: Can there be too many obstacles in a character’s path? My current WIP involves a deliberate miscarriage of justice. I started out with three main characters: J - a young girl who is effected
My current WIP involves a deliberate miscarriage of justice.
I started out with three main characters:
J - a young girl who is effected by both the crime committed and the injustice delivered
D - a clever detective with an interesting past and a dear friend who is a career criminal
N - a career criminal who is taking some time to develop a relationship with his girlfriend and his children ( both biological and unofficial)
J finds her mother and two others dead - runs for help when she understands what’s happened.
That brings in D, who knows that N, whom he’ll never catch for what he has done, is connected to this triple homicide and it looks like an opportunity to put an old friend in jail. He truly believes N will either end up dead or in prison and would be better off inside.
N, unaware of this, lives his life. Unbeknownst to him, evidence is being collected that will put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Murder, conspiracy to commit, etc.
Late at night the police enter his home to arrest him, but failures of procedure lead to a near fatal misunderstanding.
N is shot six times and wakes up in the hospital handcuffed to a bed
N is later taken out of police custody by a shrink who wants to run an experiment which involves signing N out of the hospital and turning him loose. The following three plot points are also part of the experiment.
N goes to a pub and SWAT shows up to end the nonexistent hostage situation
N escapes
N is snatched and interrogated
N is later released only to be snatched by a vigilante who thinks he’s hot and wants to have some fun with him
N does what he thinks he needs to to survive and eventually manages escape
N walks into a police station and surrenders
N tells his girlfriend things weren’t really real, but were fun so she will hate him rather than spend her life visiting him
Now this is where I am beginning to wonder if his trip to prison might not be uneventful - giving him another difficult choice to make. Situation (sheriff he knows is driving him in and a deer crosses the road, causing him to temporarily lose control of the vehicle. Sheriff is injured, N has a chance to get away - or stay and help.
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@Twilah982
I can only say for myself, but I think that a character is only overloaded with problems of the new problem doesn’t significantly add to the issue.
If you can cut a problem and not much changes - cut it.
However, there are ways to add weight to problems in order to keep them: such as keeping an emotional toll. If your character starts as a "normal" person, at least emotionally, getting shot and having to run from the police would have a serious strain on his mental fortitude.
Another way to increase the amount of problems in a story is to solve some before adding others. The Martian is a great example of this. The author Andy Weir said that he wrote the book by “throwing everything he could at his main characterâ€.
But in my opinion, all that goes out the window if your problems aren’t logical. Reading your plot points, I got lost when you introduced the shrink and SWAT invasion. Unless they make sense in context, I’d suggest cutting them.
The "shrink wanting to run an experiment" doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the plot.
The "SWAT invasion" seems random and forced. For SWAT to get a false call for a hostage situation, just while he’s in the pub...
And then it goes down from there. A vigilante...
If you make sure all the problems fit the situation logically, it won’t seem overfilled. Whereas if they don’t make sense of why they happened, then even a few problems won’t fit right.
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@Becky328
My answer is yes and no.
Ok, so here's what I think: There can definitely be too many obstacles in a character's path... however. The amount of obstacles that can be in said character's path is all based on your own skill as a writer. If you can somehow implement all of these obstacles into your novel without making it seem too unrealistic then I say go for it.
Readers get tired of reading a story in which a character never gets a break. When something is always blocking his way the story get boring and feels like there's never a moment of peace, which doesn't only take away from the feel of the story, but it also makes it seem too unrealistic. There have been several books that I've tried to read that I've ended up putting down for months on end because the main character (or whatever character who's POV the book is currently following), never seems to get a moment of rest, something exiting is always happening in their life, which leads to an overload.
The only reason I could come back to these books after the many months of being away is simply because the person who wrote the book was good at making a whole bunch of problems seem like a lot less than it actually is. Which is why I say yes and no. Yes because there definitely can be too many obstacles in a character's path. But no because the amount of obstacles that can be put in a character's path is greatly based on your ability to write those obstacles in without making it feel like an overload.
But along with that I also think that you can definitely put this one thing in there. It's not an extremely exiting obstacle, it's just an important one.
Plus, one more obstacle never hurt anyone... I mean, unless we're talking about this situation when someone else's life is at stake, but we just won't worry about that right now.
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@Shakeerah107
Yes.
There are two main problems.
The first is that if you throw in too much, the reader will be unable to see the story as a complete thing and a work of art. How many is too many partly depends on the skill of the author in delineating the complications and how they relate to it, so beta readers may be necessary.
The second is that if you throw too many, the reader may start to say that this is implausible, or even impossible, to really happen. When the reader starts to think that you, as the author, are just hosing the character, the suspension of disbelief is broken.
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@Martha805
It's all in how you write the story.
I'm going to be honest with you because I think you can take it, so here it goes.
Your story has a lot of potential to be really interesting, especially if you make it sound real. If it doesn't sound real, then a) no one is going to read it, and b) it doesn't matter if your story is too complicated or not because no one is going to want to read it.
I think that your plot could be interesting. Complicating a story more just makes it sound real, and that's good. But if you make the complications arbitrary (with no point), then you just have complications for the sake of having complications.
This is a link that helps you understand if you have too much plot in your story.
Beta readers are also a great way to figure out if your story is too complicated. If your readers follow your story and understand what's happening, then great! You don't have an overcomplicated plot. But if they get confused at key parts of the story, then your book is too confusing and you need to change something.
The bottom line is this: make it readable and understandable. if it isn't those things, then yes, you have too many obstacles in your story.
I hope this helped. :)
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@Odierno164
While most people would advise you with the same old: it is in the execution.
I will agree but have to add several things.
Time. The Lannister brothers go through an insane journey that is still being continued in the books. Kaladin from The Way of Kings goes through hell and back. I won't bore you with more examples. So what is the common thing that makes me consider those stories excellent and makes us all, or at least most of us, agree on that? Time. Not only in world years but also in pages. In both worlds the characters are not the only one and, GRMM has more but it is the same idea, and there are many other POV chapters that take us into different directions and make us forget all about character X. But if you have 3 chapters to put your criminal through and the guy is just going through all that then I'm sorry to say that I will roll my eyes out and consider it cheesy. But spread it out and it gets better.
Yes. This is more of an opinion and most people will have different thresholds. But even if you base stuff off reality you can't just add more and more and more torture to the character. The last book I read like that I still consider really terrible because of that. You can't just hurt and hurt and hurt the character. Call it whatever you want. People don't expect that and I would advise not to be corny.
Law of diminishing returns. Say you write a female character and she is raped in chapter 1. This is a major point and, if the writing is even average, we would be sad and shocked and angry and just devastated. Now in chapter 2 she is also raped. You finish chapter 3 with another rape. And by chapter 12 she has been raped like 10 times. Well. By chapter 12 I have become desensitized to her rapes. I don't even care how will the rapes are written or how emotional the thing is. The volume of tear jerking here is too much. This is not me. We all know the Mary Sue is bad but the reason it is bad is because a Mary Sue falls into that category of too much of X can be Y. That could be too much of a good thing can be bad. So really use your hurt or obstacles with reason. Don't just torture the character continuously.
My scars prove my worth. Cheesy quote aside this is a simple and great way to actually make your obstacles count. X Kept a vow and so he went to jail. But his girl broke up with him and he lost his job. X choose to run into the burning building to save the little girl but he got 3rd degree burns and broke a leg...etc. again much like the bodily scars the character has to collect all sorts of scars as a result of their journey. If even a game master would tell that you must have consequences in the world then it is the same with stories.
Obstacles that fit the genre. I won't get into genre now but basically you should not write a story with elements from other stuff and obstacles thrown in there from all over the place to give extra redemption or whatever. Getting framed and shot and all that is enough. Don't try to add him having to solve a global zombie crises and calculate the needed materials to build a space elevator.
Lastly I'm not against anything. Merely point out to stuff in theory that should be addressed and noticed. It is all about what you wrote after all.
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@Gretchen741
Problems make Great Drama:
As a person who's life has been affected closely by murder of/by family, I want/need stories that show redemption of wrongful people, but also wrongful people being found responsible for the actions/choices they have made.
It sounds complicated, but that can be good and bad. Is there such a thing as too many challenges? A story doesn't need to resolve all problems, only one at a time, and make progress.
It looks like D needs to somehow come back in and do something with the story to resolve some of the issues. D has seriously compromised ethical standards and put N's life at risk. What, exactly, I can't say.
Should the deer cross the road? Of course it should! N has to make a moral choice that looks like the wrong thing to do, but somehow proves that right action ultimately results in good outcomes - even if the good outcome is self-redemption. Or even if N goes to prison, his GF hears about his right action and follows her heart. Don't know exactly what, but it seems to be the correct way to go. You may have a different end-game in mind.
Good luck!
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