Trying Something New

Yesterday, I wrote a new story. It had no guns, no light-saber-wielding hobbits, not even a time traveler. It started with a girl in a coffee shop and went on from there. I've never written about an ordinary person in an ordinary world sitting in a coffee shop - I didn't know what to expect. But then, who is ever truly ordinary? Can any human being be considered reliably normal?

The impetus for this story came from my MFA thesis advisor. I met her for the first time yesterday during our department orientation. As we all sat around the table - eight fiction writers, two of them faculty - we talked about what it meant to be in an MFA program. And my thesis advisor recommended that as we work through the next two years, we should each try to generate new work. We should be experimenting with new ideas, developing stories which may not succeed. As she said, a spectacular failure is better than always turning in "perfect" work.

Last night, I started with a girl in a coffee shop. Then her parents appeared. Then friends of hers outside. Someone had a prosthetic arm, others were playing Scrabble. I didn't know where any of it was going, but there were no laser cannons. No solar flares, no end of the world, no entropic heat death of the universe. I left out the standard plot drivers of speculative fiction (which I'm good at) and went with writing about the kind of people you might find on the street (which I'm not so good at).

Honestly, I was surprised. I ended up writing a story about an anorexic who is oppressed by her well-intentioned parents. Did I know I would write about this? Nope. Never would have predicted it. If I had predicted it, the story would have fallen flat. It would have been a diatribe about college and repression and the injustice of living. Maybe it still is. But I didn't know I was writing about those things until they happened. I didn't try fitting the story to any of the molds I'm accustomed to, and yet I ended up touching on themes that I've always wanted to write about. It even has a modicum of racial tension, something I've never had the courage to write about directly.

So is it good? I think so. The story works. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The characted changes, somewhat, over time. We have conflict. It takes on a side of life I understand strangely well, but haven't really written about, this drive to see students perform academically at all costs. More importantly, though, the story is unique. It pushes my writing into uncharted territory. I've proven to myself that I can craft a plot without resorting to the deux ex machina of overwhelming speculation.

This, I think, is critical for good writing. The reason that many stories in speculative genres like fantasy and science fiction fall apart is the lack of character-driven plot. A story is nothing without character - as human beings, we want to read the stories of other human beings. We want to understand our fellow travelers on this blue Earth. But when that Earth is about to be devoured by hungry nanomachines from Andromeda, we all know what the protagonist will (must!) do - save the Earth. And many speculative writers, unfortunately, fail to create characters who are nuanced enough to save the Earth in a "human" manner. We humans never simply solve a problem - we try to make the problem work for us. We try to make our lives fulfilling and secure. But when that asteroid is coming in and the atmosphere is boiling away, it's easy to ignore this. Sure, astronaut dude is saving the planet, but what about his wife and his kids and his parents and that roommate he had in college who still hates him for making the astronaut corps? The Earth's about to be crushed, man. We don't have no time to think about no hateful roommates.

This is why I'm so happy with my story from last night. I want to write science fiction - good science fiction. Character-driven science fiction. But in writing stories with themes from out-there, you have to first learn how to write the people down here. And I don't mean write about them - I mean write them into your stories, write them as people, write their lives as if they could happen. And as we strip away the trappings of speculation, as we get down to the bare bones of what makes these protagonists as real as people, we discover the personal plots that make our lives and our stories truly come alive.

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About Ryan Edel

Why Fantasy Novels are Overlooked

Our waking hours are limited. In the free moments left to us after e-mail and dinner and getting the kids to bed, we do our best to be productive in our leisure. For many, this means skipping the dragons and ignoring the elves in favor of lighter fair – that unread copy of Macbeth, perhaps, or another shot at page twenty of Moby Dick.

To many, fantasy novels are not literature. These readers view fantasy as cheap escapism, simply another way to the forget the boss and ignore the economy – except that there is no chance of Merlin installing a round table in the White House. Thinking that in reading they should “better themselves,” many readers choose books that they believe will directly apply to their lives. They pick up John Grisham and Tom Clancy because certainly those books hold a grain of truth – people get sued every day, and you never know which wars our nation may be fighting outside the view of CNN. Stephen King is a harder sell, but he writes so believably that, for a moment, a reader could imagine those horrible evil things lurking in the shadows under the refrigerator. But fantasy? Dragons that belch flame? A world of dirt roads and enchanted chain mail? Pardon me, but I have work tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this nagging literary discrimination has become quite widespread. It affects many genres – fantasy, science fiction, romance, even Westerns. Part of this ironically results from the high demand for novels in these genres. Readers who love the likes of John Wayne and Captain Kirk will buy many, many books – as a result, genre novels are often not as well written as a New York Times bestseller. Readers unfamiliar with a genre – especially fantasy – see these rows of books at Barnes and Noble and don’t know what to look for. They get swamped by the cover illustrations of damsels and unicorns and knights in heavy armor. They might spend a few minutes reading the back covers before giving up and heading for the bestseller racks. If they’re brave and happen to buy a book, they’re often disappointed. It’s hard to make sense of a good fantasy without at least some familiarity with the standards of the genre. But a poorly-written fantasy novel? Our realist reader might put down the book at chapter one and never go back.

As these mainstream readers face their own poor experiences with fantasy, they spread the word. Instead of “oh, I didn’t like this book by author X,” it becomes “I tried reading a fantasy once – it just didn’t make sense to me.” These views, unfortunately, are still further reinforced by the popularity of the genre. As “typical readers” go about their daily lives, they run across people who love fantasy novels and are very vocal about this love. Renaissance Fairs coupled with Dungeons and Dragons players dressing up for their weekly game leave mainstream readers thinking that fantasy novels are more of a subculture than simply another form of literature. Like Brahmin avoiding Untouchables, these readers avoid “that guy” at the office who spent his weekend dressed in a tunic while turning a pig at a spit – chances are he still smells like boiled grease. Never mind that pig-turning-tunic-guy has always been a little nutty – the fact that he talks about warlocks and magic amulets makes it seem as if it was the books that made him this way. No one really considers the cute secretary down the hall who adores Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and R. A. Salvatore – she never talks about books because she doesn’t want to get lumped in with greasy weirdo dude or (worse yet) encourage him to talk to her.

As this pattern continues, most readers become turned-off to the idea of fantasy novels. They might pick up a copy of Harry Potter because everyone says it’s good, but they’ll never browse the fantasy section looking for it. It’s unfortunate that this happens – these readers miss a very entertaining and insightful genre. Well-written fantasy novels provide more than a magical setting. They develop a metaphorical world for readers to explore, a world that is different from our own but always close to home. But the only way to visit these worlds is to first find a book – a good book – and dodge the ever-watchful eyes of the literary purists.

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