Heart-Probability: What I Look For in Fiction

tyunglebower ♦ April 18, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

I don’t know what the hell to read next.

Only once I skim either the shelves of the library, or the descriptions online can I come to a conclusion about what book I want to try next. (Word to other indie-publishers, that jacket blurb is damned important!)

About 50% of the time, I am right. The other half of the time, it feels like I chewed a sour grape as a result of the let down of my expectations. Especially when I rarely even read a jacket blurb’s summary of a book that blows me away. Usually when I decide on a book to read, it’s because I said to myself something akin to, “not bad. Let’s see.”

Might be a current bestseller. Might be a second-tier thriller from 40 years ago. I will start to read it, if I get the sense I will find the story something I call “heart-probable.” By that I mean you can put characters in space, in purgatory, in traction, but if it feels like in the end a human experience is unfolding in a manner that I could sympathize with, (or long for) I am more likely to give it a try.

There are plenty caveats, to be fair.

For example, even though I give off the occasional “snooty English professor” vibe, I will prioritize this heart-probability over intricate writing and illustrious prose 85% of the time or more. If I want straight, eloquence, or word magic at its finest, I generally turn to poetry over fiction.

The other side of that coin shines just as brightly though; I don’t want vapid, pedestrian writing if it serves only to push cookie cutter, Hallmark Channel level characters around on a map, either. Suspense and adventure stories are among my favorite reads, when done well. Glorified travelogues propped up by guns and sex are not. That’s because even the least appealing person in real life generally has more to say, to think, to aspire to than the heroes of such books.

Heart-probable.

Even when I attempt a full escape into a story not known for the depth of character, I usually cannot finish it. I struggle with most sci-fi, (concept-over-heart) and Tolkien-style fantasy, (lost in a sea of words) for this reason.

Yes, that is subjective to some degree, but so is every other metric by which a given reader judges what works and does not work for them. We’re talking about effective fiction, not particle physics.

There are other caveats to my preferences as stated here. A story can be heart-probable, and yet removed too far from my personal experience in life to hit the nail fully on the head. Heart-probable but without hope puts me off as a reader, even if beautiful. I study and perform Shakespeare, I know tragedy-as-art. in fact perhaps because I am involved in Shakespeare, I have less tolerance for tragic stories from other places/ in modern settings? I’ll have to ponder that.

Anyway, I work overtime not to succumb to the notion this real-world has no hope, so I am not at all drawn to fictional world that offer none of it.

Maybe I should call this whole concept “My-Heart-Probable,” instead given how subjective this is, and how many stories I hated could nonetheless by “heart-probable” to someone. I concede that much of what makes a story worth reading all the way through for me is this intangible, nebulous notion of wanting to be along for a ride that is at least adjacent to the human threads that shape me as an individual, even when the setting and plot is outlandish.

Characters in the stories that mean the most to me are also tethered to the everyday to some extent. They may, and often do find themselves in the middle of something out of the ordinary, even otherworldly. Yet they remained tethered on some level to their status quo. If I am to care about how they confront the proverbial inciting incident, I have recognize a bit of where they came from before hand as human, and adjacent in some degree to my own humanity. Characters placed in entirely foreign circumstances have to remind me of something that is not, or was not foreign to me in the first place.

The idea that I could see myself next to a character as they live the story is an important one, even if I would not choose to be in the middle of their life.

A protagonist either makes a better world, or becomes a better them as a result of the stories that appeal to me most.

And when I cannot find enough of these stories to read, I do my best to write them.

Heart-probable.