A planet can be akin to a small town.

When you’re new to the craft, maintaining consistency in scale can be a daunting task. Moderation tends to come with experience, especially when you find yourself captivated by all the new and shiny elements that spark your ambition to write. It’s easy to lose your way in the writing process—the creeping sprawl of ideas that poses the danger of grafting into your story. Regardless of what you aim to write, Timmy, identifying the right scale at any given point in your work is crucial. It ensures that neither you nor your reader gets lost in the ever-expanding landscape of odds, plots, enemies, characters, and more.

Hello, Timmy! Today, we’re delving into the matter of scale once again. However, this time, we’re focusing on scale during the prewriting phase. We’ve already covered what scale is, and now I’m here to guide you on how to apply it effectively. Why am I emphasizing this? For two reasons: first, repetition is a powerful way to drive a point home, and second—and more importantly—understanding the theory is one thing, but applying it is an entirely different challenge.

You may wonder why. Well, when you’re caught up in the impulsive realm of creativity, immersed in that magical flow state where existence is distilled to just you and your work, losing track is all too common. There’s no need to be ashamed; it’s a normal part of the process. The key is being able to step back and recognize that while you’re writing about the experiences of several characters in a war, the 1500-word tangent about an amphibious operation on the other side of the continent, in which none of your characters participated, is not only unnecessary but also irrelevant to the plot and your characters. Let me break it down for you.

Scale is shaped by what your characters witness and what you choose to reveal to your audience. I understand, Timmy, that there are narrative devices like the third-person omniscient narrator, but for the sake of our discussion, I won’t dwell on it. Why? Because this narrative style heavily relies on you and your characters. This is where I want to emphasize that, narratively speaking, a planet can be treated much like a small town. How is that possible? It’s because, for the reader to be invested, the world must feel monumental to your characters. There’s a reason why purely evil villains fall flat—depth is crucial. But I digress.

Follow this principle, and you’ll be able to craft an epic narrative set in either a vast planet or a tiny town. The former can be tricky, as I mentioned earlier, with the risk of getting lost in its enormity and explaining irrelevant details or hyperfocusing on a few key locations giving a lot of depth to them, making them feel like small islands in a an ocean of nothingness. The key is to ensure that all locations and pertinent elements feel interconnected; you’re painting a grand picture with your characters as the brushes. Yes, focus is necessary, and while you may have more room for additional details or spectacle, the core lies in your characters. Just as no human can conceive the entire planet, your narrative focus should be limited. The challenge is to make everything feel grand without overwhelming the reader.

Now, for the small town, the same rules apply, but you have an advantage here. With limited scope, you invest fewer resources in presenting the setting and the world. Yes, Timmy, a story set in a single town and its surrounding countryside has the potential to be more powerful than one set in a continent-spanning tale. It might be a bit confusing, so let me clarify with examples.

I vividly recall watching Let’s Plays of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, bombarded by acronyms, names, and locations. Yet, to this day, the only thing etched in my memory is that there was a conflict between Earth and Mars, and very little else. The narrative raced so rapidly and desperately showcased its grandiosity that it afforded the player (and me, as the audience) scant time to simply exist, to absorb the setting and characters, to take everything in, yes there was a slow start where everything was presented but it wasn´t enough. Narratively speaking, I found myself completely adrift, disconnected from the unfolding events, and eventually, I stopped caring. I pressed forward just to reach the end.

Contrastingly, in the anime “The Legend of the Galactic Heroes,” the narrative is undeniably grand — one half of the Milky Way pitted against the other. Yet, it remains grounded by its focus on the main characters, they may be the main generals of their factions but the human part is focused solely on them. Everything else is well applied spectacle. It’s challenging to lose your way when the conflict is so distinctly human.

In the recently concluded anime/manga “Attack on Titan,” you can witness a masterclass in scale. The narrative starts with a limited scope, centered on the three main characters within their walled city. It becomes even more confined as the “call to action” event compels them to venture further inward. From there, the narrative and scale steadily expand, ever forward and ever larger, until—well, I won’t spoil it for you.

“The Lord of the Rings” provides another excellent illustration of this principle. If you delve into the story without prior knowledge of the setting, the world unfolds before you just as it does for the main characters, particularly the hobbits. It’s an adventure for both the characters and you as the reader. Starting in the tiny yet magnificent world of The Shire, they are thrust into a millennia-old conflict.

In the book I’m currently engrossed in, “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett, the narrative serves as an exemplary case. The central pillar of the story is the construction of a cathedral around which all the drama unfolds. While there is a broader picture—the civil war between brother and sister for the throne of England—it comes in and out of focus as the characters demand, rarely venturing out of Kingsbridge an its surrounding countryside. This is the epitome of a character-driven story. There’s no supernatural force, no special MacGuffin holding the key to everything, no “chosen one” destined to fix all the problems—just plain humanity. It feels so raw that at times, I find myself compelled to pause, not necessarily due to gratuitous gruesomeness (though, admittedly, it occurs at times), but because of the astonishing emotions conveyed not through characters saying anything, but through their actions.

So, what does this mean for prewriting? It means you should carefully consider not just what you want to write, but what you feel capable of writing. It’s all too easy to err due to ignorance, making awareness paramount. Or just wanting to tell a Grand Story mush like Tolkien or Sanderson, not understanding how they are able to write what they write because you don´t understand yourself Identify the conflict and its scale, understand how it relates to other conflicts, and stick to it. This is the one thing that you should not change as you write. Please, Timmy, pay attention—I said “should not,” not “must not.” It’s not a strict rule but a proven pattern. It’s up to you to apply it as you see fit.

So, what conclusion can you draw from this, Timmy, beyond what I’ve just shared with you? Scale is dependent on your characters and the level of conflict you want to portray. You have to give your audience time to absorb everything, allowing them to understand and, consequently, care about what they are reading. Always remember, in writing, a small pond with great depth can be far more effective than a very shallow but expansive ocean.

Until next time.