Last weekend was the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Awards Conference, and one of the panels really got me started thinking. It was about story structure and looking beyond the three-act structure that’s fairly standard in modern Western storytelling, whether it’s film or novels. As part of the discussion, one of the panelists mentioned reading a lot of fan fiction during the past year because regular fiction is just too stressful. In fan fiction, you can find stories that are pure fluff, just the characters doing things like hanging out in a coffee shop and talking, with no plot or conflict. Other panelists agreed with the need for fluff, and this was discussed further in an online chat that followed the panel. I’ve seen that sort of thing mentioned a lot lately, that “fluff” is really popular among fan fiction readers, and yet we keep hearing from editors and agents that stories need more conflict and tension. I certainly would enjoy just spending time with characters I like.

But then I started thinking about it some more, and I wonder how well fluff would work outside the fan fiction realm. Would you be interested in reading about a bunch of unknown superheroes hanging around in a coffee shop and talking about their lives, or is that only interesting if it’s the Avengers—characters you already know and care about? I’m sure you could write a fun story about random superheroes in a coffee shop, but it would probably be about their work lives, which would bring in the conflict and tension. You’d have to establish something about their superhero lives for their leisure hours to have any real meaning. On the other hand, you could have Steve and Natasha hanging out in a coffee shop, with him talking about his cute new neighbor and her trying to give him tips for dating in the 21st century, and if you’re a fan of the franchise you’d already know that he’s Captain America and she’s Black Widow, and this is a scene that might have taken place between the first Avenger’s movie and Captain America: Winter Soldier. You enjoy seeing them in their free time because you’ve seen them saving the world. The same sort of thing between someone like Super Soldier and Ninja Lady, but in their civilian personas, wouldn’t have the same interest since we don’t know what their superhero lives are about, so their story would have to be about them being superheroes, or why bother making them superheroes? I’m not sure you could do pure fluff outside an existing franchise with familiar characters.

That realization sparked two big thoughts. One is that maybe it’s not fluff I’m looking for, but rather things with less dire stakes. I don’t particularly want to read about characters I don’t already care about hanging around in a coffee shop and talking, with nothing else happening. I just want to read about adventures where the fate of the world isn’t at stake. There’s got to be a happy medium between the invincible villain whose plan is to destroy half the beings in the entire universe and the coffee shop. I think the vast majority of fantasy novels I’ve read involve some ultra-powerful villain who’s going to bring about the end of the world as the heroes know it, so all will be lost if the heroes don’t stop him, and they have to fight off swarms of evil minions along the way.

One of my favorite fantasy stories, in both book and movie version, is Stardust, where the stakes are pretty much just about whether the hero is going to figure out who his true love is before he makes a big mistake that will limit his life. There is the problem of the witch who wants the star’s heart, but they only really have one encounter with her before the final confrontation (in the movie; in the book they don’t even have that final confrontation), but they’re not focusing much attention on having to fight her. Then there’s the issue of the prince trying to get the gem that will make him king, which the star has, but our hero doesn’t even know or care about this and isn’t actively in opposition. Things will probably not be super for the kingdom if this guy gets the throne, but he doesn’t seem like he’ll be any worse than any of the previous kings. The stakes are pretty much that the hero is going to ruin his life if he doesn’t figure things out, and yet I find the story utterly captivating.

I recently read a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story (that may be its own post later), and the only thing at stake there is that the beast will be stuck as a beast unless he can break the curse. The kingdom isn’t going to be sunk into an abyss, from which demons will come pouring out, if he fails. He’ll just be stuck as a beast. No one else will know, care, or be affected. The Beauty doesn’t know that he can be saved, so even she will merely have the status quo continue. But I still found it engaging. In fact, I may care more about whether the Beast will be redeemed or whether Tristan will get his act together than I care that an imaginary world will be taken over by orcs. It’s like the saying that one death is a tragedy while many deaths are a statistic, I guess. When it’s too big to comprehend, I just shut down and don’t get emotionally involved.

I think that’s the kind of thing I’d like more of, stories where the stakes are more personal than epic, where it’s not going to be great for the characters if they fail, but the fate of the entire world isn’t at stake. It does take really strong characters and solid writing to pull that off. Making readers care and turn pages is easy when the fate of the world is at stake. Making them worry just as much that a character will have an unfulfilling life if he fails is trickier to execute.

The other thing that occurred to me from this discussion was that there’s room for authors to write these fluff stories within their own franchises. The main books may have all the big conflict, but it might be possible to write those “coffee shop” scenes for fans of the franchises. I understand that some authors do this kind of thing on Patreon. I did the one story for the Enchanted, Inc. universe that you can get if you subscribe to my newsletter, but otherwise my shorter pieces have been very plotty—not “end of the world if we fail” plotty, but still with action and conflict. Now I’m pondering if I could write the sort of fluff pieces that are popular in fan fiction for my own work and have any kind of market for them, whether selling them as individual works or doing some kind of subscription thing. It might be fun to write missing scenes for my own books, the things editors make me cut out to improve pacing but that readers might enjoy.