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.

---

     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.

---

     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.

---

     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.

Realism In The Speculative Genres

     (This is what a writer who’s down in the dumps about his spell of low productivity does, Gentle Reader: Instead of writing, he writes about writing. At any rate, it strikes me as preferable to wallowing in my old fan mail. -- FWP)

     We who write in the speculative genres – i.e., science fiction, fantasy, and most horror fiction – are often torn over questions of consistency. This is a subject with iceberg-like proprtions: only a few percent of it shows above the waterline of auctorial consciousness.

     A storyteller starts with a story to tell. Why does he want to tell it? Perhaps it strikes him as a good bet for increased revenue. Or perhaps he thinks it will illuminate an important truth about Mankind. Or perhaps, still more imperatively, his wife has threatened to poison his Chianti if he doesn’t get his ass into gear and finish the series of stories she’s come to love. One way or another, he has a reason to write it. But he has a problem.

     To make the story come out the way he wants, he needs an element that’s implausible under current circumstances:

• Science Fiction: Faster than light (FTL) travel, time travel, mental powers, and the like.
• Fantasy: Magic, magical creatures, pantheons at war with one another, etc.
• Horror: Monsters of some sort.

     This is the speculative-fiction writer’s special challenge, one that “mainstream” writers don’t face. His “what if?” isn’t just the premise for a plot line; it’s a request for an alteration of the rules of reality as they’re enforced between the covers of his book. To make it play requires the reader’s willing suspension of his disbelief. And Mankind is sufficiently various that there are millions of readers willing to make that suspension, for which God be most profusely thanked.

     But the problem isn’t limited to the writer’s opening premises. It also embraces the plot itself. Some plot developments require the amplification and extension of the unreal premises. That’s where consistency comes in, and with it the problem of realism.

     My first science-fiction novel, Which Art In Hope, made a “conventional” suspension-of-disbelief demand upon its reader: He was required to allow for:

• Psi powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance;
• The possibility of a sentient entity whose body is an entire planet.

     These are known motifs in science fiction. Thus, many who’ve been reading SF for a very long time are familiar with them and ready to allow them. However, newcomers to science fiction would have to “swallow hard” to get past them for the sake of the story. That willingness to suspend disbelief determines whether one who’s never read science fiction before can “make the jump.” (Alternately, you have to get your story out of reality’s gravitational singularity before you can engage the FTL engines.)

     One of the things I didn’t ask the reader to swallow in that first book was the possibility of faster-than-light travel. I didn’t need it; indeed, the existence of FTL would have contravened one of the essential conditions of the story I wanted to tell. But when reader demand made me contemplate a sequel to that book, it became a requirement.

     That forced me to think about the challenge involved in making my science-fiction setting internally consistent. How realistic would it be to have FTL developed by this colony world of pacifistically inclined anarchists?

     I pulled it off in Freedom’s Scion– at least, I think I did – but it took a fair amount of hard thought. The technological base of the Spoonerite society of Which Art In Hope would not support ab initio the development of an FTL drive even if it were physically possible. So my realism problem went beyond the physics of the thing.

     Magic-based fantasy has a version of the problem that isn’t immediately apparent to most readers. Broadly, it goes like this: Magic must have a basis in the laws of the universe. It must be available on certain conditions; it must be powered by something; and it must observe certain limitations. Those requirements imply that magic must have one of the following inner natures:

1. Magic is either a property of the magician, which arises from certain characteristics he possesses that others do not; or:
2. Magic is available only by persuading non-human entities with greater-than-human powers to act on the magician’s behalf; or:
3. Magic, in Robert A. Heinlein’s memorable formulation, is merely “something Western Electric will build once Bell Labs works the bugs out” – in other words, a matter of science yet unexplored and technology yet undeveloped.

     (In the above partition, I’m omitting the tiny subcategory of fantasies about omnipotence. I contend that such stories are inherently unappealing, since there are no rules – the protagonist can arrange to have whatever he wants, on any conditions he wants. Thus, he faces no problems that present non-trivial difficulties to be overcome. As a plot premise that’s undramatic and unsatisfying, and anyway, God doesn’t approve of such stories.)

     One way or another, all magic-based fantasy will fall into one of those slots. By implication, whatever the protagonists do must conform to the overarching rules of its sort. That allows for problems that even a sorcerer will have difficulty solving – and that’s at the core of all drama.

     Realism is ultimately a matter of sticking to the rules, whatever they happen to be. The writer must decide upon the rules before he sets forth. He must make them plain to the reader early in the game. Thereafter, he must adhere to them rigidly, for to depart from them would reduce his story to a kind of RoadRunner cartoon.

     Realism is quite as important in speculative fiction as it is in any other sort of entertainment. Failures to abide by the requirement for realism result in implausible, unsatisfying stories. Which is why so many writers who attempt to write in a speculative genre eventually find themselves muttering that “this is harder than I thought.”

     (Cross-posted at my op-ed site.)

On Letting Your Characters Do It For You

     A common occurrence in my “fiction writing process” – note the three initials – is a need for me to stop and ask my Marquee characters “What are you all about, really? And how does it bear on what’s happening in this scene?”

     Such moments are important to me. You see, I don’t really have a process of the formal sort. Some writers outline or synopsize; I do that too, but I almost never cleave to it in the actual act of writing. Some writers write character biographies; I’ve done that on occasion, but the finished product seems to diverge from my early conceptions rather dramatically. Some writers write out backstories to which they can make reference as needed; as useful as that seems, I find it more productive to make actual, publishable stories out of something that demands that much work. So ultimately, I’m flying by eye and feel rather than a process of the sort other writers that prefer more preparatory organization would recognize.

     That makes it important that I become intimate with my characters. (No, not in the Biblical sense. Get your mind out of the gutter.) I need to be able to “ring them up” on my mental telephone and converse with them when my plots get thorny.

     Sitting across a cafe table from Louis Redmond, Todd Iverson, or Stephen Graham Sumner can be a most helpful experience. Their voices are familiar to me, as you would expect of an old friend. A chat with one of them can often help me to break a mental logjam about how to resolve a critical conflict. Louis is particularly good on morality and ethics; Todd provides all the engineering expertise anyone could use; and Sumner’s grip on the law goes all the way to its finest details.

     Of course, others of my Marquee characters are harder to converse with. For example, before he was wounded in that assault on Morelon House, Martin Forrestal made a great conversational companion. These days, he’s always trying to remember how he felt about this or that episode. He usually fails. Martine Arnault could be good company, but getting her out of Evenings to Remember is tough and keeping her from returning to it is damned near impossible. As for Devin MacLachlan, forget it. All he wants to talk about are his books.

     Of course, I’m half-kidding here. The inventions of my mind can’t converse in any real sense. Nor can they “know” anything that I haven’t taught them. Still, by compelling them to speak in characterologically consistent ways, I can reacquire my grip on the most important element of any story: the motivations of the Marquee character group.

     It’s a bit like Stanislavsky method acting. If you know your context to a sufficient degree of specificity, and you know which of your characters’ desires, fears, and convictions would come into play in that context, you can get them to write their own lines – in effect, to write your scene for you. That conduces to the kind of fictional plausibility we call realism.

     What do you think, fellow scribblers? Have you used a technique of this sort? If so, how well did it work for you? If not, consider giving it a try and let me know!

Heroes And Realism

     I’m aware that my sort of hero – the genuinely good guy who’s a shade or two larger than life – is not in favor. He’s supposedly not realistic. Everyone has flaws, runs the gospel. If you fail to account for human imperfections, you flaunt your defiance of that reality. And to account for it properly, you have to show your guy giving in to his flaws, at least now and then.

     I dissent for a single, overriding reason: paying attention to the voice of one’s conscience is exactly what distinguishes a good guy from a bad guy or a mostly good but relatively less important Supporting Cast character...and one of the reasons I write fiction is to depict that contrast and encourage my readers to think about it.

     I had my most popular character very much in mind when I wrote Polymath. Louis Redmond is so popular among my readers that not a week passes that I don’t receive at least a dozen emails begging for more stories about him. From the first it was clear that Todd Iverson, the book’s protagonist, could not and would not compare to Louis in the most important ways. As important as I intend to make Todd in the future mapped out by the second Realm of Essences trilogy, it’s critical that he have a number of significant weaknesses. Louis had only one: his suspicion of anything pleasurable that struck him as unnecessary.

     Will Todd give in to those weaknesses? Perhaps. You’ll have to read the books to find out (snicker). But in the main he’ll attend to the still, small voice quite as closely as Louis ever did, because Louis is his hero and model in all human things. When others who matter to him fail to make the right choices, he’ll observe them, and the results, dispassionately, determined to learn from their mistakes. That all-important skill, and the willingness to use it, make the biggest difference between the common run of Mankind and the truly exemplary among us.

     In short, my attitude toward realism goes like this:

1. There is a pole, determined by the behavior of real people, toward which character decisions and actions should bend.
2. However, genuine heroes know when it’s vital that they ignore what “everybody else” would do.
3. They learn such discrimination by watching “everybody else” and pondering their words and deeds.
4. For a properly happy ending – i.e., one that nevertheless requires that the hero pay a proportional price – he must choose the right path even in full foreknowledge of what it will cost him – and that knowledge and willingness are what really qualify a hero.

     In fiction, there is such a thing as too much realism. Really.