Fiction’s Prism
by Anna Luther
December 3, 2007 — Published in On Writing
One of my recurring waking nightmares as a writer is that there is nothing left to write about. All the good topics have already been taken, and I’ll be forced into writing some trite drivel that is only a poor imitation of things written before. It’s not an unreasonable fear. There is nothing new under the sun, really. People have loved, broken hearts, gone insane, run away to sea, danced under the stars, laughed, cried, murdered, saved, sacrificed, indulged, hoped, and despaired for as long as there have been people.
Ah, maybe there is a fresh element after all: the people doing all these things — the characters. We all love and lose, but never in the same way. Never under precisely the same circumstances. Never for identical reasons. Never to the same degree. Our lives share common elements, but each one is a unique tale.
A many-splendored thing
I suspect that this is why people will always read and write fiction. No matter how many times a man falls for a woman, no matter how many mothers shed tears over wayward daughters, the particulars are always slightly different. Each new variation on a theme has the potential to strike sympathetic vibrations in a new way.
Fiction is a filter for life. Most writers will admit that they don’t just pull things out of the air when they are writing. Characters are a composite of someone they know, or someone they wish they knew, or someone they wish they didn’t know. Events are often either based on things that the author has experienced or at the very least are colored by their experiences. Settings frequently come from places the author has seen and subsequently altered. The author can step outside him or herself when they are writing, but ultimately, they are still creating something that carries traces of their personality and experiences. Fiction is life through a prism.
Flaws make it real
Fiction writers have to take care that they don’t filter out too much of the darker side of reality, while they’re busy processing life through their characters. I want my characters, whether I am writing or reading fiction, to have flaws. I want them to have failings and quirks, but preferably not mine! Like Lindsey, I hesitate to give too much of myself away in my writing.
I know it’s a temptation for me — and I’m betting I’m not alone in this — to shy away from giving my characters flaws when I’m writing. Creating characters is difficult; it can be unpleasant because sometimes it means owning up to your own flaws. A fellow writer said to me once, “You can’t be afraid to explore the dark places of your own mind when you write.” These shadows, as well as the light that throws them into relief, are part of what makes us human. They are also what make characters accessible and believable. A perfect character who never makes mistakes is bound to get on readers’ nerves (and likely the nerves of other characters in the story!)
Fiction can make us examine ourselves in light of the characters presented before us. A particularly noble character can inspire us. A particularly wicked and cruel one can cause us to reflect on our own behavior and see if there isn’t some deficient element in us, even if we aren’t particularly keen to admit it.
Reality sets in
As children, we’re taught that what separates fiction from non-fiction is realness. Non-fiction is real; fiction is not. But as we mature, we realize that this is not quite true. Good fiction is sometimes more real than non-fiction. Drawing us into its world, a good story brings us joy and knot our stomachs because it is real to its characters. It becomes beautifully, achingly real to us.
Even if the world that the author has created seems like it couldn’t possibly be transferred to the one the rest of us inhabit, at least the characters behave and things happen to them in a way that makes it believable. The story is true, is real in the world in which it happens.
This world doesn’t exist in the physical sense that you and I exist. But it is still a world that weaves the threads of life, the pieces that make our existence real. It commingles courage and fear with despair and hope, as our own lives do. It carries elements of reality.
A story is real because you have listened to it, because you have believed it, because you have loved it.
A story is real because you have read it.
Illustration by Lacey Anderson.
Anna Luther
Anna Luther is an obsessive musician-writer whose days are split between pondering the finer points of Bach and flogging verbose writers.
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