Unfinished Stories, Unfinished Lives

     Unless all the Marquee characters die in the final scene – Hamlet, anyone? – the story is inherently unfinished. Life goes on; people continue to age, hopefully grow, and probably have other interesting things happen to them before they die. But a story is supposed to feel finished – i.e., that it ends conclusively, such that at least some major aspect of the characters’ lives has been settled for good. How is that to be done, especially if the author knows that that’s not the case?

     As simple as it looks, this is actually one of the unsolved classical problems of the fictioneer. It’s one of the reasons I find writing this stuff so hard.

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     Not long ago I posted a plaint about my inability to find fresh reading material that isn’t an element in a never-ending series. It was heartfelt, but it definitely went against the current trend. These days everyone writes never-ending series. The creator’s desire to tie the thing off can be thwarted by his publisher – or by his readers. It happened to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Indeed, it can happen to anyone.

     In part, the unbounded series is motivated by its creator’s desire to economize on one of the most arduous of the fictioneer’s tasks: the creation of an attractive, plausible hero. Once you’ve concocted such a character, it can seem a shame to “waste” him. Moreover, such a character becomes your readers’ focus. Those who thrilled to your first opus about him will want him to return for further adventures. But there are other forces involved as well.

     What does the hero do after the story is over? Maybe he’s the sort that simply must have further adventures. In such a case, his creator’s hands are tied; his tale must go on. But maybe he settles down to “Standard Life:” marriage, suburban home, 2.4 kids, et cetera. While novels have been cast in such settings, it takes the talents of a Judith Guest to make them worth reading. So how does the writer convey to his readers the sense that “what follows would be too boring to read about, much less to write about” -- ?

     It really is an unsolved problem, Gentle Reader. And it keeps coming back to haunt me.

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     A character with enough appeal to power a novel can be awfully hard to “put down,” fictionally at least. One contributing factor is the well-known phenomenon of Main Character Immunity. It afflicts more writers than not. Sometimes it compels an author to say, in effect: “Aha! You thought he was dead, but I was only joshing!” That’s what happened with Sherlock Holmes after Conan Doyle’s first attempt to put an end to him.

     I can’t seem to kill one of my heroes dead enough. The little bastard has just too much appeal. He keeps coming back, largely through my exploitation of open areas in his timeline into which I can insert more involvements. But at least that timeline is bounded by his quite definite demise, written unambiguously into the novel in which I first employed him. At some point – hopefully I’ve reached it already – he’ll stop popping into my narratives.

     And then, there are some heroes that are just too...too something. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is like that. You could hit him with a nuclear-armed cruise missile and he’d just fling it back at you. John Conroe is developing a similar problem with his characters Christian Gordon and Tatiana Demidova, the central actors of his “Demon Accords” series.

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     There is something to be said in favor of the seemingly immortal hero, though. If he’s really that much more appealing than the norm, the writer can please both his readers and his broker with an endless parade of stories about him, at the price of a single spate of character construction, at that. I sometimes wonder if Tom Clancy’s series of novels about Jack Ryan, who single-handedly saved the world over and over, came to an end because Clancy willed it, or because Clancy himself passed away. (Note, however, that others have made use of Ryan since Clancy’s passing, assuredly with the permission of his estate. People want additional stories about the poor guy, so he can’t be allowed to rest.)

     But all things must pass. If we except characters such as Christian Gordon and Tatiana Demidova – John Conroe’s two self-Fallen angels of the “Demon Accords” series – heroes all die, just as we normal folks do. The problem is that no one wants to read about that. The writer has to shuffle the hero offstage in a fashion that mollifies those who’ve loved him – and the more they’ve loved him, the harder that will be.

     Just now I’m grappling with how to deal with several such figures:

• Christine D’Alessandro,
• Kevin Conway,
• Larry and Trish Sokoloff,
• Rachel MacLachlan,
• Althea Morelon,
• and several figures from the Futanari stories.

     And to add a pinch of salt to the wound, every now and then I’ll toss off a short story that prompts my readers to add a character to the list: Evan Conklin and Gail Kristof from “Sweet Things” are the latest such.

     Granted, characters too appealing to dispose of aren’t the worst problem a writer could have. But they can pose a trial to a writer who itches to set off in some totally new direction. Especially when he sees his bank balance running low.

A Dollop Of Reinforcement

     Every now and then, someone who’s read one of my books actually, demonstrably “gets it.” Note the “demonstrably” part. I’m sure there are other readers who “get it” but don’t bother to let me know. I cherish them equally. However, it’s the ones that express their revelations who provide me with the reinforcement a writer needs. One reported in just yesterday evening:

     [Porretto] attempts to ask questions along the lines of "what should a good person do in this particular situation?"

     Exactly. That is my reason for this enterprise, my answer to the question “At an age when you could justifiably declare yourself forever finished with productive work and dedicate your remaining years to relaxation, the enjoyment of the lighter pleasures, and chasing pretty women in short skirts and high heels downhill, why have you chosen instead to do this agonizing, time-consuming, monstrously difficult thing?”

     It’s to get the reader thinking.

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     Most people make the overwhelming majority of their decisions without thinking. I can’t fault anyone for that. Thinking is strenuous. It takes time and effort away from other things that might seem more urgent. Worst of all, it can lead you in the wrong direction. As Robert A. Heinlein wrote in Glory Road:

     Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won’t work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.

     The wrong premises will lead to the wrong conclusions every time – and it’s remarkable how seductive certain wrong premises can be. As Arthur Herzog wrote in The B.S. Factor, a paranoid is just a logician with a fractured premise.

     Part of our inheritance is a vast trove of “pre-made decisions” that apply nicely to a great many known situations. The child’s learning process is largely about absorbing those lessons. Because those decisions have been tested against the situations they fit many times, we can rely upon them – something we often learn by attempting to “go our own way” in such a situation and getting our fingers burned in the process.

     But that inheritance covers only a portion of the human experience. There are infinitely more possibilities than any amount of received wisdom can cover. When such a possibility arises, it’s necessary to think.

     The Futanari Saga is the most challenging of all my fiction to date. It tackles situations many persons would recoil from considering, some of which are active elements in our current sociopolitical milieu. It embeds several speculative elements – the existence of genetically (rather than surgically) produced futanari; human cloning; Rachel MacLachlan’s desire-control technology; Fountain’s apparent miracle-working – but I wrote it principally in the hope that those speculations might help to illuminate some current, real-world controversies.

     Any light arises from the reader’s decision to think: to apply his premises and his logical powers to the unprecedented situations into which I throw my Marquee characters. Without that, the stories are merely transient entertainment, and perhaps not particularly satisfying entertainment at that. But the possibility, however slender, that I could get people thinking about current controversies from an entirely new perspective is why I decided the effort would be worthwhile.

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     At the completion of each novel I kick back for a few weeks, mostly to recover from the effort, but also to consider certain questions afresh:

1. Am I entertaining my readers or just pontificating at them?
2. What would make my stories more entertaining?
3. Am I “finished?”

     The answers are never perfectly certain. They can seem more nebulous after the release of a novel than before it. But I must face them squarely, for the reasons I outlined in the first segment.

     If, by contriving novel situations with a degree of relevance to real life and putting believable characters into them, I can get a few readers to think more actively and broadly than before, I’ll answer Question #3 above with a resounding “No!” I’ll keep going. Of course that compels me to face the question “If I’m not ‘finished,’ then what comes next?” But that can wait until I’ve emptied a few more bottles of Harvey’s.

A Correction, For Whoever Cares

     In the past, when one of my novels has been mentioned in the Ace of Spades Sunday Book Thread, it’s been a modest stimulus to sales. Not this time, I’m afraid – and the reason grieves me deeply. Here’s what Oregon Muse, the Book Thread’s proprietor, had to say in announcing the availability of The Wise and the Mad:

     Available on Kindle for $3.99.Or you can get the entire collection for $6.99. This also includes The Athene Academy Collection, which consists of 3 novelettes.

     I have to warn you that these novels are rated NC-17 for sexual content. And if you're unfamiliar with the word 'futanari', you'd best not google it. Especially not images. I'm dead serious about this. Because what you see cannot be unseen. Francis has written other books that aren't quite so hardcore, for example the 'Realm of Essences' series, the first of which is Chosen One, which I've mentioned on an earlier book two three years ago.

     I can’t imagine what Oregon Muse was thinking. There’s virtually no explicit sex in any of my futanari series novels. I can only hope he hasn’t read them, because if he did, there’s no excuse for what he wrote above. Those three novels took me three years and a lot of painstaking effort to write.

     I have no idea what to do about this, but I’m definitely not happy about it.

The Project That Lurks

     This one is for all the writers, both actual and aspiring, who’ve ever contributed to “the trunk,” that charming Nineteenth Century metaphor for cherished mementos of one’s failures. As a frame for my main thesis, allow me to include two pithy statements by persons of almost exactly opposed convictions:

Nothing ever goes away. – Barry Commoner
Never throw anything away. – Robert M. Pirsig

     What’s this? Nothing ever goes away? Preposterous. Of course things go away. Sometimes they don’t go as far away as we’d like, but go they most certainly do. I could tell quite a tale about the many things that have gone away from me – in some cases, without my prior consent.

     And what’s this? Never throw anything away? Even more preposterous. Why, it verges on balderdash! If we never throw anything away, eventually we’ll have no room left and no way to move around. Our homes would resemble those that were featured on Hoarders. And let’s not forget what the neighbors would say about the stink.

     Writers know this. It’s a regular feature of our lives that things go away, and that sometimes we throw them. But they don’t always go away forever.

     Way back in the chaotic year of 1997, I started a novel. It was founded on two science-fiction motifs that, to my great surprise, had never been employed by another writer. However, the year was a poor one for me, fraught with difficulty and strife, In consequence, I carried that project forward by about 30,000 words and then…just left it lying there. But I didn’t throw it away.

     In 2009, I stumbled over that novel-fragment in the process of moving from one computer to another. After I’d read it over, I found that I could not remember what it was that kept me from pursuing it to completion. My old passion for the ideas in it flamed afresh, and I drove it to a conclusion that the earlier me would not have contemplated.

     You may have read that novel. It’s Which Art In Hope, the first volume of my Spooner Federation Saga. Many of my readers consider it my best. Sometimes I do, too.

     Something like that may have just happened again. I was reminded, a couple of nights ago, of an idea I popped some years back, just after finishing On Broken Wings. I pursued that idea for about fifty pages and…stopped. I can’t remember why. If memory serves, it’s been in “the trunk” since about 1997. Twenty-two years…but yesterday morning I unearthed it and reviewed it, and it will surely be the next novel-project I address.

     I could have thrown both those fragments away. I didn’t, and I’m glad. But now and then it’s necessary to let an aborted project “go gently into that good night.” I’ve started a project or two of that sort, as well.

     In 2007 I was struck by sudden, unaccountable inspiration. I turned out a novelette that was highly original by the standards of its genre, I was immensely proud of its backstory, plotting, and characterization. It was a hit with my readers as well. Within days after I released it, they began to hector me to fashion a novel from it. And being eager to please, I tried.

     I tried, and tried, and tried. God knows I tried. I’ve been trying for twelve years. Every attempt leaves me more frustrated than the previous one. I’ve come ever so reluctantly to the conclusion that I can’t do it.

     No, I haven’t thrown that novelette away. It’s still available. But I’ve discarded my unsuccessful attempts at extending it to novel-length, and all the ambitions that went with them. It was necessary, that I might get the idea off my mind to make room for things I can do.

     Such judgments are tough calls. Mine cost me a fair amount of anxiety. It’s impossible to be certain that they’re correct, whether at the moment or long afterward. But they’re part of a writer’s life. If you aspire to such an existence, you must be ready for them.

     You see, there’s a project lurking in your subconscious. It might have been there for a very long time, fermenting, gathering force, waiting for the best moment to spring itself upon you. You might or might not know its name. Those things don’t much matter. What’s important is the project’s existence in that murky realm below your conscious perceptions and deliberations.

     If that project has left a few bread crumbs in your trunk, stored there by an earlier, less hopeful you, you could well stumble upon them at any time, find them nourishing, and complete a proper meal from them. That’s why you must exercise restraint about throwing things away. But when that project elects to surface, there must be room for it. That’s why you must make the tough call, now and then, to discard some goal that’s proved unreachable de facto, not worth the grip it has on your efforts and thoughts.

     These considerations arise in every writer’s life. You’ll face them in your turn. You will suffer over them; that’s in the nature of the decisions involved. But it’s part of the price inflicted by the desire to create, and you will be forced to pay it.

     If you’re a writer, that is.