Fiction Is Stranger than Truth?
Is fiction really that much more dramatic or convenient than real life? That is the consensus and I can’t deny that at first blush it makes sense to say so. After all, how often do we find our lives, or even our day unfolding in such a linear, logical, dramatic manner as found in a well written story or movie?
No doubt the details of our fiction most relevant to a message or theme are more directly laid out for us then they are in life. Patterns are easier to see in a good story than they are in reality, and life doesn’t always tie up loose ends, (for the good or the bad) as well as a story does. If at all.
I’ve been wondering lately, (without having come to any sort of conclusion on the matter) if life is actually more chaotic and less orderly and meaningful than good fiction, or if instead real life is simply surrounded by a million and one distractions that prevent us from seeing the poetic in the everyday.
Note I say “everyday”. For quite often something big, or at least something odd will occur in our lives that draws attention to the sometimes story-like nature of reality. “Truth is stranger than fiction” is the cliche applicable to these times. I feel bold enough to say, however, that for most people, the so called “average” day is not as exciting as the average chapter in the fiction we love. That is, one could argue, one reason we read fiction in the first place.
I’m reminded of a little known and quite strange Robin Williams movie I saw once called, The Final Cut. In it, memory chips have been developed that one has implanted into the brain at birth. These chips literally record every moment in the entire life of the host. What they see through their eyes and what they hear through their ears. Even what they dream. At the end of life, the chip is given to a technician (Williams), whose job it is to edit the footage of an entire life into a narrative to present to the world. A narrative that will sum up the admirable aspects of the person’s life.
There is a scene early in the movie when Williams places one of these chips into his editing machine. The computer is designed to automatically set aside certain types of tedious footage. Hygiene, using the toilet, silent reading and other such activities are eliminated from the titular final cut. The result is a life with a theme. An arc. Or at least with a collection of readily identifiable patterns and positives.
So a story emerges when the extraneous material is removed. One of the themes of the movie, as you can imagine, is the type of moral dilemmas that can arise when editing the footage of terrible people into a more palatable arc. Who is to say, after all, what is “extraneous” and what is not? I won’t answer that question here, but I present this example to bring this to mind; is not every story ever told an example of removing the extraneous and pointing to the aspects most related to what the story teller wants to say?
Even if you don’t write fiction, you still do this. Nobody would ever listen to the story of your wild trip to Vegas if you had to include each trip to the bathroom, each shower, every person you said hello to. You remove, or at least try to remove, the extraneous, and get to the point that will most entertain the listener. (Though sadly, many people fail to do this, especially pertaining to stories about Vegas.)
So is fiction really elevated above “normal” life? Some of course is. No amount of editing out of the extraneous is going to reveal a Tolkienesque reality to our daily life in the world as we know it. Yet I can’t help but wonder if our lives would at least seem a bit more like our fiction if we “zoomed in” a bit more. Took a few more close-ups.
Fiction can be escapism, no doubt. But is it possible that the tiniest belief that what we are reading could actually be happening all around us is what keeps us coming back for more fiction throughout our lives?
Writers Make the Worst Readers?
In order to be a good writer, you must be a good reader.
There are what, about a billion ways of saying that? The concept is mentioned in what, 99.8% of every collection of advice for writers ever assembled? Something like that.
And we know why this counsel is so ubiquitous; it is true. A writer needs to have an idea about how to lay out story, develop character, and come up with some kind of “voice” for their fiction. The best way to do this is to become familiar with the works of others. This is of particular importance if one wants to break into a specific genre. Understanding how the strict formulas of a romance or a Western unfold is crucial to conventional success.
But outside of honing the craft, there is another reason it’s vital for writers to read a lot. A reason that is not often mentioned. Writers need to read the stories of others in order to experience the power of stories without being responsible for it.
Writing, if you want to be any good at it, is difficult work. There are a million and one ways to write a story, and you will find conflicting advice about how to proceed in doing so. But one thing is universal; it isn’t easy. There is plot, character, setting, prose, dialogue. Pacing. Voice. Length. Theme. Keeping track of all of that would be maddening if you didn’t think it was your destiny to write fiction, or if you didn’t love it. (And half the time, it’s maddening even then.)
So difficult is it, in fact, that we writers think first of improving our own craft when we endeavor to read fiction. We actually set aside the number one reason normal people read fiction in order to designate the act as something we require in order to make our jobs even more difficult.
The reason people read fiction of course is to be moved. To fear, love, laughter, tears, and any number of other responses, but to be moved sums them all up well. We have told stories as a race since before we could write them down. We dream stories of a kind when we sleep. There is a good chance that telling stories was the first communal thing sentient human beings did together.
This very blog says, “stories matter”. You’re damn right they do.
When we’re writing stories, we may forget that. So buried in the concepts I mentioned above, and then in revising, and then in selling and publishing all of it, we tend to forget that we writers require consumption of stories just as much as any other human. We too must plug into the collective psyche of the human experience. We too must escape, be made to think, be taken in by a memorable personality someone created. See ourselves in the adventures of another. And so on.
Yes, the more we read the more we understand writing. Yet if we’re only reading in order to study writing, we are doing ourselves a huge disservice.
There’s an old saying that the best doctors make the worst patients, because they think they are so tuned into and knowledgeable about all biology that they won’t take direction and be treated. I think an equally apt expression could be that if we are not careful, writers make the worst readers.
Always remember that there are worlds, characters, stories, plots, dialogue, lessons and so on which we have not slaved over creating. We must not get so engaged in creating our own that we forget the intrinsic value in visiting those of others. We aren’t so blessed that we don’t need to do that. It’s even possible that writers are in even more need of enjoying the fiction of others than most people, due to how crazy we make ourselves as we write our own.
Fiction is a powerful thing. Not because we write it, but because we read it and share it. Keep that in mind the next time you are reading someone else’s stuff, and forget about honing your craft for a bit.
Feeling Conflicted
A lot is said about the importance of conflict in fiction. (Sometimes it’s stressed even in the non-fiction work I write, but that’s another post.) Without conflict, so goes the admonition, there is no story. Or at least no story that anybody will read.
Therefore, (the conventional advice continues), an author must put their characters through hell and back, and hell again and back and back again and hell again and so on until…the end.
I see the point, in a way. But as with much advice it is taken too far in the popular venues of writing conversation. Not just by beginners either.
First, a conflict doesn’t have to require one fighting bears or saving the planet from the evil league of whatevers. Conflict can happen 100% within one’s mind. “Should I or shouldn’t I?” or “Which is the lesser of two evils?” are conflicts too. Well written fiction can intrigue the reader with exploration of a character’s thought process and personal decisions. Yet when we pound conflict, conflict, conflict into the brains of would-be writers, we spread the misguided notion that the conflict must be loud and external. In other words I believe the line between conflict and action is becoming blurred, and they are by no means the same thing.
Yet whether internal or external, conflict within a story can be overdone. You wouldn’t think it’s possible based on the counsel provided by writing “experts” the world over, but anything that can be underdone can be overdone as well. We just don’t hear as many cautionary tales about over doing it with conflict.
As one of my favorite proverbs states, it is the silence between the notes that makes the song. In context that means without moments of repose, contemplation and rest for your characters, the conflicts they face become overwhelming to the reader. Possibly even tedious, and I think we all agree that is just about the last thing we want our fiction to be. (Sloppy we can handle, but tedious? Writers will take a kick in the teeth first, please. So, I imagine, would most readers.)
Problem after problem after tragedy after disaster. This is not a formula for intriguing conflict in fiction. In fact when I read a story like this I am turned off after about the fourth consecutive plague from heaven thrown down upon the protagonist. That’s because it’ss clear the author took, “torture your characters” too much to heart, and mistook giving the people in their story a really shitty couple of days for great story telling.
In short, conflict isn’t fuel. Your story doesn’t burn brighter the more of it you add. It’s an ingredient. Like all ingredients, the right amount must be applied. I love sugar, but dumping four pounds of it into my cake batter doesn’t a better cake make. It makes an inedible mess. I have to find the right recipe and follow it.
Unlike cakes, we can’t just look up a recipe for a good story. (Though many people try to sell them…) But if we remember moderation of each component, trial and error will lead us where we need to go with our fiction.
The Name Game
In 90% of the cases, I don’t stress much about the names of characters in my fiction. That isn’t to say that names don’t matter to me, because they do, quite a bit. They have to “fit”. Yet I have read war-stories from authors who sometimes spend a month or more of the writing/editing process determining what name to assign to any given character in their work. With all respect in the world for my comrades in authorship, this struggle eludes me. (Or perhaps I elude this struggle.)
I think one reason I don’t give myself a headache over character names is that in most cases, I don’t over-think names in terms of symbolism. If a name I like happens to reflect a concept in some subtle way, okay. But in general I won’t spend much time trying to make it do so. That is because I think symbolic character names are TNT. Properly placed they can accomplish a lot of work. Yet whereas symbolism in plot, setting, dialogue and tone can be blended into a work without showing the seams, giving a character a name that will represent or symbolize their journey or purpose in the novel can knock a reader in the face with a hammer, and I don’t usually want that.
Ever have an English teacher in school point out with a degree of awe and pride that an innocent character that died in a novel you were forced to read had the same initials as Jesus Christ? If this was done on purpose as often as Mrs. School Marm claimed, it is one of the most obvious, overused and blunt force trauma inducing cliches that has ever been perpetrated on the English language. If it isn’t true as often as claimed in the classroom it nonetheless represents the muscle tearing stretches to which English teachers are willing to subject themselves in a vain effort to astonish tenth graders.
To me, an innocent lamb to the slaughter is as likely to be named Jarod Curuthers as he is to be named Bernie Stubbenfien. Fiction may not be 100% life-like, but in life people are named what they are named, and then go on their life journey independent of what they were named.
If part of the story involves a character’s parents naming them for reasons they felt were symbolic, I can fly with that. One of the characters in my novel is named for such reasons. (Centauri.) But to try to make someone’s name seem natural and yet represent a grand theme in a novel? No thanks.
I do like to come up with memorable names sometimes, but again if it is slowing my progress, I won’t fret over that forever as some authors seem to.
I want the name to stick in everyone’s mind from the start, some say. Fine. But are all memorable people memorably named? To me, if a character is to be named something unusual or memorable the idea will come to me in fairly short order. Yet if I have been agonizing for weeks over what to call the protagonist other than the commonplace “Gary Turner” that keeps showing up in my head, chances are the character ought to be named “Gary Turner.” He may even prefer it that way. (Yes, you will find they sometimes exude a preference.)
In the end, it is about the character for me. If I have done my job you will be engaged in the nature of who my characters are, more so than what they are called.
Yet they still need names that I like.
So how do I know what to name my characters? Truth be told for some of them it doesn’t matter. I may just give them a name and have done with it. Flip on the TV, see Jack Nicholson there, and think, “Bingo. The dry-cleaner shall be called ‘Mr. Nicholson’.”
But when the name does matter a bit more I tend to start out with a cadence in mind. This character “feels” like it should have a first name with two syllables and a last name with four syllables. It’s not symbolism so much, it’s just an aspect of the language that makes me feel such a way. (Though I have no scientific explanation for why I may feel such things.)
I’ll then search my mental inventory for names that match that criteria. Friends names. Names of those I find on TV, or even in a phonebook sometimes. I’ll select a few and see how well the character “carries” them.
You know what I mean by this. I know you have seen someone named, say, Arthur, and thought to yourself, “Yeah, he looks like an Arthur all right.” Same concept here.
Once I find that fit, (sometimes having to invent a name myself in order to get that fit) I will look up the name online to see if it matches any famous person or character. If it doesn’t, I will leave it, and be done with worrying. A few hours pondering is usually all it takes, because I like a character to have a name before I begin to write them into a story.
I have nothing against people who slave over character names, as I said. I can’t say I never have. But as I have pointed out here today I don’t usually allow myself to do so, because it is the character, the setting and how they behave that needs to make the biggest impact on the reader.
Ty in “Charge”
Starting next month and continuing into November, yours truly will be in a so-called leadership role in not one, but two endeavors. The first, as a director for a stage production of Yasmina Reza’s Art. The other, taking place somewhat concurrently in the same facility, is an eight week course on building a character for performance, which I will be teaching once a week to a class of teenage actors and actresses.
In a sense these activities will be new territory for me, though technically it will not be a first for either. I have directed plays before, even locally. (Though not in this theatre.) It has however been years since I have done so, and the last time I tried there was much interference from the powers that be as to how I ran my production. That will not be happening this time. As for the teaching aspect, I haven’t done an eight week course before, but this summer I have given two single session workshops and participated in a short third one.
So it’s new and yet familiar, these two impending projects. And as with any teaching or supervising role, I expect to do my share of learning as well. He who instructs or directs without the expectation of learning something himself is bound to be less successful, in my opinion.
I won’t be offering a day-by-day detailed description here of everything that transpires during these adventures. Not only would that be somewhat indiscreet, it would also become quite boring after a time for all of you, I dare say. I do however look forward to sharing with you all some general impressions I come away with, and specific adventures, (misadventures?) that present themselves on these journeys.
For those who may be wondering, all of this is not contradictory to my introverted nature. In nine out of ten cases I don’t mind public speaking, and so comfortable am I with both the venue and the subject matter that nerves will be at a minimum for the class and non-existent for the directing.
Remember, an introvert often loves to talk when the subject is one with which he is familiar and fond.
My goal in both cases, above all others, is to make everyone involved better performers by the end of their experience. Or at least to come out of the other end of things with a better appreciation for performing. My cast will probably be composed of three people (small cast) that have done a lot of acting already. Nonetheless, I hope the learn from me as I learn from them.
So watch this spot in the coming weeks and months for stories, thoughts, questions and reflections on leadership, inspiration, and education in the context of what I will be undertaking between now and Thanksgiving, starting with auditions for the play a week from Saturday. (September 1 and September 2.)
Ty Unglebower 