This question came from reading JBern's To Fight the Coming Darkness. I'm sure it's been read by many here, so I'll be brief in my synopsis of the issue.

There seems to literally be a dozen or more conflicts or mini-plot lines that work through the story (rather than subplots that go from beginning to end, I'm defining mini-plotlines as those that only last for a couple chapters). Each one is a little darker than the previous. At one point, it's great story telling. However, I'm finding myself being put off by seeing it repeated so many times. From what happens to Luna, to Fleur, George and the others, Harry's parents, and then Neville, Charlie, etc. etc. It's almost as if the reader doesn't have a chance to breath.

I remember the same thing in the last chapters of Thanfiction's DAYD. One death was a tragedy, but literally the total number of deaths in the last couple of chapters made it statistics and it was just too much. Made the entire story lose it's appeal.

So, what I'm wondering is, how do you find a balance? Is there a hard number of "What was that!" moments that you limit yourself to in a story? Do you limit subplots and character arcs to a certain number or certain people?

I guess, as a side note, another question is then: is it okay to create and keep flat characters if they are plot devices to push the main characters along. Every story has them to a certain degree. But again, how do you put limitations on it?

 

I agree with you. There is a point where enough is enough, and you'll find that jbern does love to cram needless plotpoints into pretty much off of his story, and most of the ones in TFTCD don't really add anything to the story other than to pad the word length. The whole 'gritty realism' isn't really true when much of it is blatantly foreshadowed, or given the heavyhanded push to get where it needed to be. And just saying something is gritty and dark doesn't mean it actually is.

There's a lot of stories that would be better if they were shorter. Some authors think that by throwing as many convoluted plotlines into the story makes it better, but it really doesn't. Twist after twist after twist just makes me stop caring about the story.