OMM: Compressing Real-Life Politics into a Fantasy Timeline

This Week's Topic: On My Mind -- Compressing Real-Life Politics into a Believable Fantasy Timeline

Today's an election day here in Ohio. We're mostly voting for who will represent the party on the November ballot. As we spin in yet another face-off between tyranny and democracy, it's too easy to see the hellpit awaiting us. As a citizen, it's horrifying. As a writer, it's enlightening fodder. To have lived through 4 years of a massive and flagrant regression in morals, ethics, and basic compassion only to be threatened (again and again) with another 4 years of it, I'm trying to set aside my disappointment and fury so that I can distill the pivotal moments that enabled The Collapse to figure out where to start The Story. 

There are so many inciting moments in real life over the last fifty to seventy-five years that it's difficult to pick where our protagonist's inciting moment should happen. How do I show an audience the erasure of self-regulating concepts like shame and public censure that once held higher authorities in check? That's something that happened over a long stretch of time, but is there a single moment--or three key moments--that can be built up to convey the crumbling of an institutional pillar? How do I show it without screwing up the pacing? It's easy enough to show capitalistic corruption leading to the downfall, it's been done a lot. Showing the process of the extinction of compassion is harder for me, mostly because it's the reality that makes me the most furious. Putting current real-world events into a fantasy setting with a story that expresses the futile yet desperate fight to revive integrity and altruism has to happen in a compressed timeline yet unfold over a believable blip in time. The pivotal events have to be pushed forward by the actions of the protagonist, when the reality involves a confluence of powerful people over generations.

As I head off to the polls, that's what's On My Mind.

Should You Reference the COVID-19 Pandemic in Your Writing?

So exciting! DARK WIZARD, Book #1 in a totally new series - new world, new magic system, new everything! - is coming February 25, 2021. You can preorder now. 

Available at these Retailers

    

Yes, I know I just released a book last week, but sometimes this is how balancing an Indie career with a Trad one works out. Probably we could do a theme week on that topic. Suffice to say, I'd already planned out and begun the Heirs of Magic series, when this book - finished and very sparkly to my eye - was returned to my aegis. I could have sat on it. Or I could just launch this series, too! 

You all know me (or you should, by now) - I checked my Gantt charts and decided to go for it. 

Our actual topic at the SFF Seven this week is *not* filling the pipeline with projects in order to juggle the demands of a career as a hybrid author. It is, however, not entirely unrelated. We're discussing topicality and making choices about what to write and publish - "In These times of plague: Writing about the real world in fiction."

I recall, lo these many years ago, when I was a newbie author and soaking up All The Advice, a writing professor at my university pronounced (you may add stentorious tones, if you wish) that we should eschew anything of popular culture in our work. Such references only dated the work, and made it less than. I vividly recall everyone nodding along sagely and making erudite remarks about the banality of popular culture. So much so that, for once, I kept my mouth shut.

Though I didn't agree.

People sometimes support this argument by pointing out that Jane Austen doesn't mention Napoleon in her novels, though that was the overshadowing political force at the time. She does, however, include the presence of the regiments. The movements and stationing of The Officers! (feel free to read in Lydia's excited squeal) are omnipresent to the milieu of the stories. They're such a seamless part of the world that we don't really remark on it. Except... why are there parades of uniformed soldiers marching through these idyllic, rural hamlets? 

My point is that, even if we make the conscious choice not to mention Napoleon, the tenor of the war will invade the story regardless.

I've seen a number of authors in various groups asking about whether others are including the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2021 in their books. Do we show characters in lockdown? Wearing masks? Avoiding public superspreader events?

Putting those realities of our lives in this extraordinary time into our books feels... fraught. Do we really want that stuff in our escapist fiction? And yet, the alternative - at least for contemporary fiction - is to pretend it never happened, or risk our characters looking foolish, cavorting maskless in a pandemic world, coming within six feet of PEOPLE THEY DON'T KNOW.

I don't know about you guys, but I flinch now watching movies where people attend parties in close spaces, embracing and kissing on others. It didn't take all that long, relatively speaking, for my habits and worldview to change.

The advantage of writing alternate fantasy as I do is that I don't have to worry so much about this kind of thing. On the other hand, this is the world *I* live in, and - like The Officers! - aspects will infiltrate the milieu of my stories.

I've seen a number of interviews now with directors talking about how the pandemic changed their films in profound ways, leaking in where they didn't expect it. I also saw Locked Down (Baby's First COVID-19 Movie™) and enjoyed it very much. However, filmed in London in early 2020, it already felt dated in marked aspects. 

Cue sagely nodding of sycophantic students. "See?" they say. "Dated. Less than."

I disagree. Capture the moment, if that's what calls to you. As artists, we observe the world and reflect it through our own lens. That includes *gasp* popular culture. 

Besides, it's going to leak in anyway.

How do I love fiction? Let me count the ways.

(sword on display at Château de Chambord)

There’s a ton of fictional aspects that don’t work in reality. But where’s the fun in that?! 

I appreciate the fictitious gems in books and on screen that make me suspend belief. I love when creatives take the mundane and fictionalize it. I’m a fictionist because I NEED fiction.

Why do I say I need fiction? Basically, to echo my post from last week, because fiction gives us hope that there’s more out there, that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, that we’re capable of far more than we can imagine. And everyone needs hope. 

But back to our topic of the week which is: what’s your favorite bit of pop-culture fiction doesn’t work well in reality. Vivien Jackson beat me to this with her post yesterday (such a good top 10 list, go check it out!!), but here are a few of my favorite things that are better in fiction:

1. The ringing sword draw. You’ve heard it so many times you may believe it’s real. Though, in reality, a blade doesn’t shhhinnng when it slides free of its scabbard, unless you have one made out of metal and then you’ve got other issues. But a dramatic sword draw wouldn’t be…dramatic if there wasn’t a pure, metallic ring. Think Jon Snow drawing his sword against a mob of white walkers in Game of Thrones. 

2. When evil's defeated, their mountain/castle/spaceship blows up and becomes rubble. I really like this analogy to life as we’re constantly in a battle, internally or externally, for good to win out. It’s just not usually as epic as say Sauron’s eye exploding.

3. Implants. No. No, not those implants. The sci-fi implants that project a computer screen in front of the character’s face, the ones that open doors with the wave of a hand, the kind of implants that sometimes require the main character’s (MC) to eject a chip from within their body to provide evidence that will bring down the big baddies. You know…those implant

4. Capes. You know someone’s someone and that they mean business when they’re wearing a cape. And they always flow spectacularly in the wind, real or nonexistent. Think Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok.

5. The gadget save. Tweak as you see fit for sci-fi, mystery, thriller, horror, etc. But they’re all the same, the MC's in a fix and then their gadget-supplier shows up or sends them the perfect tool. Or, the MC’s smart enough to make the tool perfect…like in MacGyver and James Bond.

6. Televators. My then four year-old son said he wanted a televator: “You know, mom, one of those elevators that poofs you where you want to go.” My mind conjured a mix of Dr. Who’s TARDIS and Star Trek’s transporter, so number 5 is an homage to all of those futuristic re-locaters. 

7. The slow-mo first kiss. In my memory, my first kiss with my husband happened in slow motion as the crickets sang around us and the moonlight sparkled on the bench. And I love how fiction can recreate the lightening jolt of the perfect, first kiss and even amplifies it with rain/music/the impossibly suddenly empty room, etc. 

8. Damage Control. I love how the MC’s car can scrape the side fo a building, be shot up, make a jump over a parted lift-bridge, and still slide into a parking spot. Same for spaceships. The Millennium Falcon’s taken on more hits and lost more pieces than any car could ever dream! 

9. Dragons.

10. I have to do it…I just have to. I have to list running in high heels as number Ten. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off in real life, trust me, I’ve done it, and it’s dang near impossible to make it appear as if you’re sprinting in tennis shoes.

There you have it. Ten reasons I love fiction for its unrealisticness! What’s one of yours?

The Alphahole Conundrum

My books! Spotted in the wild at George R.R. Martin's Beastly Books.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Sex on the Beach & Sand in the Wrong Places: What's your favorite bit of pop-culture fiction doesn't work well in reality?"

For the record, I'm going to put out there that you CAN totally have sex on the beach without getting sand in the wrong places. It's not even that difficult. Are these other people rolling around in the sand with sticky parts first?? I can't even.

Anyway...

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about fiction vs. reality. It's pretty clear to me - as I think it is for almost everyone - that stories aren't the same as real life. We want different things from our stories than we do in life. The fact that people even ask about it, like the perennial question about whether readers understand that romance in books isn't the same as in real life, is a head scratcher to me.

Um, yes. We DO understand that fictional romance is different. That's why it's called FICTION.

Every time someone complains about how there should be more awkward, terrible sex in romances I want to ask if they didn't get enough of that in their own lives. Really, that's what you want to read about for entertainment? Okay...

Anyway, one disconnect between fiction and reality is the domineering romance hero. He's broody. He's quick to anger and deliciously sexy when he loses his shit. He's protective, obsessed with the heroine to the point of suffocation. He's powerful, ruthless, and an irresistible force of nature.

We love this guy!

We would never in a million years want one in real life.

The term "alphahole" is often applied to this kind of hero, though I don't much care for it. I think most Romance readers use it for this kind of hero who goes too far into asshole jerk territory. And, pedantic types who seem unable to distinguish fiction from reality, will go on about all the behavioral red flags madly flapping here.

True enough. Like I said, we don't want this guy in real life. It's about the fantasy.

What is it about the fantasy that works here? I dunno. Could be an atavistic thing where that silverback gorilla still wows us and makes us feel safe and fertile. The herd buck is majestic and thrilling, no doubt. Also, I think power is interesting to us, no matter what form it takes.

Really, it's no conundrum at all.