A Dated Mystery Story

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my family discovered a small library sale, and I picked up a few paperback mysteries, including a book of short stories by various authors. On the drive home, I read the first story aloud to my husband while he drove.

Here is the gist of the plot: A young woman returns to the town of her birth and discovers that her identity is not what she thought. Shall I spoil it for you? Turns out that this woman’s (so-called) mother, devastated by the loss of her own child in a housefire, kidnapped her former-employers’ toddler and raised that girl as her own. Thus, our impecunious heroine is really the long-lost heir of an eccentric, wealthy recluse.

The part of the story that feels most dated is the way in which the story resolves. The wealthy recluse lives a sterile, rich life without heart (you know how those rich people are--all furniture polish and no humanity) and has no interest in her child. The daughter she wanted is one raised by herself to be a poised socialite, and the young woman who has appeared is not that person. She offers to pay her to go away. Naturally, our impecunious heroine, who lives on a part time job at a gift shop, disavows all interest in such filthy lucre and returns to her friends in the cash-strapped town. Ultimately, she is given the gift of a rundown but once-beautiful house on a piece of land and accepts it because it came “with no strings attached.” Hurrah for noble principles.

The bare bones of the story could have been presented convincingly. As it is, they fall flat.

Reading it, I was surprised that such a weak tale made it into such a book. Yet I’ve noticed that a simplistic condemnation of the isolated, over-protected, “non-authentic” life of the rich (placed in opposition to a free-hearted, more ethical, more footloose life) does seem to pop up in stories from the 1990’s. During that decade it apparently felt fresh enough to be acceptable without any finesse or real development. Nowadays the writer would have had to do a bit more with such a theme.

Thinking about the story, it helps me understand a bit better why some books do, and others don’t, deserve to become classics. This story feels dated and incomplete today even though other tales from the same decade are still highly readable. Probably that is because they hinge upon the universal human condition instead of whatever social commentary was currently popular. That is something for me to remember with my own fiction writing. I need to restrain myself from trying to share too many opinions, and instead develop my observations. There is a difference.

Here Lie No Dragons: Unspoken Rules of Socially Acceptable Storytelling

(Or, What I Learned from Ursula K. Le Guin and Jules Verne)

UPDATE: I expanded this blog post into an article for The Federalist, (read it here).

As I peruse Jules Verne’s dramatic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I am repeatedly struck not just with a case of I-am-not-buying-into-this-improbable-event-in-your-plot, but with actual discomfort. There are certain passages that conform to Nineteenth Century mores but clash with ours. Nowadays, when we talk about the astonishing creatures of the ocean, we are supposed to sound…. well, positive. Admiring. We aren’t supposed to judge them according to human standards of behavior or physical appearance, and to declare some of them (such as gigantic octopi) “monstrosities of nature,” or to decide that others (like sperm whales) are “mischievous creatures” who should be slaughtered in a “wholesome massacre” because of their supposed viciousness toward other, nicer whales. Our modern stories are supposed to focus on the danger that unrestrained humanity poses to the animals, not the danger that wild animals pose to humanity. To read about a scientist who says, “What a magnificent specimen of a rare creature! Quick, kill it!” feels downright awkward. I myself am no foe of hunting, but I am enough of a child of my era to experience unease when the fictional sea runs red with the blood of whales.

I am also reading the first story in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tales from Earthsea (a collection of novellas that intersect with her Earthsea fantasy novels). What fascinates me is the contrast between this story and the author’s first Earthsea novel from 1968 (in the forward to Tales from Earthsea, Mrs. Le Guin herself acknowledges that the vast social changes in moral outlook have changed her own view and thus her stories).

The first Earthsea novel is called A Wizard of Earthsea. In it, a young man named Ged travels the difficult path to wizardry and self-knowledge. The story is unconventional in many ways that were, in their day, quite bold. For instance, although not all the book jacket illustrations reveal this, the hero and most of the characters are not white people. For another, instead of engaging in epic warfare (or any warfare at all) the hero endures a long quest that ultimately revolves around facing and accepting his mortality. It is a hero saga and a quest story with a counter-cultural, reflective atmosphere (and without any fair-haired maidens who require rescue).

Infiltrating the Arts, Part I

Stories are powerful. Can the arts (broadly defined to include popular forms of storytelling) be used to shape people's beliefs? Can they be used a subtler form of apologetics?

Conflicts about ideas and beliefs tend to be messy. This is in part because, even if ideas themselves are logical, human allegiance to them is based on a chaos of feelings, assumptions, and preferences. Often we are not even aware of the presuppositions with which we approach an argument. Merely being right does not necessarily make a position convincing. When Christians try to engage in the interplay of ideas, we often find that our audience does not just disagree with us—instead, it actually cannot give us a fair hearing, and cannot truly understand what we say. This is observable in many different settings. Missionaries to unreached peoples cannot start with the story of Good Friday and Easter, but must first teach Genesis and the concepts of sin, God, and the soul. Missionary-citizens in the United States are also faced with a culture that is often a barrier to communication. Addressing these barriers is part of what we call apologetics.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Why Hardy Boys Novels = Pride and Prejudice

Some literary authorities cite seven basic 

plot types, but I propose an eighth

And now for something... completely different

It behooves the ambitious analyst to categorize, organize, and otherwise provide structure to the examination of literature. Those who desire to leave a mark upon the world of literature wrack their brains to produce a new system.  For example, according to Wikipedia, British literary figure Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch described all plots as development of one of seven types of fictional conflict: Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man against God, Man vs. Society, Man in the Middle, Man & Woman, Man vs. Himself. As my own humble yet valuable contribution to the literary theory of the Western World, I propose recognition of another type of plot. It may be summed up as “Wait…you mean it’s HIM?”

           

            The “Wait… you mean it’s HIM?” (W...YMIH) plot is found in a multitude of books. It transcends genre, delivering climaxes in tales as divergent as detective stories and romance novels. Let us take two wildly different pieces of writing as our example, and compare the plot of the typical Hardy Boys tale with that of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Ridiculous, disrespectful, sacrilegious (this for the Janeites), you say? Ah, but I do not claim that Miss Austen and the legion of Franklin W. Dixon ghostwriters handled their plot with equal humanity and dexterity. I only point out that each used the same one.

           

            Like other plots, the W...YMIH begins by establishing a problem, in this case a problem centered on the question: “Whom?” Elizabeth Bennet (and her mother) wonders whom she will marry. The Hardy Boys wonder whom they will turn in to the police for the crime in question. Both parties are in search of their man. Immediately the story proceeds to the introduction of the “Rude Gent.” This fellow, lavishly well-off in Miss Austen’s story, is also wealthy in the Hardy world. He catches the protagonists’ attention through his uncalled for ill-temper. To a discerning reader, the “Rude Gent’s” behavior is enough to mark him at once as the character upon whom we ought to fix our eye, but the protagonists, unaware of literature's tropes, fail to grasp his significance even when he moves beyond “Rude Gent” and slides into the role of “Rude Gent Who Keeps Showing Up.” In the case of the Hardy brothers, he generally bashes them on the head once or twice when they are not looking. In the case of Mr. Darcy, he proffers insults .

           

            The “Rude Gent Who Keeps Showing Up” (RGWKSU) is clearly qualified to answer to the great question “Whom?” Mr. Darcy is suitably rich and single. The Hardy Boys’ villain is suitably possessed of means, motive and opportunity. However, the plot is not so simple and uninteresting as to allow an epiphany in the first few chapters: no, a “Distracting Gent” must first appear. In the case of the Dixon ghostwriters, some deserving and put-upon person (a friend’s father, a young clerk seeking to rise in the world, an old man protecting his nearest and dearest) behaves in a suspicious manner and must be investigated. While the brothers are chasing their Red Herring, Elizabeth Bennett finds herself fond of a Red Lobsterback: Wickham, in his dashing scarlet coat, appears to be a better “Whom” than Darcy.

           

            The truth about the RGWKSU is finally revealed through climactic action. Mr. Darcy gallops to London and, through his timely intervention into Wickham’s marital schemes, preserves the Bennett family.  What is the feeling of Elizabeth Bennett when she realizes not only that he is a far worthier sort of man than her Lobsterback, but also that she loves him dearly? “Wait… you mean it’s HIM?” The Hardy boys’ villain also behaves decisively. Generally, he does something along the lines of knocking our heroes unconscious, trussing them like turkeys, confronting them in a scene in which he reveal their own guilt, and then unaccountably allowing the brothers to escape. The brothers are left in no doubt “whom” to denounce to the police.

            Thus it may be seen that the W...YMIH plot provides delight, excitement, and drama to readers across the genres. It’s variability and universality are its strength. I defy even Sir William Lucas to produce such a son-in-law—I mean, such a literary theory.

I issue this question to my readers : is it true that plots are universal, or can you cite any authors that you consider truly original in their plot development? 

 

Joining up with Amongst Lovely Things for a hunt through the archives. 

Head over there for "funniest posts."

Give Unto Others: Or Perhaps Not

            Should a writer provide "what readers want?"

        Human relationships are tricky things. Romance, for example, is fraught with misunderstanding and incompatible desires. Most humans expect to meet a “right person” to love or marry, yet must learn how to recognize so elusive a being and to develop healthy patterns of mutual interaction.

            I myself am seeking to better understand my authorial relationship with readers.

            I receive conflicting advice. Writers must choose an audience and write for it specifically! No, writers should simply write what they wish to read themselves. Writers will make no money if they do not respond to market demand. No, writers will never be worth reading if they do not find their own unique voice and hope that others wish to listen to it.

            In his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie instructs his readers to consider others’ wants and desires. He says to frame the presentation of one’s own request in a way that persuades people that they will get what they want if they do what one asks. This applies to writing. If I want other people to read my fiction, I must offer them something desirable, even if only the relief of suspense I have created. I cannot expect anyone to seek out my work if they are disappointed and displeased with the endings I provide. Yet stories which give readers exactly what they want (and expect) are transient and forgettable. In the end, we remember the book in which the boy’s dog dies, the hero is changed beyond repair, or the devastating betrayal is unexpected. Yet even these endings (although not what the reader wants) must satisfy the audience.

            How does one achieve this? In one of my writing groups, the members clamored for the protagonist of my story to act in a way that was completely contrary to the idea of the entire piece. Their feelings demonstrate that my story is not yet successful. Somehow, I must discover a way to persuade my readers to want what I want them to want, and to ultimately accept my answer. For this to happen, my ending must seem to flow naturally from the events that precede it, and (if it is a particularly hard sell) events must be arranged so that the audience feels it to be better, or truer, than the alternatives.

            Oddly enough, it is currently easier to set up a story so that the audience will want the protagonist to do a “bad thing” than a “right thing.” We are all familiar with the mechanics that are used to persuade us that we want the hero to illegally kill the villain. Less comfortable, less satisfying, and less salable is a story in which the hero nobly sacrifices his desires instead of his enemy. This is the true challenge. This is an opportunity to subvert readers’ expectations and provide something genuinely unexpected. I find it an attractively difficult goal and have been pondering it at length. How can a writer do this? I am still working on it. 

Writing About Historical Women? Humble Thyself and See Their Humanity

It is supremely difficult to venture outside one’s own head and see life as it appears to someone else. Yet the desire to do so is one of the reasons that people read and write fiction. Why do so few authors succeed in this worldview exchange when they choose a historical setting for their characters? Those women in period attire who gaze out at the world from dust jackets, spiritedly pursuing adventures between the pages, are often modern folk in costume instead of true representations of a different mindset.

The problem is not research. Most historical novels successfully demonstrate authorial effort to surround characters with references to cool historical customs and people. What is truly wrong is authorial mind block: the deep-down, unconscious inability to accept that women back then could really have believed the values they espoused, or that they were truly human if they did.

I do not ask authors to adopt the values of someone else’s era—only to try to understand them. Storytellers (in my view, even authors of genre fiction) help expand our understanding of life, humanity, love, hate, death—the things that matter. To do this, the writer must truly try to see beyond the period costumes. Did a given cultural group criticize any young woman so wanton as to dally alone with men? No author should address this until he or she is able to understand how that position made sense within the prevailing framework of thought, and is ready to sympathetically express it through the mouth of a character who is neither weak, annoying, nor petty (no matter how vociferously the protagonist may reject it).

Victoria Thompson’s Murder on St. Mark’s Place, a mystery set amongst the tenements of turn-of-the-century New York, provides an excellent example of authorial intent fallen short despite a fascinating setting. Sarah, the heroine, interviews three working girls who “couldn’t understand why [Sarah had] taken up a trade instead of remarrying. Plainly, they believed—as did most of the population—that a woman needed a man to take care of her.” This “most people in those days” refrain (wording which separates both the author and the reader from “those people”) is repeated multiple times throughout the book.

Is it conceivable that turn-of-the-century people who urged a woman to marry felt not that she needed a man (plainly she was surviving without one) but that her financial quality of life would be improved? Is it possible that this is equivalent to urging a modern woman to switch to a career that would provide her with a better salary for fewer hours? Indeed, is it also conceivable that nineteenth-century people were aware of women’s emotional, romantic, or even sexual needs and thought she would be happier with a man in her life? The author could have humanized the world she wrote about if she considered such propositions, and surely such humanization is the goal of fiction.  

Challenging as it is to take on another woman’s mindset and tell a story through her eyes, Ursula Le Guin does this successfully in Lavinia (a novel about a minor character from Virgil’s epic Aeneid). Lavinia is surrounded by vivid characters who may respect, threaten, wed, or abuse her—but none is accompanied by a tag that communicates, “Well, people back then…” These characters are simply, fully, obviously people. Interestingly, the author is able to heighten their universality by grounding them in the culture of ancient Italy. Most remarkable of all, Lavinia herself is a truly human, truly heroic character who strives to fulfill her own culture’s idea of virtue. Her beliefs are the driving force of her story. She is able to show us a little more about humanity while we are with her. Because the author respects her characters as people of their time period, she is able to explore the meaning and the results of values and culture at a far deeper level than a writer who remains in the “Yuck, I wouldn’t want to live back then,” stage.

Yes, it is supremely difficult to create written art that portrays human characters, but no author should be content with the illusion of having done so, no matter how many petticoats the heroine is wearing.

Blessed are the Pure in Heart, for Theirs is the End of the Story

I’ve been reading more contemporary fiction than usual, which prompted me to think about literary patterns.

Throughout the history of storytelling, the theme of the pure in heart has appealed to human minds. The pure in heart (also known as the deserving) shall see God: they will find the knowledge necessary to achieve their happy ending.* The popular definition of a “pure heart” changes, as does a culture’s understanding of what it means to “see God,” but the theme remains resonant. Interesting, is it not, that humanity seems to feel instinctively that life holds some secret, or answer, or knowledge that must be found or revealed to the deserving?

Stories demonstrate the traits that a given culture sees as making a person worthy of knowledge—and the knowledge that is worthwhile as the ending of a story. Yet even a deserving protagonist is not wholly good, because he or she is an illustration of how people would like to view themselves, and none of us wants to be compared against an unattainable ideal. We want to think ourselves deserving of a happy ending.

Folk and fairy tales are the most obvious illustrations of this theme. Fairytale heroes must earn the essential knowledge to kill the giant, scale the glass mountain, or sort a thousand grains of millet. How do these heroes succeed when undeserving older siblings, richer princes, faster animals, and other obnoxious creatures fail? Not by being perfect. Witness the rather cavalier attitude of many an ash lad toward the characters whose wealth he acquires! Yet these imperfect protagonists prove sufficient purity of heart through good-hearted gestures. The young lad shares his food with a beggar, speaks courteously to an old person, or takes mercy on an imperiled animal. Despite his lack of saintliness, he is more honest, generous, and polite than his rivals (it is generally not too taxing for any of us to imagine that we are a little better than other people).

How does this compare to the fantastical fiction of our own day? The genre is not uniform, so let us look first at the bubbly and shiny subculture of Disney and its ilk. What knowledge does the bubbly and shiny protagonist need to gain? Today’s goose girl or cinder maid becomes a princess because she believes that she is one. She needs to know that she is AWESOME and can do anything she desires. Those who do not receive or embrace this knowledge have no chance of a happy ending. We are all familiar with the premise that a personal belief in a desired outcome proves purity of heart. It is not necessary to behave perfectly in other categories (the heroine’s impatience with her mother is fine, although she must of course be kind to animals).

On the other hand, today’s more literary speculative fiction eschews the optimism of everything bubbly and shiny. In the typical science fiction/fantasy tale, it is evident that both the qualifications and the reward of a protagonist have changed. These heroes rarely need specific technical information of the sort that aided Jack the Giant Killer. Instead, they must find the understanding that will allow them to make some kind of peace with themselves. They need to know that even though life sucks and many people are rotten, it’s OK. It’s all OK. They will make it. They will assert themselves where it counts, or accept themselves, and move on—freed by the knowledge that they have seen through the illusions of society. Their purity of heart is demonstrated by a willingness to abandon the comforting illusions that others cling to, because these heroes value truth over comfort.

Even today, despite our claims of cynicism, our stories still tell of heroes who are pure in heart. It is the popular definition of “deserving” that changes—not the framework. We don’t seem able to let that go.

*This is not the theological meaning of Matt. 5:8, of course. I am speaking of a human interpretation of the moral sense inborn to each of us.