I’m on the verge of actually getting something done today but I’m distracted by wanting to put into words a thought that I’ve had many times before.
There are a lot of different models of what kind of writer you can be. One of my favourite go-to dynamics is “Gardener or Architect” — do you meticulously plan out your stories like an architect, or do you just plant seeds like a gardener and harvest whatever grows?
There’s another dichotomy I’ve identified and referred to from time to time, often on social media. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, but it definitely pertains to the kind of fiction I write. Is your story a Groundhog Day, or a Back to the Future?
These are two of my favourite films in which something inexplicable happens to a character and it shows them something about life. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly is sent to the past in a time machine designed by his friend Doc Brown. While there he happens to learn about what things were like in the 50’s, and what his parents were like back then.
In Groundhog Day, self-centered and obnoxious weatherman Phil Conners is trapped in a single day that repeats over and over again until… he isn’t. What we know as the viewer is that Phil is growing and changing the entire time he is in there and is finally released when he becomes organically and genuinely unselfish and able to love others (and at least treat them with respect.)
In both cases, a character is taken out of the ordinary and will be shown something miraculous. They are stuck in a place they don’t belong and while we the audience know the movie ends when they get out of it, the substance of the movie is what happens to them while they are there. Functionally, they are the same movie with one crucial difference.
Marty has two objectives: to repair his parents’ romance so that he can be born, and to use a precisely-timed bolt of lightning to travel back to his present of 1985. Phil hasn’t been given any instructions for what is happening to him or any conditions he can use to escape it. One has a hard plot, the other is almost entirely a character study. Therein lies the contrast: A Back to the Future is a story where a goal must be achieved to complete the arc. A Groundhog Day has the arc as the goal itself.
It’s a lot easier to write a Groundhog Day, but audiences I think respond more to Back to the Futures. It can be hard to watch characters bumble around not knowing if and how to get back to normal. If Marty had simply woken up one morning in the 1950’s with no idea how he got there and no clue how to get home, it would be a very different picture. Not only would all of the material pertaining to the time machine and the lightning be stricken from the record, but the audience would have less of a clue how Marty was doing on his arc or what he was working towards (besides, presumably, making sure his parents still hooked up.) There would be a lot of oomph and audience engagement missing from a story where Marty is not literally racing against time to get back home. Conversely, if Phil Conners was told by a witch or somebody that he was cursed to re-live the same day until he learned his lesson, the organic nature of his change would be spoiled somewhat.
Broadly speaking, BTTFs are works with hard rules and objectives and GD’s are explorations of a situation. It feels like a true either-or, but if you look at the history of bodyswapping and other speculative fiction, you’ll see that most works play in between the two on a spectrum. Mostly, audiences like it when characters have something to do, some signifier of when the change is coming to an end. They’re not usually as plot-intensive as Back to the Future, but neither are they as loose and amorphous as Groundhog Day. Freaky Friday’s magic fortune cookie, The Hot Chick’s magic earring, Family Switch’s magic telescope lens (…or is it?)
I may be analytical, but I’m not particularly detail-oriented in my writing, so I tend to write Groundhog Days myself. Kristi’s Mom has a lever of transformation, but there’s no indication the character will be able to use it or even want to. A Holiday Wish and Partsexchange are stories with extremely low levels of rules, objectives and explanations. On the other hand, part of what I like about The Trading Post (thanks to the design by its original creators) is that it’s very much a Back to the Future, with specific rules and guidelines on how the transformation occurs and what it means, even if the semi-realistic aspect means the characters don’t always have “arcs.”
My current WIP has a pretty specific magical artifact in play, but that’s just to disguise the fact that it’s a Groundhog Day at heart. I wanted the benefit of giving the story a concrete plot without having to introduce a mad scientist or something. Hopefully, I strike that balance properly and it all works out.