In one of my older projects, a fantasy novel, I wanted to explore themes of regret through two characters with ostensibly similar circumstance and how their differing approaches to regret impacted their personal narratives. In one of the perspective characters' narrations, the element of regret isn't immediately presented to the audience, that being the one the audience is first introduced to. Spoiler: Summary She had just lit a fire in her own home. Her parents had already succumb to the fumes, her sister missing, and she waiting for her own passing through the flames. She offers no justification for her murder of her mother and father, she offers no final words or dramatic final gestures as her attempted suicide seems to be coming to fruition. She doesn't offer the audience any hint as to what she may be feeling or thinking in this moment; she doesn't even provide the audience for the longest time with a name. She only just passively describes, rather dreamily, the scene. The flames lapping at her, her inability to breathe, and soon the slipping of her consciousness into nothing. She'd later awake and in the one show of emotion she revels in her new surroundings, believing she'd died, and then disappointment knocking her back into passiveness when a very not-divine woman addresses her and asks "How would you care to be our God?" From here, she is enlisted as one of the Candidates for Godhood, one of dozens of people who have been "rescued from their lives" by this cult and are now being forced to compete with one another for the right to ascend to divinity, else forfeit their right to be welcomed into their new world where the rare and unique luxury of being able to bring redress to faults of the pass is offered. The narrator accepts, and again offers no insight as to why she agreed to pursue this goal. Her feelings are explored vicariously through those of the other Candidates for Godhood, all of whom seem to resemble one another in many key ways, rather than through her own account of her emotions. Over time, though the depersonalization grows more dramatic and distinct, her desperation becomes more and more clear through the increasing stony-faced and objective accounts of the actions she takes to win this absurd competition. The idea is that I want regret to be explored in the background of her narration, through implication of her motivations and past that later coalesces into something concrete. Using her depersonalization as a way to explore the effect of overwhelming regret on the psyche, she never provides the audience with a name for herself and rarely provides descriptions of her feelings -- in fact, the personal element of her narration will over time diminish. Inversely, however, her responses to her circumstance grow more dramatic, desperate and emotional as her account grows more objective and impersonal. An issue shows itself, though. An implied connection between the feelings and circumstances of the other Candidates and herself seems... too not-concrete, and there doesn't seem to be away to immediately hook or attach the audience to this idea. A similar issue may arise with the inverse correlation between the personal element of her narration and the increasingly emotional response to the competition (which was intended to imply some important drive for her to win Godhood). Worse, it'd be hard to get the audience to care when it's immediately revealed the narrator tried to kill her parents and herself, and it seems like a bad move not to offer any explanation or justification (even if it's important for the themes I'm shooting for). This character exists as a foil to the other perspective character, who compulsively attempts to help and save the greatest number of people and ends up becoming a civil servant to do so. Her response to regret becomes redemption (to make right by doing right in the future), in opposition of the other character's being redress (the attempt to fix something retroactively). The novel is meant to explore the effects of allowing either scenario to become overwhelming, and the especial dangers of attempting to redress situations which can't rightly be put back as they were. The connection between the two narratives is meant to be unveiled over time, and is hidden behind one of the character's reticence on the subject. Unfortunately, I'm worried that getting people invested in the... less favorable of the two's story may make exploring these themes in this way particularly difficult. What should I do?
Reading through this I can really only say that you're worrying too much about how to convey your subtext. This is an extremely complicated idea presented in an equally complicated way. No matter what you do this story is going to be difficult to create in exactly the way you want it to be. I think you need to think deeply about the purpose of every element of the way you plan to present your ideas. The more you know them, the easier it will be to figure out how to write it. Why a challenge to Godhood? Why is it a cult and not a genuine offering of Godship? Consider what would change about the story if the offer was for a true Godhood. Consider what would change about the story if the offer wasn't for Godhood in any manner at all. Why does your suicidal character agree to the competition but not use it as a way to kill themselves? Why does your character have the motivation to live now? What is this new motivation to live? Where did it come from? Does the missing sister come into play anywhere, if not, why is she missing and not just dead? Do you know your characters motivations or is the lack of justification on the murder of her parents because you can't think of a justifiable reason for murdering ones parents? (If you do know them then write your character in a way that shows she knows them as well.) Consider writing it from a more favourable perspective. Does that serve the purpose of your story? If not, do not and don't worry about the audience. People can sit through Montana 1948 and then want to deconstruct the inner motivations of every pos character in that flaming pile of sh*t then regardless of the seemingly heinous acts of your character and the lack of overt explanation, they will still relate to the character. That's just to start with as well. You have lots to contemplate about this one. The main issue I think you may be having is that you feel you should expose the motivations of your character over the course of the story but are unsure of how to do so whilst writing what you want to write, in the way you want to write it. You need to know your character inside, outside and backwards. You have to know absolutely everything to keep this on track the way you want it to. The more you know, the more your character knows and if they know then it'll find it's way into your story in a manner which will let the audience know as well.
A practical suggestion to add to the excellent suggestions by @GrJs above. You know what you want to happen to your characters. Now, as you write, ask yourself before writing EVERY single scene : What do I want this scene to accomplish? The rule is this: you must answer that question in real words before you start writing each scene. In fact, it helps if you write the answer down. Nothing vague will do. Firmly establish your writing goal for each scene. Not 'what happens in the scene' but what the scene is 'for.' What do you want the reader to be thinking and feeling as they read that scene? If you are foreshadowing something, what is it, and how do you accomplish it in that scene? If you want the reader to suddenly realise something about your character, how do you make that happen? This approach helps you to focus on what effect you are trying to create in the reader. It allows you to plant deliberate clues for the reader, so, at the end of the story, they will draw the correct conclusions about your themes of regret and depersonalisation.
GrJs, if it helps at all I can give you some idea of my current, though rough, answers to each of those questions. I'll put them in spoiler tags to keep the message from looking unnecessarily long and taking up too much space. Spoiler: Character The number one reason I had for the group's offer (in-universe) is that they need someone who is held back by an impossible wish, and it's important so to underscore the character's greatest fault of being preoccupied with attempting to directly fix the mistakes of the past. Ultimately, the character's initial homicide, attempted homicide and attempted suicide are related to her desire to reunite her whole family, which had been fragmented by an earlier tragedy she considers her fault. When she awakes to be offered the opportunity to be a God she finds herself newly driven by the promise of the ability to bring her family back together again and be newly inseparable in a way she was never able to before. "When I killed mother and father, I knew they'd be frolicking in Heaven somewhere with my sister and brother while I rotted in Hell. Comfortably, in fact. I was happy knowing I'd make amends with my sacrifice of Eternity. But I don't have to make amends now; there will never have been any death for me to take responsibility for." or something along those lines are how she eventually addresses her own motivations. The "perfect" solution to her regrets; the "ultimate" reform. She firmly believed that she could pay for her sins by delivering her family to her lost brother and herself to some faraway Hell to begrudge herself her sins. This is important, as an exploration of how regret can drive a person to an unhealthy obsession with the redress of the past instead of focusing on the channeling of it into one's future character. The futility of seeking to do the impossible (to wholly and totally change the past, in her case) is being portrayed by the ultimate fraudulence of the offer for Godship. Spoiler: Sister The missing sister would be the "shadow archetype" and the other perspective character. Her story arc involves her taking responsibility for the murder of her parents (both to the audience in her narration and to soldiers) and presumed death of her sister. She would ultimately be arrested in a scene wherein she describes how she plunged a paring knife into her parents' and sister's chests. She would later be released as an Ex-Con on the condition that she repay her sins in unbridled servitude to her government. Taking the offer, she is strong-armed into the life of an agent. She considers herself responsible for the two tragedies that faced her family due to her treatment of her sister. When she's taunted with knowledge of her sister's whereabouts and vague promises that she still lives, this hero takes the charge to the cult in hopes of making right with herself and her last remaining family. Similarly to the other perspective character, her story deals in regret. In contrast, however, instead of being preoccupied with the past to the point of being overwhelmed by it, she considers it her responsibility to make amends by living the possible life she can for others in servitude of everyone but herself. Again, however, it deals in the unhealthiness of being swallowed by regret in a totally different context and when channeled in a totally different direction. It's weird, because it seems so obvious, but to know literally and absolutely everything I want to accomplish at every waking moment as I write isn't an approach I considered beforehand, but to analyze my own characters top, front, bottom and back, and each of the sides too, would definitely be necessary in an idea like this. Thank you both! I never tackled anything quite like this in a project before. Shadow archetypes, dual-perspective storytelling, unreliable narrators and narrators with mental illness are all new to me, and it's become a bit overwhelming to manage in my previous, less organized methods.
I didn't mean to give the impression that you need to know exactly where your story is going at all times. If you're like me, you pants a lot. BUT when you write a scene, it's a good idea to ask yourself what you want that scene to accomplish. Ask yourself this: what do you want the reader to take away from it? Do you want the reader to like your character? Is that the purpose of the scene? Okay, so write the scene with that in mind. This doesn't mean you have to know how the entire story is going to turn out. Just work on how to make the character instantly likeable in that scene. Do you want the reader to sense there's a disaster coming? So, write that scene so the reader picks up hints of an oncoming disaster, without giving the game away. Do you want the reader to understand why the protagonist is frustrated by her brother's stubbornness? Write the scene so, at the end of it, the reader knows why the protagonist is frustrated. This kind of focus. It's a piece by piece thing, but it keeps the story moving forward. It also helps you choose what to put in (and what to leave out) of each scene. It keeps you from biting off more than you can chew. Of course you can have multiple purposes in any scene as well—make the character likeable AND hint at impending disaster. But if you decide what purpose/purposes the scene should accomplish before you start writing it, then you will stay on track. This technique breaks writing a long and complex novel into do-able pieces.
This is just the sort of thing I've never considered. Every paragraph, and every sentence, I knew should have a defined reason for its inclusion, but I never thought so broad as to have definite "points" to individual scenes. Thinking on it now, though, I see that of course that I need every part of the story to be focused. This advise is excellent, and I think will help me no matter what kind of novel I go on to write in the future. Thank you both!
Yeah. You don't have to think TOO far ahead. But it gives you a goal that's more focused than 'gee, I just want this to be good.'
When I feel overwhelmed by my own story, I always think about advice I took from reading L.M. Bujold. One of her major characters once said in her novel 'Barrayar', "Watch me. I can walk around the world." To me, this implies that a long journey is made up of a lot of steps—not of leaps and long-distance sights set on the horizon. No. At your own feet and the next step you want to take. Eventually you will have made it. Always keep the goal in sight, yes, but first watch your steps.
