A Writer's Device: Watch out for emergent connections.

This is about how when writing anything much longer than a short story suitable for postcard publication, there is a tendency to write to the plan, rather than just go with the story. That's for a good reason; I've mentioned recently how important it is to remember to finish writing the damn book. But with that warning readdressed, let's look at clever thing that can happen as you work in pieces and especially if you have early parts of the manuscript being edited while you write on ahead. An Emergent Connection (or explanation).

Interactive Storytellers of all eras have known about this idea. I, not having been raised in the ancient and venerable Bulshitar tribe, had to pick it up by game-mastering role playing games. That's a form of group story telling where you *have to* be aware and reactive to how the players perceive the story being told, and what connections and conclusions they reach about parts of it, or your game turns into a muddle of confusion and disappointment. Briefly. Because players don't come back to play in campaigns where what they contribute isn't integrated into the story being told.

How it works is, in short, like this: The main story is being told; hooks and character actions are interwoven as things go on, and suddenly one of the players (the contributors to the telling of the story) makes a connection as to why or how two things the game-master (the creator of the concept of the story, and most of the descriptions being told) suddenly make sense. This is not to say that every time the players connected, something they were correct, or considering all the evidence, or even being plausible. Lots of misconnections happen. As the referee as well as the lead story teller, the GM has to put those to bed to help keep everyone on track with the scenario. BUT...

Sometimes they spot a thing that the GM hadn't considered; that was so obvious and correct that it needs to be included in the story. Good game-masters spot those, the way the ancient story-circle tellers did, and weaves those into the story. An Emergent Connection becomes a later-referenced story element.

It may happen to you, as a writer, that some rereading of earlier chapters while you are writing later ones will reveal an emergent connection. I got lucky recently when my Editor was reading some of the earlier chapters of my new novel, and hit on one such connection.

There is an agent-in-place in the location where the main story mission will happen. That dude has a bit of a "take it easy, but get the work done attitude" as part of his character description. A couple of chapters later, some of the bad guys are talking together about possible threats to their plans. One bad guy dismisses any possible threat from the agent-in-place's actions for racist reasons. "Those lot are lazy and just want to go home and get drunk" and so forth.

My Editor's reaction was along the lines of "that's perfect; the Opposition will underestimate this agent, but he'll still get the job done without drawing any reaction until it's too late."

I knew, from the story concept, they'd disdain to care much about him. This made it clear that they'd actually fail to notice even when he achieved his goals.

Presto! An Emergent Connection. It's a strong enough one that I'll actually be integrating that as a story element in later chapters. The Oppos won't catch on to his having been effective until too late.

So there you go. Something to watch out for, something to pick and choose from, but something that can tighten up the plausibility and interconnectedness of your story. It sure helps mine!