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

Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode Seven Tips for How to Add Complex complexity to your story.

So you want to add complexity to your story.

Most authors do.

Complexity just sounds so sophisticated. It sounds like one of those novels or films that are taken apart and analyzed by really smart critics and professors.

It sounds like taking your story to the next level and in some ways it is complex stories are things of beauty

These are the stories that entertain audiences beyond just the moment. These are the stories we come

back to over and over again gaining some new insight or appreciation with every re-reading or re-watching.

There is, however, a difference between a story that is successfully complex

and one that is just complicated.

I talked about this in last week's episode, is your

story too complicated? Here are nine signs. In which I shared an answer to

reader Lila Diller's request, could you define more clearly what you mean about the difference

between complex and complicated?

In that episode, I pointed out nine different ways stories may be unintentionally and deleteriously complicating themselves.

Most of these examples had to do with too many random pieces that just aren't coming together into a cohesive whole. In this

week's episode I want to take a look at the other side of the coin. What is

complexity in a story and what are some tools you can use for how to add complexity to a story

without crossing the line into complications. Now both complexity and complication arise out of many parts. The difference is that perhaps

surprisingly complexity actually keeps things quite simple.

Complicated stories offer many different elements,

...