My interests include mythology, languages, medieval history, and how they interact with contemporary culture. I grew up watching Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bond, and Dragon Ball Z, and this explains more about me than you might think. I dance, teach, travel, read, and write. Above all, I love stories.
First off, I’m shifting operations over to caseyblair.com (that URL will no longer redirect you here). I have too many images for WordPress to import to migrate this blog cleanly so I’ll be leaving it up indefinitely, but don’t expect new content here!
Secondly, I’m starting an email newsletter, and you can sign up here! This is only for important updates like book releases. AND, if you sign up you’ll automatically receive a link to download a FREE copy of my Tea Princess Chronicles short story featured in Swift the Chase. That story was written to stand alone, so it’ll introduce you to that universe if you’re new or it will be extra fun if you’ve been reading along.
And the last piece of news is an important update about a book release: my novella Consider the Dust will be out June 2nd! You can read the announcement and preorder here.
Putting together a year’s best list is inherently weird.
Do I use books I read in 2019, or books that came out in 2019? Since I read ARCs early, it seems unfair to only do the former. But if I only do the latter then I miss older books, and I believe in supporting backlist. Especially since I haven’t gotten to all the books that came out this year that I want to read! (Like, I’m sure A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay would be listed if it wasn’t, you know, still on my TBR. >_<)
I also remain confused by people who were posting these in, like, November. Great for holiday shopping I guess, but I’ve read a dozen books since then! IN THIS HOUSE WE ARE EXCESSIVELY THOROUGH WHERE BOOK LISTS ARE CONCERNED and also honestly just in general.
So this is a mix, basically. But all books are available to purchase as of the end of 2019! I did cut sequels from the list, too: all these are stand-alones or beginnings of series.
More importantly, all of them are books not just that I enjoyed casually, but that I will yell about in an alarmingly enthusiastic fashion to anyone I can convince to hold still long enough.
These are, of the 150ish titles under consideration for 2019, my favorite reads. The top 15%, more or less. You may have heard me shout about them before, and you certainly will again. Requisite caveat that these are necessarily my personal taste, and I read primarily for character arcs and always want stories about powerful women.
So with that in mind, here they are in alphabetical by author’s last name order, genres all mixed together because I had too many edge cases XD; you can search by age or genre category as you like. All links go to IndieBound in the interest of supporting independent bookstores, so if you want to know more about any of them, just click!
(If we’re mutuals and you’re curious whether a particular book might be a good fit for you, you know how to reach me! Otherwise, if you want me to sell you books in person, you’d better register for Sirens Conference. >=D)
First, this was an incredible year for space opera for me across genres. If you only read one book off this list, make it Empress of Forever. Trust me.
Second, this is more YA than I’ve been excited about in ages–I’ve gone through a dry spell with YA for several years, so I hope this isn’t an outlier and 2020 will bring more of the same!
Also, that’s like… six whole books by dudes lol. If you’re looking for more books by and about women, nonbinary and trans people, people of color, queer people, neuroatypical and disabled people, I’ve got you fairly well covered!
Next year I plan to keep broadening my reading in middle grade and romance, but what I’m really hoping for is an adult epic fantasy series I want to yell at everyone about. We’ll see how it goes!
Here we are: another year passed, a new decade launched, and I am in my prime.
(I’m now 31 years old and clearly still a huge nerd.)
Last year I talked about taking a step back and figuring out how to get what I want out of life without killing myself. I was ready to fully embrace embarking on and furthering the kind of adventures that matter to me.
I, uh. Went a little fuller out than I anticipated?
I started listing out the things I’ve done in the last year that might merit mentioning in my annual birthday round-up post, and. I mean, I’m always busy, because I am very bad at not doing. But I’ve apparently gotten much better very quickly at doing meaningful work, because there are way more exciting life happenings I want to talk about here.
The big thing this year that I can’t possibly not start with, given its scope and how much of my life it took this year in sheer energy not to mention time, is that I successfully planned a fantasy wedding full of dragons and achieved marriage. It was such a project, and while I’m delighted it is done with forever—hard to overstate this, truly, I am Very Done—I’m happy with the work I did and given all the same information would make those choices again.
On the story front, which I’m thrilled to be able to effectively prioritize again (honestly can’t recommend planning a wedding on your own and also trying to write books and do dayjobbery, it is a suboptimal combination of time commitments), I think this may be the first time in at least five years I haven’t finished drafting a book since my last birthday writing?
That said, I’ve still written upwards of 100,000 words on two different books*—for my non-writer friends: this is a significant number of words; pertinently, it’s well more than a book’s worth—and that DESPITE PLANNING A DANG INTRICATE WEDDING, so. I’m cutting myself a bit of slack for once in my life. The writing is occurring, I’m growing as a writer, and I’m happy with the work I’m doing: that’s what matters.
(*Passed 80k on one and 50k on the other! I’ve learned in an ideal world I shouldn’t try to write two books at the same time, but I am nevertheless writing two books at the same time in a substantial way.)
I did have a book launch, my very first! I have a short story in an anthology of fantasy chase scenes called Swift the Chase, which is particularly exciting for me because I’ve read work by literally all the other authors and honestly loved them all. (If you haven’t checked it out, it is designed to be friendly to people new to everyone’s work!)
As for the work that supports my continued ability to work on stories, the very recent adventure is that I left the traditional workforce and launched my freelance career! Since that was, uh, last week, I have little to definitively report other than that I’m excited about this as a substantial life change for myself. This falls firmly in the category of adventures that set myself up for the future I want, and I’m looking forward to exploring where this takes me.
A theme for this year all around has been my improving at both prioritizing and setting—and enforcing—boundaries. The difference that has made is in my being able to live my life attending to what I care about, to put my time and energy into what matters most to me.
There are so many other projects I’ve touched this year that are firmly trending toward that future. My final project at the bookstore was a culminating event on so much of what I’d worked toward during my time there, an inclusive panel with romance writers talking about reclaiming history that our community loved and that even got a write-up in the newspaper.
Because outside of all that, I’ve done work I’m proud of, and care about. Earlier this year my essay “Women Are Already Powerful: The Problem of Privileging Masculine Modes of Power in Fantasy” was published, and getting to dive into analyzing the relationship between gender, power, fantasy, and storytelling in a big way is, like. A Lot of what I’m passionate about, so that’s me maximally #backonmybullshit and loving it.
It’s always validating when other people also think I have important insights to contribute, and Sirens Conference, which I have so much respect for, is bringing me on as faculty next year to do just that. I’ve done programming there before—including this year!—and got a taste of running a workshop stepping up this year at the last-minute to fill in after a cancellation, but it’s different to craft a long-form program in advance, and to be confident I’m delivering an experience that will fundamentally change people’s understanding. Teaching in this field has always been an aspiration of mine, and I could not have been more thrilled by this invitation. I’m already plotting.
Bringing my ideas to bear to craft experiences has been something of a theme this year. At 4th Street Fantasy, I’ve officially taken over programming. This was the first year I was largely responsible for that core of the conference even though I wasn’t in charge, and I’m excited to buckle in and work on shaping ways for us to explore ideas pushing genre and writing boundaries in exciting ways. I learned a lot this year, and there’s only, always, more to come.
And of course, there’s the annual birthday adventure! Last year I thought I was going to switch from flying to travel adventures, but I decided to do this a differently. There are always things—activities, experiences—I’ve been meaning to try that are just never enough of a priority for me to get around to. That’s part of how I got started with skydiving!
So instead for my birthday every year I’m going to give this gift to myself: trying something new, something that I’m excited about. A regular reminder, no matter what else is or isn’t happening in my life, to make my life adventurous; that life can always be an adventure.
This year? I tried out a capoeira class.
Somewhat to my surprise—I thought it might be a good fit for me, that’s part of why I’d wanted to try!—I really loved it, way more than I anticipated. Even starting from nothing, it felt fundamentally right from the start. So suddenly now I’m working on making this particular adventure a regular part of my life. (No picture this year, sorry. I have some videos, but I’m not sharing. =P)
Adventure abounds, and this decade has opened with them all around! My life this past year has been more fulfilling than at any time I can remember: both more focused but also filling into all the areas of my life I want to spend more time in: essays and teaching, building inclusive communities, seeing and valuing the people in my life and myself included, writing the stories that matter to me, and always learning and growing and becoming more myself.
I’m spending my life doing the work I care about, be it professional or personal or somewhere in between. And that will always be its own adventure.
I’m flying inexorably toward the future I want for myself, and I can’t wait to see what route I take next year.
Casey, what in the world is a virtual assistant? Is that even a real job?
It is indeed! I had a lot of questions myself and have been fielding them since I broached this idea, so here’s the basics of what this means.
Essentially, I’ll be handling a lot of the tasks that people really wish they could delegate—the things they don’t really personally need to attend to except that someone does, and well: like booking flights, or organizing email, or updating a website. The little tasks that bury everyone on a daily basis. A virtual assistant lightens the load, whether it’s an hour of work a week or twenty.
It’s actually almost more surprising it’s taken me so long to land on this idea, because this is so much of what I’ve done at my last several jobs. I always go in, rapidly figure out the holes where necessary tasks are getting dropped, and end up taking loads of work off my bosses’ plates to make them happen and setting up processes to make everything easier to manage. So now I’m just going to, you know, do that.
But remotely.
Not going to lie, I am somewhat nervous about freelancing as career! But ultimately I think this is going to be the best way to have a sustainable job that supports my writing career and long-term health while actually affording me enough money to live on.
So here we go! This promises to be an adventure, and I’m ready to meet it.
If you want to know more about what this looks like, my business website is up! And I’d be much obliged if you’d pass that on to anyone you think might benefit from a little virtual help. ❤
I’ll have more to say about this year’s Sirens Conference another time, but I have to start with this. Sirens will understand why.
I’ve spent most of today unpacking all the signs of a wonderful conference. The heroine capes and inevitable books, the glitter and ideas and memories.
Then the card Sabrina signed to me.
The shirts that match hers.
The sweater she laughed when I purchased; remembering how easily she laughed.
The conference was wonderful. The conference was devastating.
These statements are both true.
#
Sabrina Chin was the Huffliest puff to ever puff. She would have been deeply touched, I think—and possibly surprised, because she took “unassuming” to extremes—by the outpouring of tears and tributes on her behalf over the last week, after she suddenly passed away in her sleep mid-conference. She certainly would have hated being the focus of all our attentions, which almost makes me laugh.
In the memorial journal, I wasn’t sure how to convey what Sabrina was to all of us at Sirens. Ultimately I wrote that Sabrina was our heart.
This is a statement which is true and yet entirely inadequate. I can only hope that on some level, she knew. I hope that collectively we were anywhere near as good to her as she was to all of us; that she knew that we saw her, and loved her, and will always.
#
We were together in our grief last week, which I’m grateful for. Now I’m grateful to be home, to take a breath; to slow down. She would have wanted that for us, I think.
I’m home, and that means I have the space and time to think and feel, and in those moments when I hold still I can’t help but focus on what I otherwise might wish to distract myself from, except that her memory deserves my attention.
I’m home, and my skin holds together. But when I clench my fists although the skin holds, you can see the bone underneath, showing white against glaring red. My fingers are cracked.
I open my hands, and it’s no longer visible, but I know the truth underneath. Some metaphors are too obvious to avoid.
Sabrina was our heart.
#
Sabrina loved Sirens, and she loved the community. She put so much of herself in that we will never be able to replicate or replace, but that will echo in our futures.
For those who would otherwise have sent flowers, in lieu of that her family has asked that “a donation be made to the conference that she poured her heart and soul into.”
They knew what Sirens was to her. We know what she was to us.
#
My love to everyone who is also grieving; it is an odd comfort to know how many of us are united in this. Take care of yourselves while you do. You know she would have wanted that.
We’ll take this breath together, and then we’ll pick up and move again and carry the light of her spirit forward, together.
She was proud of us. We will continue to be worthy of that.
Hi friends! I have a busy schedule this week at Sirens Conference, so for those of you here in Denver, here are some times you can find me.
Tonight I’ll be introducing Sirens Studio guest of honor Roshani Chokshi, talking a little about women and power and myth-making.
Then tomorrow (Wednesday 10/23) gets exciting: surprise I’m running a two-hour workshop with Nivair Gabriel on women’s leadership in fantasy! Stop by for what we’ve titled “Who Run the Fantasy Worlds: Girls.” This has come together last minute as we’re filling in due to an emergency, so here’s what you can expect us to talk about.
On Thursday I’ll be helping get the much anticipated Sirens Bookstore set up! Throughout the remainder of the conference I’ll be stopping in to yell about books at you, so you have a good chance of seeing me there.
Friday starts bright and early with a panel I’m moderating at 9am on building inclusive bookish communities with Faye Bi, Shaista Fenwick, Traci-Anne Canada, and Cass Morris.
At 2pm I’ll be helping Amy Tenbrink tell you about all the new women-in-fantasy books released since last Sirens, and at 5pm you can find me at Book Speed Dating, where I will rapidly try to convince you to give a few of my favorite fantasy books a try.
(It’s very exciting that I am *scheduled* to spend so much of this conference shoving books at people.)
Saturday at noon I’ll be presenting my paper: “The Extraordinary Power of Heroines: Examining Women’s Heroism in Fantasy.”
And that’ it! You can DEFINITELY find me at the Sirens ball, but in general, I’ll be around and happy to visit old friends and make new ones. =)
All the samples in this collection are hopeful, thoughtful, and action-packed. If you love Tea Princess Chronicles, it’s a great way to check out other authors whose work is likely up your alley! I’ve personally read and would recommend stories by every one of them.
My short story is a Tea Princess Chronicles bonus scene designed to work as entry point for new readers, so don’t worry if you’re not all caught up! But if you do know what’s been going on, it’ll be extra special. =)
Told from the perspective of Miyara’s best friend, the brilliant and prickly witch Lorwyn, this scene also features Miyara’s former bodyguard from Book 1 (A Coup of Tea), the assassin Entero, whom Lorwyn is Definitely Not dangerously in love with…
Magic—danger—and the thrill of the chase!
Experience the rush of racing across rooftops with thieves—or the desperation of fleeing an assassin who knows you a little too well. From the fish market of a tropical island sultanate, to the monster-filled alleys of a steampunk London, to a land where souls take different forms as they rise or fall through the layers of the world, this collection of chase scenes and vignettes set in nine distinctive worlds will leave you spellbound.
Find unexpected allies, unshakeable enemies, sudden twists and turns, and always the swiftness of the chase—whether you’re on the hunt, or racing for your life.
This sampler includes an exclusive bonus scene set during the events of Tea Set and Match by Casey Blair, available for free online, and a scene from an unpublished novel by Rachel Neumeier not available anywhere else. The excerpts by Intisar Khanani, Raf Morgan, P. Djèlí Clark, Sherwood Smith, Joyce Chng, Melissa McShane and Andrea K. Höst are from longer works that are available for sale at all major retailers.
We’re celebrating the release with a giveaway, and there’s still time to enter the raffle for that!
If you’re interested in learning more about how this came to be, check out organizer Raf Morgan’s post here!
And if you decide to check it out, you can leave a review on Goodreads!
I think that’s it! (Another exclamation point for good measure!) Happy reading!
I’ve been sitting on this for AGES and am thrilled to finally be able to announce I’m part of an anthology of fantasy chase scenes coming this October! The title is Swift the Chase, and you can add it on Goodreads.
Today is the cover reveal (my very first cover reveal!! =D!), and I could not be more excited about this. The cover by Seedlings Design is gorgeous, and seeing my name listed along with these authors (!!!) is amazing.
The book is releasing October 8th, and we’re hosting a Facebook party to celebrate and give away free books! I’ll be on deck from 3:30-4:00pm PST to answer any questions and dole out Tea Princess Chronicles trivia.
Mark your calendars, check out the cover here, and read on for more about the anthology and my story!
Magic—danger—and the thrill of the chase!
Experience the rush of racing across rooftops with thieves—or the desperation of fleeing an assassin who knows you a little too well. From the fish market of a tropical island sultanate, to the monster-filled alleys of a steampunk London, to a land where souls take different forms as they rise or fall through the layers of the world, this collection of chase scenes and vignettes set in nine distinctive worlds will leave you spellbound.
Find unexpected allies, unshakeable enemies, sudden twists and turns, and always the swiftness of the chase—whether you’re on the hunt, or racing for your life.
This sampler includes an exclusive bonus scene set during the events of Tea Set and Match by Casey Blair, available for free online, and a scene from an unpublished novel by Rachel Neumeier not available anywhere else. The excerpts by Intisar Khanani, Raf Morgan, P. Djèlí Clark, Sherwood Smith, Joyce Chng, Melissa McShane and Andrea K. Höst are from longer works that are available for sale at all major retailers.
The Tea Princess Chronicles exclusive bonus scene stands alone but is set midway through Book 2 (Tea Set and Match), told from the perspective of Miyara’s best friend, the brilliant and prickly witch Lorwyn—and also features Miyara’s former bodyguard from Book 1 (A Coup of Tea), the assassin Entero, whom Lorwyn is Definitely Not dangerously in love with…
Entry points into creating stories differ for everyone. I’ve mentioned before that I come at stories from the characters, and that I write character-driven books. What this means is that, rather than “what if this cool idea” or “what if this cool magic,” I start with “what if this character premise.”
My novels are high concept, but my entry point to those ideas begins from a character and spirals out from there—and with every piece of the story I craft, I always go back to character.
Looking at some of my finished books, say with Tea Princess Chronicles, I started with the idea of a princess who quits and ends up managing a magical tea shop. For Afterstorms, I started with a woman who is both a badass sorceress while actively doing the work of mothering and also gets to have a romance. For my YA space opera, I basically asked, what if Gundam actually had a girl as the protagonist who gets to pilot the super awesome space mech?
And so on. The types of stories those became, the world-building, the themes borne out in them (things like what it means to do something in the world that matters and incremental activism, how societies try to make women lesser, and embracing the power that comes with upending people’s expectations and not walking a proscribed path, respectively)—they all started from those premises .
But how do I translate an idea for a character into a story?
Broadly, to know how the story arc works, I need to know who the character is at the beginning, which tells me who they are at the end—or vice versa. If they’ve come into their power at the end, then at the beginning they believe themselves powerless. They’re insecure about their place in the world at the beginning; they’re confident at the end.
And then I figure out what choices, and what actions to hang them on, would bring them from that beginning point to the ending. But that still takes a few leaps; albeit ones I can make these days out of longstanding practice, because figuring out character is really easy for me. It’s what I read for and what I write for. That said, being very into character development is not the same as being able to plot, so let’s talk about how you get from one to the other.
Here’s one of my favorite tactics.
Back when I was doing a lot of theater, one of the techniques I learned for how to dig into character was Uta Hagen’s questions. With some additions, these can be useful not just for understanding character, but understanding the relationship between character, world-building, plot, and story. These are the questions I focus on, with my adaptations.
What does your character think they want? (Let’s say, to be a hero.)
What do they actually want? (Hmm. How about security? They want to be a hero because they think the respect of masses will make people value them and protect them.)
What are the given circumstances? (Our character is alone, because war has destroyed the political and physical infrastructure of their world.)
What is preventing them from getting what they want? (An occupying force.)
What will they do—and what can they do—to get what they want? (Gather a ragtag crew to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.)
My parentheticals there aren’t the most original—they are in fact deliberately tropey as shit; can you tell I’m an epic fantasy reader and shounen anime fan?—because that’s not the point at this stage. The point is highlighting the fundamentals that make up the core of the story, and the logic of the story, to flesh out with what makes it yours.
Answering these questions doesn’t create an entire story on its own, but it does give me the basis for the subsequent questions I need to answer to make a story happen.
Like, okay, the protagonist is going to need a team—how do they assemble it? What unique skills does our protagonist have that would actually be useful in overthrowing an army, or attract people to be willing to work with them, and how do they acquire those skills? If they haven’t taken up arms before the start of the plot, why now? What changed, and why did it change?
Let’s take the starter questions in order.
The first two questions (What does your character think they want, and what do they actually want?) are key for interesting character development, because this is how you change expectations for not entirely predictable plots. What your protagonist thinks they want changes, and they get what they actually want (or need, which is an important distinction somewhat tangential to this post) in a way they could not have dreamed of at the beginning but that their actions throughout the plot nevertheless make inevitable.
Given my hypothetical parentheticals there, let’s say your protagonist discovers sacrificing themselves for the sake of a corrupt government might make them a hero in the public eye given the levels of propaganda management, but it would be empty and wouldn’t actually make them safe. But they make friends along the way who will protect them for who they are at whatever cost, so they choose to save their imperfect friends rather than the figureheads of society. They don’t become a hero at large but to the only people that matter, and they get their security in the way that’s meaningful to them. That sort of thing. (If you’re looking for practical published examples, Brandon Sanderson excels at this.)
The important part of “the given circumstances” question is that they have to be personal to the character. It’s not just “war has torn apart a country” but “war has left the character alone, and the character desperately wants to not be alone.”
Firstly, because if the stakes aren’t personal, nobody cares. Secondly, this is how your world-building and your point-of-view character are inextricably linked.
Characters don’t exist in a vacuum (or a white room >_>); they are born in their environments, and those environments shape and affect them even if they don’t define them. If they don’t, then the character won’t feel compelling but vague. If you think your character could exist exactly the same born into an entirely different fantasy world, they’re probably not sufficiently defined. (See also a unique challenge inherent to AU fanfic: how to make the characters still make sense to the reader when the setting they were created with is entirely substituted.)
Asking what actions the character can take, and the reasons they need to take them (what prevents them from getting what they want), are where we come to plot.
What are the tools your protagonist has to change their situation?
If your character’s a sorceress, maybe she’s solving problems using magic—in which case the readers may need to understand more about how magic works, be it the system’s rules that they’re breaking or that numinous magic is fickle so having to rely on it working is A Problem—for your stakes to work. If they’re a political operator, readers probably need to know how the politics work, so we can feel satisfied when they’ve managed something tricky without needing an explanation that slows pacing in the moment of why what they did was so clever.
Tea Princess Chronicles was my first time writing about a protagonist who isn’t some kind of magical martial arts action heroine. Her strength, established in chapter one, is listening, which I physically manifest through how I depict the fantasy tea ceremony.
For another example, I love Rachel Aaron’s Heartstriker series for being stories of action and adventure and all kinds of magical battle shenanigans where the plots ultimately always hinge on the “nice” protagonist meaningfully exercising compassion.
As for the question of what actions a protagonist will take—that’s where the story is.
This answer doesn’t have to be, “what would drive them to kill the person oppressing them,” as is so common in epic fantasy; it can just as easily be, “they will focus their time and energy on building relationships.” See Mirage by Somaiya Daud for a great example of this one: her protagonist could easily become a violent rebel or a pawn of the oppressive regime, yet what she chooses is neither of those—she makes another path that is ultimately the only one that makes sense for her character.
Given a person in a particular situation who can do certain things, what will they choose to do, and why, and what does that mean? That’s the core of it all.
disparate elements working in tandem toward a narratively coherent goal aka trapping me
Raymond Chandler once wrote of plotting, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.”
Like most writing advice, this is useful to a point. When someone gives the writing advice of “kill your darlings,” the point is not to cut all the things you like about your story; it’s to cut the things you’re hanging onto because you like them but that don’t actually fit coherently in this particular story. When they advise, “write every day,” the point is (or should be, sigh, that’s another blog) to commit to making structural changes in your life that enable you to write consistently, not that if you don’t work on stories every day that you’re not a Real Writer.
But every time NaNoWriMo rolls around, I see upticks of people who have interpreted Chandler’s Law as a mandate to just keep throwing exciting things at the page until you have enough words to call it a story, or until you get through the part where you didn’t know what happened and then you’ll find yourself at the real story, which is… generally not how stories work.
A Twitter discussion last week about plotting (PS Elizabeth Bear is very smart about stories and has a substack newsletter you can follow) got me wanting to expand on how I think misunderstandings of this axiom can create problems in the plot rather than solving them.
The most common failure mode of plotting I read in fantasy is actually a failure of character agency.
(Requisite caveats before I get going here that I am coming at this from the perspective of someone who vastly prefers character-driven to plot-driven stories, an axis which is in some sense an arbitrary and nonsensical distinction but one that can nevertheless be useful for analysis. YMMV. As with all writing commentary, if my approach on this subject isn’t useful to you, discard it; no advice is universal. Onwards!)
Here’s why plotting can actually indicate an agency problem: a plot is not just “things that happen.” A quick Google search gives the definition of plot as “the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.”
There are two key phrases here. The first is “the main events,” which seems self-explanatory. The more important one is “an interrelated sequence.”
Random events are not a plot. If the things that happen don’t have story resonance, the story is unsatisfying: nothing feels like it matters, because nothing does matter when it’s not meaningfully related to everything else.
The most common way I see this failure mode of Chandler’s Law play out in stories is when characters are just reacting. An explosion comes through the window, so then they have to escape! But then the escape to a place where a monster is waiting for them, so they have to run again! Then the nearest hideaway just happens to be the villain’s lair, where they have to perform Some Filler Caper to get inside but then conveniently stumble upon a villainous intent monologue?? And so on.
There are ways to make this work—almost anything can work in the right circumstances—but the question the author has to be able to answer is why. Why did the villain cause an explosion, if lacking that explosion the main character wouldn’t have acted? Why did they choose to go to the place with the monster? Now that they know the villain’s raison d’etre, what are they going to do about it besides wait for the next explosion?
So, there are two principles at play here. The first is that, protagonist or antagonist or side character, characters should do things for reasons that make sense given the knowledge they have.
If the villain had reason to believe the protagonist was already working against them and so was trying to take them out, this may be a good reason for the explosion. But just having an explosion because the author needs to get the character moving doesn’t work without narrative reasoning. (Nothing wrong with writing the explosion first to facilitate making words happen and then coming up with the reasoning afterward! But the reasoning still has to exist and make sense.)
Corollary: the narrative should make us aware of that reasoning.
If our main character is like, oh shit the villain probably believes I’m working against them even though I want nothing to do with this because of that thing they saw in my office!, cool. It can even work retroactively (protagonist: I wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t exploded my house! antagonist: I didn’t know you were innocent then, but you certainly aren’t now!).
What doesn’t work: Our protagonist going, gosh, I wonder what we should do now? Hmm. Hmmmmm. Oh hey look, the plot has exploded through my window, even though this would not make any sense given what we eventually learn of the villain’s goals!
Which brings me to the second principle, which is: reacting isn’t enough if it doesn’t eventually result in action.
There is a separate but related discussion to be had about what agency even is in storytelling. There are ways to write passive protagonists, or protagonists whose choices are so circumscribed by their environments that so is their ability to act (for an excellent example of the latter, read Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri).
But if the plot is always having to come through the window explosively at the protagonist to get them to do something, and once that impetus is done they’re always idly waiting for the next impetus, it’s not the character driving the story.
It’s easy for me to get bored by this kind of narrative, because it’s not the point-of-view characters making it happen. That level of disconnection from choices creating effects with narrative relevance leaves me wondering why this story matters. Why are we reading this version of events, from this perspective?
An example I love to hold up when talking about with how agency works is The Goblin Emperor by Katharine Addison aka Sarah Monette. This is in part because the protagonist doesn’t for the most part take the physical actions people often associate with fantasy—he’s not a fighter or a wizard. So what actions does he take? Being entirely trapped within a political framework, it’s the conversations and how he manages them, the people he chooses to reach out to—or reject—and why, that make this story go. The people he uplifts, that he focuses on building bridges (literally and figuratively!)—this is what makes the story work. He does react to events that come at him from outside, but he doesn’t just react: even while reacting, he is always making choices toward being the person he wants to be, figuring out whether it is possible and how to accomplish his goals.
Here’s another way to look at it: Chandler’s Law is fine as far as it goes. There is nothing wrong with an explosion coming through the window and the characters having to escape. But how they escape should matter. It should tell us something about who the character is, and not just what they can do, but they will and won’t do. That explosion should also affect what they decide to do next—and begin doing!—rather than just waiting for another explosion to show up.
It’s not enough to have a man come through the door with a gun to make your plot happen. The man has to be relevant, and so does what the protagonist does about the situation.
Relevant to what? How do you make the plot matter? That’s where we get back to basics.
What’s the core of the story you’re trying to tell?
Is it an action-adventure coming-of-age story, where our protagonist learns their own power? Or is it an action-adventure where our protagonist ultimately learns they’re “powerless to amend a broken world” (many thanks to GGK for that phrase) and becomes an antihero? Or a spy caper full of daring adventures where the real friends are the ones we make along the way, including our enemy-to-ally who came through the door with a gun? Or is it a political romance, and the enemy with a gun becomes enemy-to-lover?
You’ve got options. My choice always comes back to character, because the character development I want my protagonist to have dictates how the story goes. But you can equally well make these decisions based on what actions thematically serve the world-building idea you’re exploring or that develop the cool magic you want to explode at the end. The man coming through the door with a gun isn’t what makes the story; it’s how that fits.
So it behooves you to ask, why this thing, and not something else? “Because it’s cool” is a good starting reason, but only if it can be made to matter to the story you’re trying to tell.
Why is your protagonist the protagonist, and not someone else?
(Someday I would like to read an orphan farmboy protagonist who gets to be the main character because his unique skill at cultivating rare turnip varieties is critical to saving the world and not because he is The Chosen One. But I digress.)
What can the protagonist do, and what will they do, that no one else will?
If your protagonist is reluctant to do protagonist things, why did you choose them? What would make them actually take action—by which I mean, make choices that affect the narrative—on their own initiative? Because they’ll need to, for the story to be satisfying.
A plot is not just events that occur; it’s a sequence of interrelated events. And a story with point-of-view characters who only react to events without making choices that affect them is a story with agency problems. Because while character and plot may be two different things, if they’re not working together, the story may not be working as intended, either.
For more on how I actually use character to create plot that does tie in, continue on to the next post!
protagonist and antagonist making interrelated choices
Casey Blair 