Okay, hear me out through the pretentious sounding title – this is legitimately a very common mistake I made all the time when I was a newer writer. I’d been talking about it on Twitter over the weekend, and wanted to organize my thoughts a little more coherently so that hopefully other people can avoid this mistake.
Let me give you a couple of examples. On my first big attempt at a fantasy novel, I had a plot hole where I needed my characters to figure out where a specific prisoner was held. I had done a lot of worldbuilding and history, so I said “this is a super sekret organization that has worked to subvert the big bads for years. They spy on them these three ways.” So when I was trying to figure out how to find out where the prisoners were held, I tried to figure out which of those methods would work best. None of them worked, and as a result I ended up bending over BACKWARDS trying to justify it (I believe I ultimately ended up having them no joke follow bread crumbs as people made food for prisoners. It… was bad).
Hold up. Why couldn’t they just have an informant or a guard they can bribe to get additional information? Because, I said so. I’d already detailed in numerous charts the organizational structure and exactly who they knew and when they’d bribed them and what departments they couldn’t infiltrate because rigorous management….
Do you start to see the tautological nature of this? I’m not doing something (letting them bribe the guard) because “that’s the way it is”; i.e. I’d already said they don’t bribe those guards.
That’s the problem though. I’m the author; I have total control over “the way it is”. This gang doesn’t actually exist; my elaborate charts of departments and timelines doesn’t really exist either. It’s never on page so as far as the reader is concerned it certainly doesn’t exist. I’m the author; I just said they do. That’s my variable to control. When that world-building is getting in the way of solving structural problems in my novel, I’m committing a perfect example of this tautological fallacy.
This appeared all the time – here’s another example from the same project.
The characters were running from a magical masked wizard (MMW). In my free-writing about the MMW, I’d come up with an elaborate idea about how copper conducted magic because it was copper bowls that she used in her blood rituals. Sure, I guess? Why not. So when the characters needed to hide from this MMW, I had them hide in some pipes.
BUT WAIT, OH NO!
That can’t work! THOSE pipes are COPPER because I’d mentioned it randomly in my freewriting (I didn’t want my city to have LEAD pipes after all), and that meant because her magic was conducted through copper the characters absolutely couldn’t hide in THOSE tunnels. They’d be spotted for sure and would die! Maybe they can dig a big hole in the trench, or punch through a brick wall, or oh have a carriage to swap them out for freedom that they arranged three days in advance or or or…
Mike for chrissake just let them hide in the goddamn pipe.
To be clear, this whole “copper conducts magic” was not integral to my setting. It was not being built up for some eventual payoff. I don’t even know why I’d been researching “What are water-pipes in cities made of?” other than Wikipedia is an addictive website that I should definitely avoid (though, to be fair, it’s nowhere NEAR as bad as TVTropes.com). Or why I’d decided it particularly important to not have lead pipes. It wasn’t like the reader would even know the pipes were copper-
-Oh wait, I awkwardly added a bit of dialogue to this chase scene where a character proclaimed “Wait, those are copper pipes, we can’t go in there!” So now not only was I avoiding a much simpler plot solution to the scene’s needs, I was also adding shitty dialogue to explain why they weren’t taking the OBVIOUS OPTION. RIGHT. THERE. All because some notes that were off screen in a notebook.
There are characters on the run. They need to hide. There’s a pipe right there and it’s a cool af chase scene if that’s where they can hide. Boom, done.
Look, world building is complicated and it’s easy to go DEEP. But remember, the purpose of all that world-building and plot stuff is to facilitate your story. “The way it is” exists to set up awesome moments in what you’re writing; if it’s not doing that it’s not essential to your plot. So use your authorial muscles to take control of a story and don’t let your world-building restrain you. When you’re staring at a plot hole and are trying to find answers, think of it from 1) the perspective of the reader. Do they know about the world building that is causing the plot hole, or is it something that’s completely off camera? If it’s off camera, don’t let it limit you. 2) Think of it from the perspective of what you’re setting up in your novel. In the above example, if I wanted to set up a dramatic question about specifically why this big bad could detect people in copper pipes and it would be used later again in act 3 and I want the reader to know about it… well, then that’s fine. This is world-building being used to set up the story. If “the way it is” isn’t setting up something important later in your story and that’s what’s holding you back? Ignore it, shove it out of the way, or just CHANGE the way it is.
You have the freedom, Neo-writer. You can change whatever you want in this world, be it adding a happy little tree here or an awesome plot-forwarding-coincidence there.
So, go out there. Don’t be held back by your off-screen world-building. There is no off screen world-building.
So let them go hide in the goddamn pipe.
Cheers, and be kind to yourselves.
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