The Landscaper Writer

We all have our favorite authors and we tend to walk on their footsteps when we are learning. Sometimes this manifests in an art style, a genre, or just how you structure a story.

The MCU manages to make a few hits with bathos everyone puts a rethorical anti-climax in their writing regardless if it fits or not. Akira Toriyama we have ingrained in our minds that every character can be power-scaled with little context. Brandon Sanderson says you have to finish sentences with a period and someone on youtube will write an essay as if nobody thought of it before.

Those techniques are not bad on themselves, but they can get misused by both beginners and professionals alike. Worst of all, is when a style gets too much attention and loses favor because the quality of it lowers, it leaves a bad taste of the mouth even when it is used well. All it takes is a famous writer to start using periods instead of question marks and suddenly it would be Brandon’s fault for just looking baffled at whoever asked about it on an interview.

The creator of A Song of Ice and Fire, George, commonly called by the internet by the sound of people grinding their teeth waiting for the next book, is a victim of this. GRRRM was once praised for calling his style of writing a “Gardener” one, as opposed to the well planned, well structured “Architect”; you let the characters grow on their own and see where they take you.

And all it takes is the man to not release a book for a mere 15 years and suddenly the gardener style is to blame.

Gardening is not the problem, it can be a strength

If I were to guess, GRRRRM stating that he has to write a whole chapter again, and see if it works, and fits with others, and not having someone to poke him saying it is good enough, and they can publish 14 books and people will buy them yearly, is the main problem there.

In this metaphor, you could even say the problem is the gardener is pruning it too much, or HBO threw a few dozens of million of dollars to someone grow fittonias and you have to start all over again if you breath wrong near them.

I even saw once an “architect” youtuber asking “what vantage exactly you have over me?” as if GRRRRRM’s success and the millions of dollars didn’t speak for itself. Listen, I’m not a fan of how the guy writes, but if it wasn’t good, people wouldn’t be waiting to read it over his dead body by now.

I don’t think I need to sing the praises of an architect, though. Anyone that doesn’t fall for a sloppy “I TOTALLY PLANNED THIS ALL ALONG GUYS” can see how even having two sentences rhyme is a rewarding skill.

Planning has its place. Three act structures, five acts if you want to be meticulous, writing the beginning after the end, planning all scenes before a character says their first words, all are great if you are limited by a medium, a time slot, even. But it is also a tragedy to see deleted scenes that would have worked better but the movie “got too long”, MCU movies have quite the aborted arcs with this, way more than a Snyder cult, I mean cut.

If you want a great example of Gardening writing that includes pesticides so strong not even the plants can survive, just check how the manga industry works.

Monthly mangas like Full Metal Alchemist and Claymore have a much longer, well planned run while the first arc of weekly mangas feel like the author having to throw rails on a train that will only stops when it crashes.

Dragon Ball for all its faults is pure gardening, dragon balls, then training, then tournament… repeat, repeat again, DEMONS, ALIENS… TIME TRAVEL… ALIEN DEMONS.

Even Naruto you can see the first 13, then 25… then 50 chapters carefully thread away from a conclusion they can’t wrap it up. Kishimoto wanted to introduce all characters slowly instead of a busy tournament and even on shippuden the other teams just did a few appearances on each arc.

To a less successful story, the author of The World God Only Knows was so scarred from his previous series that was cancelled not following his plans, he only stopped alluding to a bigger story after 100 chapters, and they still didn’t give him an extra volume to wrap things up after about 5 years of publication. Come on guys would it kill you to make another 12 chapters? That is just 3 months of publication.

Best of both worlds

You know what I feel lacking in a lot of well designed houses? Green spaces. If you want me to pay 5 human livers per square meter, the least you can do is make that extra spacious corner not be just flat cement.

It feels like a simplistic advice that you don’t need to be on team GRRRRRRM or someone that can actually draw a timeline, but it is less and less the climate I see on internet discussions. So be the landscaper. Design the green around the hard structure.

You can have quiet times where characters just sit and talk, about simple things. You can go back to the drawing board that a new worldbuilding idea brings other implications, and you can force plants to follow a trellis.

Make characters gravitate to the plot, but remember it is not a sin for characters to have depth, instead of following a script word for word. Sketch spin-offs if you want to. Remember actors may Jack Sparrow it, understand that if fans have a favorite it is important to at least know why more than just following the formula. Graft that bad boy into the main story and see how more fun it changes.

Your storyboard is not set in stone. Don’t act like there is some sacred geometry for its pacing one simply wouldn’t understand, if you were that good at math you’d know how to recalculate the room for error.

And if you’re gonna ignore my advice and just be a gardener, don’t be an architect just on the holy number of books your plants outgrown it, you have had decades to repot them, GRRRRRRRRM.