Hello everyone
New Year is often the time we look to make changes. Many people will have good intentions and will set out to evolve or transform, but by the time you’re reading this, many resolutions will likely already be forgotten.
If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions: I believe in making changes, but if you want or need to make a change, then make the change and make it immediately. Don’t make the change because of an arbitrary date—do what is right for you, and do it now.
But why do we make changes, whether at New Year or any other time?
Why make a change?
Why make a change might seem a simple question with an obvious answer, but we make changes because we want something to be different.
However, there is often a disconnect—any change we make is intended to achieve an outcome. We don’t want the change; we want the outcome. So for instance, we don’t want to eat less and exercise more…we want to weigh less or be healthier.
Making the change
People will often set their resolutions in terms of the outcome (for instance, to weigh less), but without any real thought as to how that goal will be achieved. For the moment, let’s focus on the change that is made, and not the intended outcome.
When a change is made, and that change is intended to achieve a certain outcome, then the change is an article of faith. The person making the change has to believe that their goal will be achieved through this change.
This belief can be tested when as part of the change, something has to be unlearned. For instance, if someone wants to improve their skill at golf, that may require changing their swing. The first step to changing a swing is to unlearn the current swing, and therefore, the first step toward improvement may be to “get worse.”
And when you get worse, the immediate reaction is to revert to what you were doing before, which leads to no change.
How does this relate to novels?
The notion of change is interesting, but I’m a novelist, so you might be wondering where my thoughts are going. Now, obviously, if your New Year’s resolution includes reading more books, then I can make some suggestions.
But to the wider point, in any novel characters have to change. Characters rarely change by choice—often, they will have the decision to behave differently, or to behave against their nature, forced upon them.
Any decision to change must be plausible if the reader is going to stay engaged with the story, and so for me, the first concern is what is driving any decision to change, and usually (but not always) that decision is based on the character being afraid of losing something. So, for instance, a character may feel that if he doesn’t improve his golf, he is going to lose status among his contemporaries.
But there is also that disconnect—action taken versus desired outcome—and so often, whether that change achieves the desired result determines whether a character will succeed or whether the story will end in tragedy.
2022
That’s me for January.
I hope 2022 has been treating you well so far. Have you made any changes? Are they sticking? Are they giving you the outcome you wanted?
I’ll be back in in February.
Until then, all the best
Simon