On Fiction, Structure, and Doughnut Holes

This is the second in a two-part series on book structure. The first deals with nonfiction.
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Doughnuts are traditionally known for the hole in their center. The story goes that an American named Hanson Gregory was displeased with the often uncooked doughy center of the pastry, and decided to cut it out. Hence the hole, which was supposed to make the doughnut more tasty.

The same cannot be said for holes in your story. Rather than adding, they—wait for it—subtract from the reading experience.

Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Let’s take a look at two recent stories: The Witcher series on Netflix, and the whodunit movie Knives Out, while we contemplate this hole question. (You can read my rant about The Witcher on Twitter.)

Feel free to eat a tasty pastry if it enhances the experience. This post may include spoilers, though likely not many. Read on at your own risk.

Weaving the Web

According to the Rotten Tomatoes thumbnail of Knives Out,

When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan’s dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan’s untimely death.

Knives Out is whodunit, which means that by its very nature the story both leads us toward the answer to the mystery AND astray down plausible side paths. The negotiation of the tension between these two goals is what makes a whodunit good (or not).

I like using the whodunit as an example because the device is so transparent. The audience is constantly asking: Is that significant? What about that? Have I seen that before? How did that character behave before?

They want to find the clues.

Lest you think otherwise, negotiating tension between what the reader wants to discover, and when their discovery is the most satisfying, is a goal for any book, no matter the genre.

Knives Out plants a lot of clues. Everyone has a motive and everyone has done something….suspicious. Footprints in the mud match one character’s sneakers. There is dirt under the secret window on the second floor, suggesting that someone’s alibi isn’t airtight. And the movie makes hay out of all these to good effect—just not necessarily the effect viewers were expecting.

Readers of other genres may not be as conscious of the desire to “solve” the story structure as whodunit readers are, but they will respond to your clues. What you want is to weave a web—of events, characters, setting details, behaviors, and more—interconnected and vital to telling the story.

Losing the Thread

I enjoyed The Witcher hugely. Unfortunately, they left some gaping holes that left me gaping with confusion. (Note: this is about the Netflix show only. I have not read the source material or played the games.)

As per Rotten Tomatoes,

The witcher Geralt, a mutated monster hunter, struggles to find his place in a world where people often prove more wicked than beasts.

From the beginning, we meet three main characters. It was pretty clear early on how Geralt and Ciri would eventually connect. What I couldn’t figure out for the longest time was how Yennefer fit into the whole universe.

At the beginning and/or end of almost every sequence involving her, my reaction was either, “What is going on?” or “Why is this happening?” We kept getting dropped into scenes/sequences with her with NO CONTEXT.

How were we supposed to feel about her or the people she interacted with? Hard to say, because we knew basically nothing about any of them. (Geralt doesn’t show up for a long while.)

“Why is this happening?” signals a real storytelling problem. Except in rare instances, reader confusion means we are doing a bad job telling the story. The Witcher left vast chasms where they should have built a story bridge, or webbed the storytelling together. I couldn’t see the doughnut for the hole in it.

Make Your Readers Care

If you want your reader to feel something about a character, you have to give them a reason to feel something. You’ve gotta earn it.

Readers aren’t going to be sad about the loss of a character they never got to know, or celebrate the besting of a villain they didn’t experience being villainous.

In The Witcher we had a complicated character with the potential for rich material. Yennefer is both a hero and a villain, depending on your perspective. Instead, for the first half of the season, we got a series of set pieces that had no apparent connection to each other. The show told us to care because they said so.

Telling your reader they need to care about a character because you said so is NOT a story.

We need to get to know characters. We need context. Motivation. This pertains to nonfiction as well as fiction. If you cannot give the space/context for certain characters then you should not introduce those characters.

In Knives Out, we are told pretty early on who the killer is and we still want to know what happens next. We care because we spend time with the killer and see them interacting with the other characters.

Bottom Line

If you want your readers to invest their time and attention into your story, you need to invest in it, too. No one lives in a void, not even a fictional character.

Take note of where your story seems to drag. Either the passage is necessary to the story, is a necessary diversion (as in a whodunit), or…it’s a doughnut hole. Fill it, or let it go.

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Want help figuring out where your story might have holes? Let’s get together for a book structure intensive.

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