ALLISON MARTIN

Last week’s STORY ROOTS post was all about the protagonist as the mother tree that feeds every other character in the book, but we need to look closer now at this root structure and the environment in which these characters grow.

Setting the landscape for your story is asking the big picture question you want your story to answer.

Vision Question

Define the high level question being asked and set the landscape for your story forest. 

Have you ever seen a tree growing on the edge of mountain rock, reaching out over a cliff with a curved trunk to catch the sun without tumbling down the rockface? 

What do you think would happen to that tree if you uprooted it and transplanted it to flat ground? It would fall over due to the angle of the tree to the ground as well as the shape of the root structure. A rock root system ‘hangs on’ whereas a soil root system ‘spreads out’. 

A flat ground tree growing tall and bone straight to the sky fighting to be the tallest to get the most sun. If you suddenly moved that tree to the rocky cliff, its top heavy branches would snap it clean in half, if the roots even took to begin with. 

When it comes to your story, the vision you have–or the big question you’re asking–will set the landscape in which your trees must grow. 

Let’s grab a quick idea and flesh it out in this book so you can see how I apply this to my own ideas.

How does someone grapple with grief at the same time as falling in love? 

This is a great high level story question, and it sets the tone for the kinds of characters and plot that can happen to create an engaging story. What kind of tree will grow here? What if your character was a sociopath in prison? Would this kind of character have a personal crisis hanging in the balance of grief and love? 

Probably not, because by definition Sociopaths are incapable of empathy or remorse, and lack conscience. To grieve and love may be within the slight grasp of a true sociopath’s abilities, but to have the two in conflict would not make a believable story nor one with a very strong hook.

What about a teenaged girl in a small town? Would someone like that be at home in this landscape? They could be, definitely. More So than a middle aged sociopath in prison, I’d say.

The importance of setting your landscape

A mistake that is often made is cramming too many things into one story. Having a clear view of your story question will help you understand what needs to be in your story and what needs to be cut. 

The idea that more twists and turns, complexity, or layers of themes is a good thing, is prevalent with aspiring writers–but seasoned authors are guilty too. While you may think more “issues” are adding depth to your story, they may actually be muddying the water.

If you can’t describe your story in one sentence, you don’t know your story 

There are very few arguments around writing that I would go to battle for but one of them is that the best and most affecting stories are strikingly clear. But don’t confuse streamlined with boring, or slow paced!

Less is more when it comes to story and giving your big story question room to breathe and grow is going to make readers love your book more not less. We’ll talk more about the writer’s fascination with plot twists and shock values later.

All you need to know here is that every word, sentence, and scene needs to somehow relate to your broader story question. 

In our case for this book the question is: How does someone grapple with grief at the same time as falling in love?

Theme and question

There’s been a great debate about themes in a story for longer than I’ve been around. And I want to note that our question is not a theme. 

This question of grieving while falling in love has the potential to birth many different themes based on how you write the story, build your characters, and structure your plot. Ideas of some themes that might show themselves in our vision question are: you cannot feel joy without pain, opening your heart to grief heals it faster than pushing it down, letting people in makes grief feel less lonely, grief and love make people do outrageous things, or having a trusted adult is important to the health of teenagers. I mean the list is endless, because we haven’t fleshed out our story yet. 

The Vision Question is simply your guide to stay on track while you write, revise, and edit your book by understanding the landscape in which your characters will grow.

How your vision helps you sell your story

You are going to have to sell your story at every level. You need to sell it to yourself, to an agent and editor (for traditionally published authors), influencers, and finally readers. Not to mention reviewers, bookstores, and media.

Your story vision–the big question–is your ticket to making sure the premise is clear and engaging. And when someone asks you that dreaded question “What’s your book about?” you can start a conversation with “I’ve been so fascinated by how different people process grief and love in their lives, it inspired a story about … then move into your premise which we’ll discuss next week!

Using your vision to set your publishing goals

Your story vision can also help you set or reach your publishing goals by helping you understand how you want your readers to feel when they read your books.

Your publishing goals for the story are also going to inform your choices for voice, plot, and theme. Indie publishing a YA contemporary that will be read mostly by adults has very different style choices than publishing a YA contemporary traditionally that will be bought mostly by schools and libraries.

Conventions and tropes will also alter based on what you want to achieve with the story. Do you want mass market appeal or a niche/cult following for the book? The answers to this will inform your entire writing process and can even clue you in to whether the book will be ‘marketable’ in the first place.

Having an idea upfront about the likelihood of success with your story might help you to get excited about writing it, or rework some problems before you write an entire book and realize it’s never going to sell. 

And you know what, being a bestseller might not be a goal of yours. This project might be just for you and that’s okay too. Knowing what you don’t want is just as useful in setting your direction when you sit down to write.

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Next week we will be tackling the next tree analogy I have for you while writing your story: The Seed of the Story.