All Fiction is Alternate History
One my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation is called “Parallels“. In it, one of the characters is accidentally thrown into a series of alternate realities. Each universe differs from his own due to past events having turned out differently. So the entire trajectory of history in that universe ends up altered.
One of the interesting things about the episode is that at the beginning, the character doesn’t know he is moving through alternate universes. That’s because initially he is transported to realities that are “next door” to his own, so to speak. In other words, entire universes wherein only one small recent detail is different. (In an early example, the flavor of the cake at a birthday party changes before the party is over, indicating that in all likelihood just about everything in the history of that universe was exactly the same as the character’s true universe…except that tiny detail. The character could have probably lived the rest of his life in that universe, and never known the difference.
I was thinking about this concept after the most recent meeting of the writers group I’m in. One of our newer members is writing a novel of historical fiction, part of which takes place during the American Civil War. She feared she wasn’t qualified to write the story she wanted to write. She was nervous about the historical sticklers who stand ready to point out the slightest inaccuracy in a novel. Despite her diligent research, she was concerned she couldn’t get everything right.
I told her not to worry too much about it…that especially when it comes to the Civil War there are people out there who will find fault with every little thing. The tiniest mention in passing of the wrong kind of belt buckle for a Confederate soldier, and they go nuts.
I essentially told her to not worry about those people. They are more worried about being detailed historians than novelists. Not that there is anything wrong with being a historian, but fear of their expertise shouldn’t keep anyone from writing historical fiction. What matters most is the story. She seemed to agree with that, as did several others.
What I wish I’d said is what came to me a few days later. I’ll share it with you today, though.
When we write fiction we are in essence bringing to life something that did not happen in our world, but did happen in one of the infinite possible universes of the imagination. Fiction therefore is, for all intents and purposes, an alternate universe. We don’t travel there physically, but in good fiction, don’t the created worlds seem real to us? Alternate realities. This holds true even if you aren’t writing science fiction, by the way.
Now, as much as some would like to believe otherwise, this applies to historical fiction as well. Fiction as a whole doesn’t proceed exactly as real life does, or else it wouldn’t be fiction. In most cases, our characters do not actually exist in this world. Also people speak a bit more efficiently in good fiction. (Imagine reading through all of the “umms” and stutters real people go through when they converse.) There’s no pizza place around the corner from that specific park in Chicago where your short story takes place. Yet in your realistic but nonetheless alternate Chicago, you put one there.
A reader familiar with Chicago, (or at least Google Street View) will indeed point out to you that there has never been a pizza parlor a block from where your story takes place, yes. But you know what you can tell them? Tell them is it’s an alternate Chicago in a nearby universe.
With any luck it will weird them out, and they will then leave you the hell alone. But if they are intrigued and want to know more, tell them what I’ve told you here; all fiction is an alternate universe. Even if it’s a universe that is nearly identical to our own, the tiniest shifts are present. For example, your character, who doesn’t exist, lives in this Chicago. If you went no further than that you’d have made your point. Does anyone check census records to see if anyone by your character’s name ever lived in Chicago? Hopefully not. Again, it’s a slightly alternate Chicago, and dammit it has a pizza parlor down the street from this park.
Why? Because your story needs it, and it’s not a stretch to think a pizza parlor would exist in a Chicago neighborhood. The history and essence of Chicago is not blown up by having a pizza parlor on a given street that does not actually have one today.
Same goes with Civil War fiction, or any historical novel. Your story takes place in a universe that is almost exactly like our own was at that time. But wouldn’t you know it, in your alternate reality that type of hairpin was invented three years earlier than it was in our universe, so your character is wearing one. But you remain faithful to the essence of the time period as well as the essence of your story.
Obviously, if you wish to remain within the realm of historical fiction, you can’t wander off too far into alternate universes. You can’t have the Confederates wearing orange uniforms, or write a black Civil War general into the narrative. That’s several universes too far removed from ours to qualify for historical fiction. (Though it would make a great entry in the “alternate history” sub-genre.) But don’t sacrifice an otherwise solid narrative because you’re afraid to compress time a bit, or make a horse black instead of brown. The history buffs may not like it, but you’re a writer, and your first duty is to story.
Perhaps in an alternate universe, I decided not to post that, so as to not upset the history buffs. But knowing me, I probably did post it in most of the other universes as well.
Overcome by the Randomness
I admit that in the writing world, I am sometimes overcome by the randomness.
Why does any given book that ignores all the rules of “good” writing become a best seller and make its author rich? There are plenty of books out there that are excoriated for breaking the exact same rules, their author’s deemed poor writers.
Why do books that follow all of the confining rules of three act structures and protagonists in trees with antagonists that have one appealing trait often not sell, even as editors, agents, and “experts” demand that new writers follow these golden keys? If they only work a fraction of the time, why are they still peddled as advice?
How can I detest a story submitted into my writers group that everyone else present adores? How can there be that much variance? Is the story any good, or isn’t it? And if I see it so differently as compared to the rest, is that saying more about the story, or about me? Or about them? Does it say anything? When I don’t like it, even if I can point out its flaws in light of writing craft and structure, does that mean it’s bad writing? It feels like bad writing, but does that matter?
Why is Nobel Prize material considered among the best writing? I’ve read Alice Munro and find her work both dry and ponderous in most cases. I am not an expert on the matter, but I’m not sure what is so earth-shattering or society-changing about her work. Sounds a lot like talkative “day in the life” stuff to me. You know, the sort of “tell, don’t show” naval gazing we are told not to write. Except, I guess, when you win the Noel Prize in Literature for it.
So, is it that I don’t like what is considered classic or important? If that is so, why do I love Shakespeare? Why is the The Old Man and the Sea among my favorite novels? How do I appreciate Dickinson? (A poetess, not an author, but there’s a point being made here.)
If the true gift of language and its usage is beyond me as I read Steve Berry or Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, how can I consider The Lion In Winter to be one of the best scripts ever written by someone other than Shakespeare? It’s thick, verbose, complicated…lacking in action by most standards, yet it is, to me magnificent.
But The Great Gatsby ? I get nothing at all from what is called by many experts the best novel ever written in English. Certainly the best ever in America.
I usually don’t seek out authors merely because they are praised by the literary intelligentsia, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid them either. But is that fact indicative of my not knowing good writing when I see it-that I don’t seek out Nobel Prize literature by default?
Am I then more of a “genre” fiction, low-life? Maybe. One of the best novels I have ever read is a Steve Berry suspense novel called, The Third Secret. But I have yet to really feel drawn into a Dan Brown novel. If, as the experts say, both authors are merely connecting the dots in the same predictable bestselling formula, why do I like Berry and not Brown? What’s Berry doing differently than Brown? Anything? For that matter, what are the thousands of formula suspense authors out there who have not made it big doing differently than either of those two very rich people? Is it merely luck?
Is it all personal taste? Does the simple fact that some people like one thing and dislike something else account for all of this? If so, what’s the point of labeling something “genre fiction” or “literature”? Is that determined merely by whether or not an English professor happens to love your novel? Or is there more to it than that?
It feels like it has to be more to it than that, though. Otherwise, why work on writing craft? We’d all just write a first draft and put it out there, and hope that the select people with the correct brain chemistry will find it and love it as it is. (Because somebody would.) Which then brings up this question…is all good writing merely good marketing? Get enough people out there to buy it, and you’re a good writer? Or do they have to be certain people? Or a certain number of certain people…who the hell knows?
Do I like some high literature because it contains traces of genre fiction? Is the genre fiction I have enjoyed possessive of some undefined literary quality?? Surely there is an X-Factor…or else why do I like some Hemingway, and not the rest of Hemingway? Why Berry over Brown?
In the end, when I read something that is poorly written, though, I know it. I can point to these things which make it a bad novel or story. I have confidence in my reasons why I don’t like something. Reasons that feel as though they transcend mere personal taste. I can point to the flaws. But perhaps it isn’t the presence of flaws, but whether or not the reader is bothered by them that makes writing strong or weak?
Even if we stipulate that that is true, nothing more is resolved because then we begin asking what makes flaws in one piece of fiction overlooked by a majority or readers, when the major flaws of another book sink it in the minds of most readers?
Makes one wonder if it’s ever worth looking for flaws in our writing. It sounds like heresy to say, but in a world that has millions of examples of flawed and (by some metrics) terrible fiction that succeeds, why do we writers wrack our brains to edit our stuff into perfection? Because every “Ask the Agent” advice column out there pounds into our heads, “polish polish polish, and when you think you can’t do any more, polish again. Make your manuscript shine. Get it to me perfect.“…Yeah and then maybe your intern doesn’t toss it away instantly. IF they are in a good mood on the random day your “polished” manuscript arrives there…
Bad writing is more than simply writing I personally do not like. Munro getting a Nobel Prize would seem to indicate that, if we are to put any trust at all into the Nobel selection process. (Maybe we shouldn’t, who knows?) And something isn’t brilliant because I like it. That would be narcissistic in a way. Yet everything I like (and you like) possess something that everything I dislike (and you dislike) is lacking. An unknown something that would seem to make all of the studying, practicing, experimenting and class taking obsolete. It’s going to be random whether or not you strike oil in the end, and that applies whether you are hoping for a Nobel, or hoping to become an author of “airport fiction”.
The only hope seems to be to write as much as you can, and to make sure you, in your highly subjective, non-scholarly tastes, love it. Maybe we all need to just write for the reader that is ourselves to create stories that matter to us. And hopefully, one day, that means it will achieve something more important than either the Nobel Prize or the prominent display at the airport…it will become a story that matters to other people as well.
Nanowrimo Contemplations
It’s time once again to think about the annual National Novel Writing Month. Didn’t I just go through all of this mental tennis with myself last month? Generally, I wouldn’t say this last year has flown by, but in the context of Nano, it feels like the year never happened almost.
Probably because I agonized over whether or not to do it last year for over a month.
If you will recall, last year the issue was whether to use Nano to jump start Novel 2, which is my next official big project. I was concerned that doing so might sink the project. My first two Nano Novels have not again seen the light of day since. And those two were mostly cold turkey starts. This was an ordained project, that I intended to be a part of my body of work.
I decided, however, that I could do it. I could write the first 50,000 words of my “legitimate” next novel under the umbrella of Nanowrimo, and have a solid head start on the rough draft for same.
I was about 70% wrong.
The plot got away from me. Quite a bit away from me, in fact. The partially outline I worked from takes some of the blame. But the worst of it is when I had to go beyond the outline in order to get to 50,000 words. Once I got to the total pantsing part of the process, the wheels started to come off.
Only at the the time I didn’t realize it. If I had known, I could have stopped. But I kept plugging away towards 50K. (That rhymes. The Nano people should put that on a shirt.) But once I started regular writing work on Novel 2 at the start of 2013, it became clear in a short time that it had a yoke around it’s neck. Or perhaps a millstone is a better metaphor. Call it what you will, Nanowrimo-ing was the main reason it was there.
I pressed on for a while. I slogged. Took breaks. Forced myself. You have to do some of that when you write a novel. But I realized it was no mere writer’s block. It was, in fact, an unsustainable plot, even through a first draft. Normally I complete a first draft without looking back. (Nano helped me do that, in fact.) I wanted to do that with this. Press to the finish line. But after much thought and regret I concluded that I wasn’t simply the injured last-place runner who insists on crossing the finish line. There was no finish line. As though the track had blown up and caught fire before I got there, and the whole place had been evacuated.
Thankfully, after a lot of brain wracking and severe editing, I was able to reboot the narrative in such a way that I now feel I can write the novel. The first draft will still be rough, and will need many revisions, but I can see the road now. Though now I think my brain might need to rest from Novel 2.
Enter, maybe, Nano 2013.
I didn’t intend to participate this year. Last year I “knew” I’d be working on revisions and latter drafts of Novel 2 by now, and that is priority. But after last year’s Nano, plus the sputtering, the gutting and the total rebooting of the broad outline of the plot, I have for a month or so felt weary of Novel 2. Also relived that I seem to have stumbled onto at least a broad road map (though some specifics are still unanswered). But not relived enough to jump in and write it. Perhaps I should, but if I learned anything form last year, it’s that sometimes resistance is there for a reason. I’ve forced work on this novel before and it didn’t take. I don’t think i should do it again.
So I’m thinking about Nano this year as a pallet cleanse if you will. Pure cold turkey writing again. Writing a novel that I had no previous plans or thoughts about. Something that will keep my long-form writing gears turning, but not derail my dedicated work on Novel 2. A return to writing-high. A high that I hope will have a residual effect on the rest of my writing.
No thoughts about legacy. No important “Novel 3” designation. No scheduling of its revisions. Just reckless, harried writing of a novel in 30 days. A novel to which I have no previously existing emotional attachment. A novel which, if I don’t like it can go in the pile with the rest of my forgotten Nano stuff. But if it turns out to be something, I can put it away, let it simmer, and work on it again after Novel 2’s long delayed first draft is complete. No pressure on myself.
Well, a bit of pressure on myself. There needs to be some in order for it to be fun at all, right? I’ve already proven beyond doubt that I can produce 50,000 words of a narrative in 30 days. What I have not proven is that I can produce a completed arc in those days. For though in all of my Nano experience I have gotten enough words, it has never been a complete story. If I do Nano this year, I hope to change that. I hope to have a completed, 50,000 word story arc in 30 days. It puts the challenge back into Nano a bit, but without the importance of starting Novel 2. And it will give me good practice on plotting, (which is probably my weaker component for novels.)
My only concern is that it will de-prioritize Novel 2 in my mind so much, that I will never return to it. Then again, it is a novel, a collection of words. And a currently incomplete one at that. It is not a prom date that I have stood up. I will be back to it. I just have those residual worries. But if I can convince myself in the end, I am helping my writing as a whole by taking this short detour, I might be able to do it.
So there you have it. My once again complicated thoughts on Nanowrimo. Are you doing it this year?
Postpone Your “Darlings”
“Kill your darlings,” as it pertains to keeping one’s writing concise and without extraneous ornamentation is attributed, incorrectly, to William Faulkner. But the concept is sound; as a writer you are prone to falling in love with each part of your creations, even that which you don’t need to make the story work. They become your darlings, and good editing means you will have to of course kill your darlings.
Unless you don’t.
Most people that edit out large chunks of a manuscript save much of what the excise. That clever conversation, interesting minor character or well constructed description may be weighing down your current project, but could be used in something else. Which is why I think it should be called “postponing your darlings” instead of “killing” them.
And even if you don’t use the actual words again, their existence can inspire whole new ideas. Just like getting an idea from something you see on TV or at the store, story concepts might rise from what got left out of other stories which in turn will provide its own darlings to postpone, which in turn could inspire yet something else. A (hopefully) endless cycle of literary rising phoenixes, with solid fiction rising from the ashes of postponed darlings from previous works in perpetuity.
Of course, the odds of such a chain lasting forever are small. But the point is, we writers don’t have to be so dramatic about everything. If you write something you like, something that speaks to you, odds are you will find a place for it to be eventually. Nothing’s killed unless you decide you don’t like it at all. So there is no killing of anything, really.
As for the darlings part, I’m not sure if I would call anything a write a “darling”. In this context, I find it too important to be flexible and willing to explore to let myself become enamored with any one section of my writing. If you’re that attached to something you have written, at least in the early drafts, that you have to liken it to killing darlings, maybe you need to take a step back from it all for a while.
Writers need not always be so dramatic about such things.
My Views on Views
It wouldn’t take much investigation of this blog or my online presence in general to determine my overall political and social leanings. I neither keep my views a secret, nor maintain a specific platform for exploring my political views in depth. I say things about issues when I feel moved to do so, but not all that I could say.
As a writer who aspires to get published by someone else, or aspires to sell many copies of self-published material, I’ve often heard it advised that I never express such opinions. That unless I intend to run for political office or establish a career as a political blogger, I should keep my opinions on such things totally under wraps. People don’t want to follow someone on Twitter that expresses political views all the time, unless they are political themselves, some have suggested.
That may or not be true to some extent. It may or may not be a bigger worry of mine if getting more Twitter followers were a higher priority for me. I’d like more, but if they don’t come, they don’t come. Something tells me the flow of followers would not change greatly depending on how often I expressed views on current events.
Still, I understand the advise somewhat. Though I should be open minded enough, for example, to read and enjoy the well-written novels of someone that is an arch-Conservative, the truth is I find that to be a strike against the work. Yes, in many ways it’s unfair. But as with any endeavor in life, we tend not to want to associate or socialize with people who hold views that are offensive to us. Not all Conservatives offend me, though more do as time goes on. But to a large extent one’s fiction is a personal thing, springing forth from within oneself, reading the fiction of someone I would personally detest is difficult.
The same with the music of singers or the acting of actors. There just seems to be less difficulty enjoying the artistic work of those whose political views are unknown at least, or closer to my own at the most.
When I take this into account, I would want people to read my fiction and come see my plays regardless of my opinions. Is it not easier for them to do so if they don’t know what my opinions are?
On the other hand, to not mention what I think of issues that are important to me-that is to say to not speak out against something in the political or social climate that has made me angry would be to censor myself in a way, would it not? Am I not casting off, or pretending that a large part of my consciousness is not there, out of the hope that it will not prevent people from liking my creations? That seems obscene.
Don’t get me wrong, I can use tact and diplomacy. I don’t need to talk about a political issue all of the time, as this blog oft hath shown. I tweet about other things as well. Just as I wouldn’t engage in political wrangling at someone’s house when I was a guest, or at other inappropriate times. I’m not uncouth, after all. But on my “platform” online, I feel the need to sometimes at least make it clear who I am and for what I will and will not stand…even if that doesn’t mean making speeches all of the time.
Maybe others are more open minded about art than I am. Maybe most people don’t care about the political leanings of the writers they read, or the actors they watch.
Maybe even I am not that way myself; how many examples of not liking performances or novels created by arch-Conservatives can I actually present? I still enjoyed the movies based on the very recently departed Tom Clancy, even though I am disgusted by most of what he stood for as a man. But I haven’t exactly lined up to buy any of Newt Gingrich’s novels either…
Plus there is the never ending mystery within my mind of how I have Conservative friends. How I and they are close despite the huge moral differences. If I can be friends with them, can I not enjoy their novels? Perhaps so, but I am uncertain.
So I don’t know. I can only say I will sometimes mention online, as I would in person, what my beliefs about an important subject are, at least so people know with whom they are dealing. Only they can decide if afterward I have shown too much to make my fiction or my performances enjoyable.
Ty Unglebower 