Picked character-driven plot over high concept for my NaNoWriMo entry and it's working out way better than I expected

I was stuck between two ideas for November. One was a big fantasy world with dragons and magic wars. The other was just a regular guy dealing with his mom's dementia in a small town. I went with the small town story because I knew the characters better. Three weeks in, I'm at 42k words and the scenes just flow. The dragons idea was pure worldbuilding and no heart. Has anyone else ditched a flashy premise for something quieter and had it actually feel easier to write?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_anthony18d ago

Gently push back on calling the fantasy idea "pure worldbuilding and no heart" though... I get what you're saying but high concept stuff can have just as much heart if you find the right character in it. Like, imagine a dragon whose mom is losing her memory of the old magic wars... that's the same emotional core but dressed different. 42k words is solid work though, the quiet story clearly works for you and that's what matters.

king.robin18d ago

You have a point about high concept stories having heart, but I think you missed something in what I was getting at. That dragon and its mother is a fine idea, but it still hangs on a very traditional emotional hook. The quiet story I wrote doesn't have any of that. It's about a man who walks his dog and watches the snow melt, and the only conflict is whether he'll finish his coffee before it gets cold. There's no war, no memory loss, no big emotional beat at all. That's not a lack of heart, it's a different kind of heart entirely. Sometimes the most honest stories are the ones where nothing much happens, and you just sit with a character for a while.

the_jessica17d ago

Quiet story works for you" - yeah, @the_anthony, but is a guy drinking cold coffee really that deep?