of the easiest ways to complicate a story is by adding unnecessary characters. A Story Featuring Too Many Characters Filling the Same Type of Role Martin Chuzzlewit offers a notorious example of a random and unnecessary setting, thanks to a lengthy section in which author Charles Dickens shoehorned his title character into a grueling tour of the United States. A Plot in Which the Structural Beats Are All About Different Things There are many different ways, we can complicate our stories. What’s the difference between “complex” and “complicated”? As I mentioned in my original response to Lila’s question, I like to think of “complex” as “many streams all leading to the sea.” Meanwhile, “complicated” is more akin to “many streams leading to many different seas.” Both are the result of “many parts,” but complexity brings unity to the overall whole by connecting more of those parts, while a complicated story is one in which those many parts don’t quite come together to create a single effect. Next week, we’ll talk about how you can bring desired complexity into your work-in-progress.
Today, I want to talk about several of the most common culprits for complicated stories. This comment sparked a conversation in the comments of that post, in which Lila Diller asked:Ĭould you define more clearly what you mean about the difference between complex & complicated?Īnd so a post (or two posts, actually) was born. One of the most powerful guidelines for any author is to “honor simplicity.” This doesn’t mean you can’t write stories of deep complexity, but it does mean you should never confuse complex with complicated. A few weeks ago, in the post entitled “ How to Structure Stories With Multiple Characters,” I mentioned in passing that: This a topic I’ve spent quite some time contemplating in recent years (not least because one of the major reasons my fantasy WIP went off the rails was my realization in revisions that it was just too complicated). But what is complexity? How can we learn how to write stories that are complex-without skidding across that narrow dividing line into complicated? What’s the difference between a complex story and a complicated story? And is your story too complicated? Calling a story “complex” is a high compliment.
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