Today, I want to expand on a concept I’ve touched on before but deserves its own article: Downtime, and the importance of reorienting your characters in their story.
Downtime is a bit of a loose term. Generally, “downtime” is just any scene in which your characters aren’t actively pursuing anything plot-related. It can take the form of character/world-building, setup for plot-related stuff, travel, and many other things.
These are times where your characters are able to rest in whatever way they can.
Reorienting can be part of the downtime process. It’s not always needed, but if you’ve just had a lot of fast-paced and/or plot-important stuff happen, it’s good to give your characters (and readers) time to process it all.
It’s good to just have characters talk about the gravity of what’s happened, or list out the most pressing issues facing them at the moment. It’s not the best practice to summarize what’s just happened right after it happens — your readers just read it and don’t need to have their hands held through a retelling. It is, however, a good idea to let your characters gather themselves after a lot of chaos.
These scenes are generally slower-paced than usual, though they don’t need to be. Most of the time I feel these scenes are quieter, happening in controlled environments where the characters feel a modicum of safety. However, your character can reorient themselves by doing something exciting if that’s more their style or what they need!
The specifics of these scenes are really up to you and your story, and when I say that they don’t pursue plot-related things I don’t mean that nothing is happening and I don’t mean that they can’t have things in them related to the plot.
Not to do the thing I said I wouldn’t do again, but to take an example from The Cardinal Directive, Mission Log #4 just came out this past Friday and dealt with the fallout of a lot of major plot points rearing their ugly heads. Log #3 was chaotic and scary, and only now are the protagonists somewhere they can breathe.
They still have a lot of things to do. Alison lists out the several problems that they have and lays out the loose plan they’ve formulated to solve at least a few of them. There are talks about what’s happened, and the log spends a lot of time dealing with the emotional ramifications and characters trying to figure out where they stand now.
They don’t directly do anything in the log that pushes the plot forward. They have a plan, and the story I have in mind wouldn’t be the same if I left these bonding scenes out, but they don’t actually push the plot forward in the same way.
The log before it was a lot. It introduced a lot of new concepts and unknowns that will be explored in the future. Log #5, coming out this coming Friday, will continue the trend of reorienting our characters within the world they live in while beginning the dive into the depths of the setting’s antagonists.
There are a lot of benefits to using downtime to reorient your characters.
It gives you the opportunity to clarify anything about the situation that wasn’t as clear as you wanted it to be. Similarly, if the point is for the situation to be unclear, you have time to draw attention to that fact so readers know that the decision was intentional.
It gives your characters time to gather and regroup both mentally and physically. They are able to sift through their options and make up a plan going forward knowing what they know now. Any emotional fallout from the chaos also has time to be dealt with here. Taking the time to reiterate the details you want your readers to focus on also helps them get an idea of what parts of the story they should pay extra attention to.
How your characters act after the danger is over is just as important as how they act when under pressure! It’s very telling for the audience how your characters deal with stress and what they do in their spare time to unwind.
It gives YOU as a writer time to gather and regroup! Slowing down to ask yourself questions like “What are my protagonist’s greatest problems/fears right now?” or “This was a lot. How does my protagonist cope with this stress?” lets you build out your characters and world, and it makes it a lot easier to get a feel for who your characters are, what they’re most worried about right now, and what their next move is. If you’re having trouble figuring out where to take your story next, this is often a great way to organically discover where the next step should take them.
There’s really no single way to do it — as long as the characters are taking time to rest in one way or another, it’s downtime! As long as the characters are working at getting a handle on what their next move is, they’re reorienting! All the details are up to you! It’s a super flexible pacing device that I absolutely recommend trying out if you’re ever feeling like your story is moving too fast, or it isn’t clear which details the reader should be focusing on.
You may have noticed this article is a bit short, and came out a little late! There’s a good reason for it though, hear me out:
You see, I love writing. Writing is my passion. There are very few things I love as much or more than I love writing. I always said I’d do it every day if I could, and these days that’s exactly what I’m doing!
And one of the things I love more than writing? Horses.
I’m not kidding when I say I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love horses. I still have a stuffed animal horse named Fluffy that an aunt got for me when I was around 3 or 4, and she only got her for me because I already liked horses by then. I have no idea what initially sparked it, but it’s a love that’s stayed bright and strong from a very young age.
I’ve been riding and training on and off every few years when an opportunity presented itself, but I always had to stop. The first ranch I trained at closed down. The next trainer moved away. School and a long drive made it hard to go to the next trainer consistently.
My college had a riding team, but by the time I got there, it just didn’t feel feasible to balance school and anything fun. I pretty much stopped writing books, stopped drawing, didn’t pursue riding horses, never joined any clubs, and never really made any friends.
I concentrated on schoolwork.
And it sucked.
When I was doing schoolwork, I was stressed. When I wasn’t doing schoolwork, I was stressed over not doing schoolwork. I started burning out and falling apart. I went from being a straight-A student to barely scraping by in most of my classes.
COVID-19’s emergence and everything that’s come after it didn’t exactly help any of that.
Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed time to think. Time to evaluate my life decisions and ask myself if this was really what I wanted. Time to reorient my priorities and rediscover the things I loved.
So, I set out a gap year for myself, at the very least.
I took time, and I decompressed.
Gradually, I started writing again. I started this blog. I started drawing. I started The Cardinal Directive. I started just being creative in general again.
And now, I’ve fallen in love with horses all over again.
So the reason why this article is late? I’ll show you.
He’s a sweetheart and a dream come true called Red, and as of October 31, 2021, I officially own him.
I can’t thank my family — especially my dad — enough for all the support it took to make this a reality. It was his idea to start looking into horse boarding in the area, and the money to buy Red came one half from me, and the other half from my parents.
As you might imagine, I’m still over the moon about it and visiting him every day I can. This past week (especially the weekend), he was all I could focus on. Between writing being my job and having Red, I haven’t been this happy in a long, long time.
While this is indeed partially just me gushing over my new best friend, I also want to make an important point, and you may already have guessed where I’m going with it.
The world is crazy right now.
There are no two ways about it. Everything has been chaotic and scary for a long time now, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in feelings of fear and helplessness when so many issues just seem to be closing in on us all at once.
Downtime isn’t just a concept restricted to literature or tabletop RPG’s — we ALL need things that give us joy in life and let us unwind. We all need time to reorient ourselves if we need it. We all deserve it.
Don’t give up the things you love to make more room for constant stress. It’s not worth it.
Hold on tight to the things that bring you happiness and fulfillment.
If you’re in school, don’t do what I did. Concentrating on schoolwork sounds good in writing, but in practice it tends to be a recipe for burnout. Make time for friends and hobbies between the stress, and let yourself enjoy them.
I don’t mean to imply by any of this that taking a gap year is the right decision for everyone. It was the right decision for me. You’re in charge of what the right decisions are for you in life. My reorienting process had to be dramatic enough to remove myself from the stressor entirely in order to regroup, but if I had taken different steps to mitigate my stress levels during the school year maybe I wouldn’t have had to.
The point is more so that the world can be a hungry thing, and it has a way of chipping away at us. Between work, school, and pressing world issues that we as singular people can’t effect much change in, there’s no shortage of anchors that are happy to sink you as far as they can.
The decisions I’ve made aren’t available to everyone, and I’m not foolish enough to suggest that they are. Not everyone has the option to take a gap year, pursue their passion, or spend money on a lifelong dream, much less all three. I’m very lucky to have these options.
You may not have those options. But you still deserve joy. You deserve the gentle warmth of sunlight on your skin. You deserve to rediscover your favorite hobby. You deserve the anticipation that comes from the smell of a storm on the wind. You deserve the goosebumps you get from finding a new favorite song.
You deserve a thousand little joys that the world can offer.
You deserve time to rest and time to reorient yourself if you need it.
Whatever your options and life circumstances are, I hope you are able to find happiness and joy in something this week, and I encourage you to reconnect with hobbies you maybe haven’t touched in a while.
Take some downtime if you have the option, especially if you’ve been stressing seemingly without end. Never underestimate the amount of good it can do you to take a step back from life and just laugh and breathe.
For now, though, that’s all for me.
For those of you that can take some time for themselves, I wish you the best of luck and happiness in doing something you love. For those of you that don’t have the option, I wish you strength and peace to make it through to a time where you can.
Thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you again in the next article.
Get it... like "right on!" but "write on!"... Dad jokes!
So well written! Our daughter, we love you so much! ❤ Just beautiful! We were reading right before bed, and it is so inspiring. Truly amazing! We know that whoever reads this article will be inspired as well! Dad says "Write On baby!"