Your views on standard complexity.

[Graceful_Ghost]

In your own biased opinion, what comes to mind when you hear complex stories? What defines complexity for you?
Is it the relationships of the characters, the worldbuilding laws and rules, systems of your world, or the foundation of the world from its birth to its current age? Or is it the internal conflict that you just cannot find the right words to explain, and your characters have to unravel this feeling?
I would like to hear your voices(or in this case, read your words. XD)!

 

[georgelee5786]

Complex moral issues faced by complex characters

 

[Yule]

I like to think there's a line between a difficult story and a complex story. I find some stories difficult to read because they dump way too much info way too fast, these ones are pretty much textbooks to me. I need to study the material, when really I just want to read and enjoy it.

When the story gives just enough info at just the right times though, then these keep building up as time goes. These ones have loads of info too, but because they're spanned out well across an interesting plot, I can enjoy the story's complexity without it being a chore to read!

 

[TheEldritchGod]

In your own biased opinion, what comes to mind when you hear complex stories?

My stories.

What defines complexity for you?

My stories

Is it the relationships of the characters, the worldbuilding laws and rules, systems of your world, or the foundation of the world from its birth to its current age?

yes.

Or is it the internal conflict that you just cannot find the right words to explain, and your characters have to unravel this feeling?

No.
I always know the right words.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Something pretentious.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Complexity is not difficulty, it's good density.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Plot. Characters can be extremely complex and well thought-out, but it's the plot that makes them shine.

If we dig even deeper, the heart of good plot is complication and cohesiveness. That's it. A story becomes more and more complex the more complications it go through, as they build on top of one another into a giant complex mess at the climax and then get untangled at the resolution.

The story will become even more complex when every little complication have clear links to one another and influences each other in some ways, making for a cohesive whole.

 

[Sagacious_Punk]

For me, "complexity" is defined mainly by verisimilitude. The more believable and authentic a story seems, the more complex it is, imo; since the real world has endless interconnectedness and interaction on all levels of existence, even a "simple" story like a slice-of-life can be very complex indeed the more it represents a world that looks alive.

Perhaps another way of categorizing stories (simple vs. complex) should be "easy" vs. "difficult". Easy stories are ones which are straightforward to follow: slice-of-life, generic fantasies, low-key adventures, near-future technothrillers, and so on, featuring small numbers of characters, story threads, and/or multi-layered plots; while difficult stories are grand epics with tons of characters, several main arcs interwoven with subtle sub-plots for many characters/events, and have original and weird/unconvetional settings or narrative structure (or both). Difficult stories also tend to use more complex language (both in terms of words and sentence-level structure), bury a ton of details in passing mentions, and generally provoke the reader to stop and think at least once every page or so. (The really hard ones require brainwork every other paragraph or so.)

Some examples (regardless of genre or authenticity or story dramatics):

- "Easy" stories: Inheritance Cycle series, Harry Potter series, anything written by Dan Brown or Michael Crichton (both explain complex concepts really well!), Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton, any Jack Reacher novel

- "Difficult" stories: anything written by Greg Egan (anything! though his stories are not necessarily complex, re verisimilitude), The Golden Age trilogy by John C Wright, The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, Requiem for Homo Sapiens trilogy by David Zindell, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Earthsea series (Ursula le Guin has a really specific prose style which requires getting used to), Snow Crash and Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, Malazan Book of the Fallen

Let's examine also complex vs. simple stories (aka authentic versus "two-dimensional")

- "Simple" stories: The Mastership Game by Scott Mcbain (an incredible book btw, but it is more of an allegory than a real story), Inheritance Cycle, Jack Reacher novels (they are awesome - the old ones, at least - but they are a plain power fantasy), Riftwar Saga series (a fuckton of books which are nevertheless the definition of "generic high fantasy", right up there with the Wheel of Time), anything written by Jack Vance (The only memorable thing from the Demon Princes and Planet of Adventure were how shallow the plots were, and the absolutely kickass epigraphs)

- "Complex" stories: Together We Will Go by J Michael Straczynski, Elantris, Requiem for Homo Sapiens, Heartstriker series by Rachel Aaron, The Golden Age trilogy, Fallen Dragon, Jurrasic Park and its sequel (the books are orders of magnitude superior to the movies)


As is evident, there are overlaps in these two general categories. As a rule of thumb, difficult stories tend to also be complex stories, but that's not the case always. The Dragon Never Sleeps for example is a hard book to read and follow (even though it's v. short), but in summary it's just a bog-standard space opera. On the other spectrum, Elantris by Sanderson (which is a superior version of his Mistborn series, imo) is v. easy to follow, but presents its plot and characters with such elegance and panache that makes it very much believable on a more heightened level.

And I guess I can stop here. I'm not sure if I made my definitions complete enough, but there you have it. At the very least I hope I gave you a few interesting titles to read. (I've used only book examples; if I had included other media... dude, was this post going to be much longer.)

 

[ThrillingHuman]

In your own biased opinion, what comes to mind when you hear complex stories?

 

[prognastat]

There are multiple types of complexity a story can contain though most stories focus on a specific one the most.

Character Complexity:
How much thought it put into the characters themselves? The more the characters are distinct without being cardboard cutouts the more complex.

Social Complexity:
The amount of characters and more importantly relationships between characters to keep track of.

Moral Complexity:
How much is the story exploring morals. This can be done by having the main character or prominent characters set up with a certain distinct moral framework and using the story to challenge it it thought provoking ways allowing the reader to explore those same moral dilemmas as they read along. It can also be achieved by having characters with opposing/mutually exlusive moral frameworks clash in some way.

World Complexity:
If it is a science fiction/fantasy book how much did you develop a logic for their physics, technology, or magic systems? If it is set in another world how distinct is the culture, history etc for the world you built?

The thing to keep in mind is that too simple is bad, but though more complexity is generally good at a certain point from a popularity standpoint it's going to harm your progress more than help it if you go too far. Although some people love a story that takes a lot of work to understand not because it is badly written, but because there are a lot of interweaving parts to keep track of many do not like it when they have to constantly be paying attention to everything and thinking it over rather than just breezing through their read.

There is a reason Harry Potter is one of the most popular novel series and not Dune. Sure the latter is very popular, but nowhere near Harry Potter because the amount of people that are potentially going to enjoy Dune are inherently lower than Harry Potter. This by no means is a commentary on quality, but something to keep in mind when writing. The most important thing is to know the audience you are writing for so you are writing at a level of complexity they enjoy consistently and also different readers enjoy different types of complexity. Switching which type of complexity your story focuses on can be successful, but is more likely to get readers to quit reading than not.

I guess there is one kind of complexity that exists, but is very different from the others and that's how complex your prose is. Generally here my advice is to be very careful about going too complex. The average American reads at a 7th-8th grade reading level or at the level of a 13-14 year old) I'm sure this differs from country to country, however keep in mind even if non-english speaking readers might read at a higher level than that in their own language when works here are in English their reading levels in English are probably lower. If you go too complex with your prose you are going to put people off of reading your work. Don't go more complex here than is required to tell your story. Unless you want it to be a dick measuring contest where the prize is losing out on readers.

 

[ElijahRyne]

In your own biased opinion, what comes to mind when you hear complex stories? What defines complexity for you?
Is it the relationships of the characters, the worldbuilding laws and rules, systems of your world, or the foundation of the world from its birth to its current age? Or is it the internal conflict that you just cannot find the right words to explain, and your characters have to unravel this feeling?
I would like to hear your voices(or in this case, read your words. XD)!

It is when the language is difficult and the story has as as many layers as an onyon.

 

[DaisukeHanashi]

Let's face it

Mathematics and Algorithms are only the complexities I know that fucks my mind around.

But thanks to algorithm, I know why letters are involved in mathematics.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Complex when the problems can't be solved by MC using his fists.

I follow the notion of "either solving the problem or solving the one that is giving MC the problem."

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Usually, something pretentious, as Sailus said. Some of the most complex stories I read were simple. I find that oftentimes when people focus too much on complexity they miss.