In Heaven’s Name, What Was I Thinking?

There’s an old Wile E. Coyote cartoon that I wish I could find again for one two-minute segment. Wile E. is in the desert, standing under a flat outcrop of rock with a stick. For some reason, he’s poking at it. Over and over and over. Then you hear a crack, and Wile E. looks at the viewer and pulls out a sign that says, “In heaven’s name, what was I thinking?” Then the rock collapses on him.

This isn’t the same one, but it’s very close . . .

If they ever film my life, they can just play that two minutes over and over again. Especially they can play it when they’re talking about my story choices. (And my romantic choices. And my real estate choices. And . . . wait, where was I?)

A zillion years ago, three of us were working on a fairy tale collaboration. We came up with a premise and plotted the novel and then we all wandered off, but I kept playing in the world and I built more stories on that premise. Today I went back to those stories to pull them in line with the Monday Street stories since they take place in the same world, and I really looked at that premise for the first time.

In heaven’s name, what was I thinking?

It’s not like I haven’t been here before. Several years ago my agent sold a book to my editor at SMP, the only book I’d never sold. It had never sold for a reason and a big part of that reason was the godawful stupid premise, one of the worst romance premises of all time: the hero makes a bet he can’t get the heroine. Stupidest premise of all time since it guarantees that (a) the hero is a jackass and (b) the Big Misunderstanding is going to crop up over and over again. I did everything I could to get out from under that damn premise including having the hero turn the bet down and having The Big Misunderstanding implode early, but it’s still a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE premise. After that, the first thing I looked at any time I got a story idea was, “Does this make sense?” closely followed by “Does this mean the protagonists are jerks/stupid/users/criminally insane?” It’s amazing how many premises don’t survive those two questions.

And yet when I went back to the Zo Stories, now with the working title of Paradise Park, there I was again. “Does this make sense?” No. “Does this mean the protagonists are stupid?” Yes. But I liked the stories. I liked the characters, liked who they were, liked what they did. The only real problem was the idea that made them all possible: it was impossible. Not just that the antagonist would have to be dumb as a rock to think that would get him his goal, not just the entire world of the story would have to be asleep at the switch to let him get away with it for as long as he does, not just that one character with a modicum of common sense could put an end to the whole shebang, but that the goal was biologically, physically impossible. Also it didn’t make sense.

In heaven’s name, what was I thinking?

I’d explain it here, but I just tried to explain it to Toni, thinking she’d talk me out of the woods, and I couldn’t even explain it to her. So we tried to reverse engineer it: “People are trying to kill/kidnap all the Riven princesses over the age of 16 and the only way they can escape is to marry a commoner.” Figuring out motivation for killing or kidnapping princesses is easy; figuring out why getting married to a commoner removes the impetus is damn near impossible, unless the princesses have to be removed before they marry royalty, in which case, two questions remain:

How many damn princesses are there?

and

WHY????

Dumbest premise ever. At this point, I’d welcome a hero making a bet.

Make me feel better. What the dumbest premise you ever encountered in a story?