S.B. Stewart-Laing's Blog, page 5

The Importance of Fairy Tales

'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.'
--Albert Einstein 'Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.'
--G.K. Chesterton

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I've heard through the grapevine that you have taken up arms against a 'pernicious' threat to our childrens' impressionable minds-- otherwise known as fairy tales. As it turns out, I'm a scientist with degrees (one of them in evolutionary biology) and papers (also in evolutionary biology) and a cool job title with 'scientist' in it. More to the point, I'm a scientist who loved the heck out of fairy tales as a kid. A cursory look through my blog and website will tell you that I'm a scientist who still loves the heck out of fairy tales.

Personally, I'd attribute much of my success as a scientist to my enjoyment of fiction and fantasy. To invent and discover, one must first imagine the world as it might be, or as no one has thought of it before. History is full of scientists who were thought to be crazy because they suggested that the earth was covered with moving plates of rock or that dinosaurs were ancient birds or that the Higgs particle gives matter its mass. Without the ability to think beyond known fact and search for new answers we would only have a fraction of our current knowledge of the workings of the universe.

But really, fairy tales aren't here to train the next generation of scientists to think outside the box. Humans have always told stories in an attempt to transmit the values of our society. Because stories stick in our imagination, we take away the core messages of the tale, not the extraneous details. Atheists don't become more generous after being reminded of God because they think they'll be smited for misbehaving-- it's because we remember being told to love and care for each other.  Fairy tales are vehicles for imparting truths that are not easily measured with beakers and Geiger counters: the value of love, of family ties, of persistance in the face of adversity, of doing the right thing even when it seems impossible.

Yes, it is 'statistically improbable' that a frog will turn into a prince, but life is wonderfully weird and improbable, and we do ourselves a great disservice by insisting that the unlikely cannot be. There is a Chinese proverb that says 'he who claims something is impossible should not interrupt the person doing it'. This encapsulates the story of human history, as we continually achieve what previous generations would have considered a fantasy. We have the potential to be a better society because we don't just ask 'why', we ask 'why not?', and fiction and fairy tales are part of that process.

Fantasyland's 'First-World Problem' Problem

“We have white people problems in America. That’s what we have. White people problems. You know what that is? That’s where your life is amazing, so you just make up shit to be upset about. People in other countries have real problems. Like “Oh shit, they’re cutting all our heads off, today!” Things like that. Here, we make things up to be upset about. Like “How come I have to choose a language on the ATM. It’s bullshit. I shouldn’t have to do that. I’m American!”
— Louis CK

The denizens of Fantasyland should have a lot of problems. There are Evil Overlords, rebellions, dragons, vampires, and newly-minted wizards with dubious control over their powers. If you live in the medieval-European-flavoured rural areas, you probably have limited access to education, clean water, or anything resembling medical care; if you live in Urban Fantasy City, you have to deal with a crime rate that makes Detroit look like Lake Wobegon.

In spite of all this, there seems to be a lot of focus on first-world problems in a way that's jarring for the context. I don't think a focus on relatively trivial conflicts is inherently a problem-- I love Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories, and Bertie's antics are the epitome of first-world problems. This works both because the works are comedy, where we expect a lighter weight of conflict, and because the stories are set in an insulated world free of serious issues. If you're writing a Fantasyland comedy of manners, go ahead and let two characters struggle over the ownership of a cow-creamer.

The first-world problem fixation gets disconcerting, however, when removed from a privileged bubble. First of all, characters who have always lived in a deprived environment will probably not think to whine in a serious way about something that's a part of their everyday existence, especially if they have no inkling that life could be different. Young characters seem particularly prone to out-of-context whining, perhaps because this is how modern Western society tends to characterise anyone under the age of eighteen. Second, when a character is complaining about trivial issues in their lives while the world burns around them, the character looks hopelessly oblivious at best and sociopathic at worst. While people in harsh circumstances do experience small annoyances, these should not be given the same narrative attention as the life-and-death struggles in your setting.

Women, Entitlement, and Trophy Narratives

'Well, you have to keep in mind that what we learn as kids is really hard to deprogram as an adult. And what we learned as kids is that we males are each owed, and will eventually be awarded, a beautiful woman...But we, as the audience, know that in the end the hero will "get the girl," just as we know that at the end of the month we're going to "get our paycheck." Failure to award either is breaking a societal contract...From birth we're taught that we're owed a beautiful girl. We all think of ourselves as the hero of our own story, and we all (whether we admit it or not) think we're heroes for just getting through our day.'
--David Wong

For those of you watching US news over the weekend, you probably saw the tragic story of Elliot Rodger's killing spree. His rampage, according to his YouTube channel and printed manifesto, was fueled by rage that he had been denied the 'love, affection, adoration' of women-- attention to which he felt deeply entitled. The internet showed opposing reactions. One was a hashtag--#YesAllWomen-- decrying the culture of male entitlement towards women. The other, disturbingly, was from self-described 'Pick Up Artists', who claim this is an example of how men are driven mad by failures with women, and can be saved by 'seduction' techniques.

What both of these responses demonstrate, I think, is that our culture is saturated with the narrative of 'women as trophy'. It pervades the vast majority of our pop culture, a motif that both reflects and reenforces the notion that men are entitled to female attention on demand. While romantic storylines with a female main character, they develop a relationship with the (male) love interest; often, a main plot thread is getting the attention of said male character.  In other words, his interest in the relationship matters.

Flip to stories-- particularly 'genre' works-- where the main protagonist is male and the love interest female. There's no dwelling on her feelings or interest level. It's simply assumed that when the hero wins, he will be rewarded with his mate of choice. So what Western culture tells us, collectively, is that heterosexual men should expect a world that runs on the 'inset coin, receive woman' principle-- complete the correct quests or strike the right poses, and the woman you're interested in will pop up and declare her undying lust.

This is not to imply that this endlessly repeated story caused this weekend's horrific crime. Rodgers clearly had many, many deep-seated problems. But the public response-- both from the men who believe Rodgers' entitled attitude towards women was justified, and from the many, many women who recounted their experiences with male entitlement to their attention and their bodies-- shows how pervasive this narrative is in our culture. And the results are not good.

What I am suggesting we do, as writers, is to stop telling the story. Stop contributing our voices. Stop amplifying the signal. Write stories that treat women as fully autonomous people, not trophies to be handed out for whatever man finishes in first place. 

Characters With Invisible Disabilities

'Miraculously recover or die. That is the extent of our cultural bandwith for chronic illness.'
--S. Kelly Harrell

In spite of the fixation medical dramas have with rare diseases, Fictionland has a serious dearth of characters with health problems. If these characters appear, they generally have a very visible problem (ie, are completely blind, use a mobility device, are obviously mentally ill or intellectually challenged to the point of not functioning, etc); they are either shown as having superpowers, or as 'overcoming' their condition to 'inspirationally' do various ordinary things.

What we don't see a lot in fiction is characters who have a health condition, but mostly get on with supernatural detective work and/or bartending*. From a baldly utilitarian perspective, writers are missing out on a lot of good plotlines. By necessity, someone with a chronic health problem will have needs outside of the 'norm', and this can be used in all kinds of ways to advance, complicate, or add surprise to the plot. Maybe the character has gained medical knowledge from managing their condition, and use that to save the day; maybe it gives the villain a way to poison them while maintaining plausible deniability; maybe their plan gets derailed by a illness flare-up and they have to make a new scheme on the fly. Those are only a few possibilities.

The barrier, I think, is the 'recover or die' dichotomy in our collective conception of illness. The idea that someone could get used to managing a condition long-term and go about their daily lives in a reasonably normal way challenges that notion, but in my opinion, it's a notion well worth challenging.

*Career day in Urban Fantasy City must be very very short.

Slacktivism Theory

If you're on Facebook or another social networking site, you've presumably seen what is popularly called 'slacktivism': people reblogging or 'liking' posts about issues in order to appear engaged.

Lucian Clark of GenderTerror wrote a very thoughtful essay on why labling all online activism, 'awareness' activities, and general discussion as slacktivism dismisses a large chunk of the population and their valuable contributions to public discourse and activism. It's been proven time and time again that online petitions and the like can be highly effective, as can crowdfunding of lesser-known charity projects. There are also circumstances where 'raising awareness' is a positive goal in and of itself.

I often see similar arguments applied to fiction, especially when readers and writers are discussing whether or not elements in a story are problematic. Much like the commentary on 'slactivism', there seems to be a notion that the ideas shared in non-physical spaces such books and websites don't have an impact on the 'real world'. Why should we care when it's 'just a story'?

I'd argue that fiction shares some important characteristics with 'virtual' activism. Most obviously, it's a way we share messages and ideas in a medium somewhat detached from 'real life' context. Potentially, our audience is scattered around the globe, but all occupying the same intellectual space for the time we're studying a petition or reading a story or watching a movie. Second, there is an ease involved. Regardless of what the end result is, it is physically easier and faster to email a petition to all of your interested friends than it is to go door-to-door canvasing; in the same way, enjoying fiction is a leisure activity, and it's easier to initiate a deep discussion about a fictional story (and keep said discussion civil) than it is to start a similar discussion about a 'real world' issue covered by the story (or shown as an allegory).

There are many, many ways to spread ideas, and there's no reason to feel that one tool is inherently superior to another.

Science to the Rescue

'It might be interesting to see some fiction that actually shows the more positive elements of GMOs for once.'
--Stu

A while ago, someone said to me that getting my genome sequenced was a waste of time and money-- in her words, 'humans survived all these years without knowing what genetic diseases we might have, so why do we need this now?'. I pointed out that humans had survived as a species for 200,000 years without the benefit of penicillin, flush toilets, radios, vaccinations, electric motors, or central heating, but few would argue that these innovations didn't improve the general quality of life.

Useful inventions seem like obviously good ideas in retrospect, but at the time innovation-- particularly on a large scale-- is often met with a degree of fear and skepticism. This isn't to say that skepticism is always unjustified. After all, many apparent scientific advances turned out to be frauds or incorrect conjectures, or were found to come at an unacceptably steep price.

At the same time, considering how much we as a society have gained from scientific inquiry (you're reading this blog on a computer, possibly thousands of miles from Scotland), it's surprising there isn't more optimistic sci-fi, where science saves the day. Part of this probably has to do with how the human brain functions-- we are neurobiologically predisposed to give more weight to scary events than to positive ones. However, there is a lot more to the story than mad science run amok.

It would be cool to see more stories where invention and investigation is the focus as the characters struggle to solve a problem or deal with the complex 'real world' consequences--both good and bad-- of their scientific discoveries.

The Continuous Breakup Cycle

'I think one of the issues with modern storytelling is this notion that relationships are only interesting if they're on the rocks. Especially in T.V. programs the common wisdom seems to be that the second characters hook up all the tension and investment goes out the window. To me that just seems lazy. There is the potential for interest at every stage of a relationship, imo.'
--Tiger Grey

Functional, generally contented couples are a rarity in Fictionland. If two people are in love, their relationship is constantly being thwarted by Big Misunderstandings and romantic false leads. If two people are in a relationship, it will either be definitively ended early on in the story, or be defined by conflict and regular breakups. Occasionally, the beta couple will get to be happy, but even they are not always safe.

While stories require conflict, there is no grand rulebook that says the protagonists can't be a well-matched couple. One of the refreshing things about the urban fantasy TV series Grimm is that the main character and his girlfriend stay together. Yes, their relationship is tested, but they work together to solve problems, and don't respond to conflict with theatrical breakups: they (gasp!) actually have adult conversations about their needs and the issues at hand.

Many writers seem to underestimate the interest that can be sustained by watching a relationship evolve in response to conflict. There's lot of plot to be had if a couple or polyamorous triad or whatever other relationship unit is tossed into a new and scary situation and have to redefine their roles in the relationship in response to everyone's new needs and roles. There could also be an exploration of how people form new romantic connections in uncertain environments if the character and their love interest meet over the course of the story. There's not just no need to whip out the 'break up, make up, repeat' plotline; it's old, tired, and needs to make way for more interesting relationship stories.

Strictly Formula

'In some types of genre writing, the same old same old is exactly what the readers want, with a different hero each time or just the same type.'
--D.G. Hudson

Genre fiction sometimes gets a bad rap. There is a cultural tendency to view fiction as either Literature-with-a-capital-L or as genre stories churned out according to formula, even if we're a fan of one or more types of 'genre' fiction ourselves. Honestly, every genre (yes, even capital-L-Literature!) has overused tropes and plotlines, because borrowing and recycling and repurposing is at the heart of human storytelling.

Some subgenres actively embrace this. Most famously, category romance has turned formula into art form, using strict word counts and content requirements to tell thousands of permutations on basic storylines. It works here because the authors are self aware. These stories are pure escapism, and the anticipation of the guaranteed happy ending, as well as anticipation of some of the other tropes, is part of the reader's experience and enjoyment. If your intent is to actively feed off the expected formula because its integral to the genre, by all means go for it. The fact that romance novels fly off the shelves, even in a recession, proves our collective desire for deliberate, scripted escapism.

Other genres, however, have become formulaic by stagnation rather than by design. My suspicion is that new authors feel like the existing tropes are pre-requisites for entry, rather than devices used by the people who've gone before. I've mentioned repeatedly that traditional publishing (certain genres especially) are not exactly carnivals of diversity, so some of the problem may simply be that people with similar perspectives are, by dint of those perspectives, producing similar stories. But a good part of me thinks that we consciously or subconsciously see certain tropes as essential to the genre even when they're not. In those cases, don't constrain your thinking based on what other people have done--let your story be itself.

Your Characters, Unprotected

'...It won't protect them from mortality or consequence, but it will give them the power of choice.'
-Shan Jeniah Burton (She left this as part of a really good comment about fear and the human desire for control on my 'R is for Reefer Madness' post)

A lot of writers refer to their books or characters as their babies. When you put so much of yourself-- your time, your feelings, your intellectual effort-- into something, you get deeply attached. That's a natural response. But that same attachment goes awry when our attachment to our characters means we use our authorial power to save them from ever making any mistakes.

This ends up manifesting in one of several ways in the story. One way is that the world of the story can bend outrageously to accommodate your character. Improbable coincidences prevent certain death from the elements; the bad guy decides to taunt them instead of killing them; magical rules and social laws sprout loopholes to save the characters from the losing their powers and going to jail; other characters become entranced with the main character to the point of forgiving any and all bad behaviour. This ends up sucking all suspense out of the story, since the audience quickly detects the character is in no danger.

Another way is that the character gains extreme competence and eerie precognition. They 'just know' or 'somehow guess' everything from secret villainous plans to impending weather systems; they can fix everything from a broken bone to a broken boat engine; they can figure out exactly the right thing to say to comfort their love interest. Like the previous example, these characters often kill suspense because we know they'll always win. However, it's possible to turn these all-powerful characters into something fun-- certainly superheroes and the leads in action series fit this category-- by giving them a few human personality flaws and tossing huge, impossibly tangled obstacles into their path.

Finally, there is the most subtle example-- the character to whom the plot happens. They are spared making mistakes because they take almost no actions themselves. Other characters act around them or act upon them instead. This can usually be solved by ditching the inactive main character and focusing on the rest of the plot, or by giving the passive character a greater role in the narrative.

It's okay to let your characters screw up. They're not real, and it's thus perfectly fine to let them make bad choices and feel the full consequences. Those failings are what make them human, and by extension interesting. Their stories, too, are more compelling as the characters trip themselves up. Yes, it can be difficult to write, especially as it's so easy as the author to straighten everything out, but just let them go.

What Lies Beneath

'You've given me an idea as a writer in developing characters with hidden limitations'
-Stephanie Forgue Houghtllin

In any writing course, there's a lot of talk about 'internal conflict' as part of character development. When described, it often sounds like an admonition to give your character some dysfunctional characteristic (a temper, commitment phobia) or a traumatic past. This neglects the range of possible subtle ways to develop the character's mental and emotional struggles over the course of the story.

One of the criticisms of stories where characters' traumatic pasts are handled sloppily is that the character often comes off as whiny, angry, or otherwise without emotional depth in response to their history. Some of this criticism, I'm afraid, comes from the widespread sentiments that trauma survivors should 'get over' their experiences. But I think one of the major problems is that the author is focused on externalising the character's every thought and feeling, on having them 'act out' instead of allowing them to feel more quietly.

The face that the character presents to others can be radically different from their inner life, and therein lies the core of a compelling 'internal conflict'. Even if the character is suffering dramatically, they are unlikely to have the luxury of having an active breakdown every waking minute. Indeed, the tension of a character suppressing their feelings can be not just more realistic, but more compelling than having the character voice everything they feel.

The conflict doesn't have to be a darkly dramatic either. Perhaps the character struggles with their beliefs in the face of new events around them; perhaps they have some long-term challenge such as a mental illness that follows them. Perhaps the dichotomy between their mental life and the expectations of what they should present to the world creates opposing emotional pulls within the character. There are many, many possibilities to develop, so go out and write them.