Working your strong points

After years of trying, I recently sold my first story.  Those were a couple of great moments, both when I got the email telling me that they wanted to buy the story and when the magazine with the story in it came several months later.  Since I want to experience those moments again, I started to wonder why this particular story sold when so many others—some of which I consider actually better—obstinately refuse to stop coming back.

Ironically “The Ossuaries,” which is the story that eventually sold, has a pretty thin plot, which is the area in which I struggle the most.  It concerns an anthropologist who discovers a site where it appears that modern humans rounded up Neanderthals and executed them, implying genocide.  This site is located in a central Asian country that is in the middle of an ethnic civil war and the leader of the government is anxious for an excuse to impose a final solution on the insurgents.  The anthropologist fears that his discovery may provide the justification for this atrocity and yet he also doesn’t want to jeopardize his scientific integrity and his career by covering up or distorting facts.  When I describe the plot to people I generally end by waving my hands weakly in the air and saying, “I make it work.”  And apparently, I do, because the story sold.

The question is how did I make it work. First of all, I performed some sleight of hand. I set it up so that there were three potential possibilities as to where this site could be. The last and most promising site is close to where the insurgents are the most active, and once the first two sites don’t pan out, they must perform their search quickly while the army holds the area. Giving your characters a reason to hurry is a good way to inject momentum into the story.

But I think the most important reason it works is because I give the main character an untenable choice. He is the great grandson of Holocaust survivors and has been hearing the stories all his life. It has in fact, become something of an obsession with him, so his sympathies lie with the oppressed minority. But he is also a dedicated scientist who would normally never consider covering up an important find. I put him into a situation where these two passions are in conflict and he can’t make a decision without betraying one of them. There is no right choice.

I think everybody can relate to that kind of no-win dilemma and that’s what makes the story work. My guess is that the editor who bought this story was intrigued by the main character’s predicament and felt that it compensated for the point around which the plot turns—that a government would use an archeological find to justify genocide—which is admittedly a little far-fetched. Every story has strong points and weak points. The strong points need to be compelling enough to make readers not worry about the weak ones.