This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 600 first episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors

Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Is your story too complicated?

Here are nine signs.

Calling a story complex is a high compliment.

But what is complexity?

How can we learn to write stories that are complex without skidding across that narrow dividing line into complicated?

What's the difference between a complex story and a complicated story.

This is a topic I've spent quite some time contemplating

in recent years, not least, because one of the major reasons

my fantasy work in progress went off the rails was my realization in revisions that it was just too complicated.

A few weeks ago in the episode entitled How to Structure Stories with Multiple characters, I mentioned in passing that one of the most powerful

guidelines for any author is to honor simplicity.

This doesn't mean you can't write stories of deep complexity, but it does mean

you should never confuse complex with complicated.

This comment sparked a conversation in the comments of the transcript of that episode on my website in which Lila Diller asked,

could you define more clearly what you mean about the difference between complex and complicated.

And so an episode, or two episodes actually was born.

Today I want to talk about several of the most common culprits for complicated stories.

Next week we'll talk about how you can bring desired complexity into your work and progress.

So first off, what's the difference between complex and complicated?

As I mentioned in my original response to Lila's question,

I like to think of complex as many streams all

...