Variety has been called the spice of life. I’ve always liked this description. Variety is like inertia, or sound waves, or colored light from stained glass windows. It isn’t anything by itself, but rather a description of how other things change. But when it comes to storytelling, variety is something we often forget about.
I think this is understandable. We’ve all been told that our stories need focus, they need to stay on-topic. Most of us learned to write a thesis statement before we learned to write much else.
And it’s true that a lack of focus makes a story feel fragmented. But while a story does need to cohere thematically, I think we often get too entrenched in the turnings of our plot and end up forgetting that it also needs to feel alive. Real life throws curve balls all the time, and without them we’d have a lot less excitement and a lot more monotony.
We’re also fighting for attention in the modern world. Human brains are wired for novelty, which is why channel surfing, social media scrolling, and YouTube auto-play keep us hooked. Books are fighting to hold on to readers despite all the distractions.
I think I’ve come to realize that the “distraction model” of psychology is actually something we, as writers, can employ.
Consider the genre of video games known as MMOs: Massively Multiplayer Online games. These are by far the most-played games in existence, often sucking players in for hours and even days at a time. But ask any two MMO players what they’re up to, and you’ll get two different answers. MMOs aren’t just one game; they’re packed with lots of things to do—questing, fighting, fishing, building a house, running a guild, crafting, raiding—and players bounce between them.
Any one line of thought gets old. Any one game gets boring. Any one plot stagnates, unless it’s freshened up with something new.
I think this explains the popularity of TV shows, with all of their multi-threaded plotlines and character webs. I also think it’s the secret to epic fantasy, which manages to hook readers for 1,000-page-long books. And it’s the secret to many a best-selling novel from every other genre, too.
Some of the best stories don’t have just 1 thread. They manage to find a few—just 2 or 3 will do—that all pertain to the same central idea, and then jump between them.
Because let’s face it: Even if you desperately love your protagonist, they probably have some small tick that gets on each reader’s nerves. That’s true to life, too. Married couples know each others' flaws; it’s not that they think the other person has no flaws. And the tension of your story, if left to grow and grow and grow, will become tiresome.
You need an escape valve to let off steam. Readers need an escape valve. They don’t always know that they wanted it, but it still comes as a relief.
And that release can come in many different forms. The most important element is that it be different. It needs to be tangential to the story, but not the same.
There are a myriad of ways this can be implemented. Here are just a few examples from stories I’ve loved.
Multiple POV characters from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series
As great as Percy is (and he’s pretty great), we get a break from him with frequent chapters from other points of view
Multiple plotlines from The Lord of the Rings series
This is an advanced technique that will do wonders for your story engagement. Leaping to different plotlines gives readers a change of pace, lets them escape any plots they don’t particularly care about, and also builds tension for when those threads do get resumed.
Multiple storyforms from Everything Sad is Untrue
This novel deftly weaves between historical flashbacks, present-day autobiography, and myth, giving you a sense not just of the main character but also of his cultural background
Multiple sides of the conflict from All the Light We Cannot See
This one is built into the premise of the book. You get to see WWII from the Allied side and the Axis side, both rendered in beautiful and tragic detail.
Multiple categories of conflict from The Once and Future King
This story has an emotional plotline: Lancelot and his affair with Guenever. But it also has a philosophical plotline, which is something rarely seen in fiction, that follows King Arthur’s quest to discover the meaning of rulership and become a good king. When combined, they engage both heart and mind.
Multiple worlds from Dreamlander
This portal fantasy jumps between our world and the fantasy world every few chapters
A frame story from The Name of the Wind
This is a saga, so by definition we have to follow Kvothe the whole time. And he’s a pretty interesting guy. But just in case your attention ever threatens to flag, Patrick Rothfuss jumps back and forth between the frame story and the story-story a handful of times during the book, revealing insights that give the character a sense of progression.
There are many other ways to shake things up. The key is that these need to be significant changes of time, place, or character, enough that it feels different. Enough that a weary reader who was just about to set the book down goes, “Oh, the next chapter is about that? Well maybe just one more.”