In a post on Writer Unboxed, Donald Maass says that novelists don’t have to choose between high concept simplicity and literary complexity. “Simple story concepts spin off complex developments. Complex stories have at their heart a simple human truth,” Maass says. “Having either firmly in hand will make the writing process easier. Simple? Complicated? A novel is both—and so is writing one.”
Even the most sweeping epic can be drawn down to the journey of a character of family, framed around the passage of a single event, or viewed through the lens of a big question. Atticus Finch represents a society rent by racism, Jay Gatsby the excess of an entire decade. “A subject as broad as life itself is best approached through a tight focus,” Maass says. “The narrower the window, in a way, the wider the view.”
Maass suggests some questions and exercises that could help you simplify your complex theme:
- What contradiction inherent in human nature does your protagonist embody? Show each side at work.
- How is the main problem facing your character one that none of us would ever want to face? Make it more agonizing.
- Your protagonist may not know it, but he/she is on a universal human quest. For what? What does it take to answer that question, find that self, or arrive at that place?
- What is the object, idea, group, or place around which your protagonist’s story revolves? Make it central enough to serve as your novel’s title and icon cover image.
- Can you compress your story’s timeframe? What can you invert? In what way can the storyteller (that’s you) manipulate the tale to conceal, falsely foreshadow, create a pattern, work a trick, or in any other way play with the reader’s head?
You can find the rest at the link below.
