Fiction About Creating Fiction

This week I watched the Fred Astaire musical THE BAND WAGON. The plot (such as it is) revolves around a lighthearted musical play the Fred Astaire character's two best friends have written for him as a comeback vehicle. The famous director who's persuaded to take charge of the production insists they rewrite the story as a contemporary, avant-garde musical adaptation of FAUST. When the opening performance proves to be a spectacular flop, the cast and crew remake the play according to the original script. So this movie is a musical about the making of two musicals.

KISS ME, KATE is another well-known example of a film about producing a play. Many others appear in the list on the TV Tropes page titled "The Musical Musical":

The Musical Musical

Of course, the device of a play within a play goes back to Shakespeare, if not earlier. In A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, the workmen of the city put on a play about Pyramus and Thisbe, meant as a movingly tragic drama but turning into a farce. Hamlet writes a revenge drama for the visiting actors to perform in an attempt to expose his murderous uncle and even lectures them on acting techniques.

Then there are films and TV series such as WANDAVISION and PLEASANTVILLE, in which the protagonist is trapped inside a TV show or movie come to life.

Novels about writing books are not uncommon, also. One obvious example is Stephen King's MISERY, in which the villainess forces the author of her favorite series to compose a sequel restoring the supposedly dead heroine to life.

Such stories can go either way in terms of the relation of the embedded fiction to the main plot. In MISERY, the melodramatic historical novel the author writes during his captivity contrasts sharply with his own desperate plight; the process of creation offers temporary escape. In HAMLET, the content and theme of the play within a play deliberately echo the situation at Elsinore.

Do authors create stories like this mainly because, as labeled on TV Tropes, "Most writers are writers," and we tend to "write what we know"?

Most Writers Are Writers

Or are there deeper reasons why many people enjoy metafictional fiction?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Most Writers Are Writers

This is the name of a page on the TV Tropes site, referring to the countless works of fiction with authors, playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, or poets as protagonists, a not unreasonable consequence of the hoary precept to "write what you know.":

Most Writers Are Writers

Taking this principle to its logical extreme leads to the situation satirized in a quote from SF author Joe Haldeman at the top of that trope page: "Bad books on writing and thoughtless English professors solemnly tell beginners to Write What You Know, which explains why so many mediocre novels are about English professors contemplating adultery."

Strict obedience to that "rule" would, of course, mean no fiction could be created about places or ethnicities other than the author's own, much less science fiction or fantasy. TV Tropes has another page discussing, with examples, the difficulties of writing about nonhuman protagonists such as extraterrestrials or animals. Yet even these characters have to exhibit as least some human-like traits, or readers couldn't identify with them:

Most Writers Are Human

Henry James critiques the advice that an author should write only from his or her own experience in this famous passage from his 1884 essay "The Art of Fiction" about the need for a writer to be someone "on whom nothing is lost":

"I remember an English novelist, a woman of genius, telling me that she was much commended for the impression she had managed to give in one of her tales of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant youth. She had been asked where she learned so much about this recondite being, she had been congratulated on her peculiar opportunities. These opportunities consisted in her having once, in Paris, as she ascended a staircase, passed an open door where, in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience. She had got her impression, and she evolved her type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French; so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and produced a reality. Above all, however, she was blessed with the faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for the artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place in the social scale. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it--this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience, and experience only,' I should feel that this was a rather tantalising monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!'"

To put it more briefly, it has been said that instead of "Write what you know," the rule should be, "Know what you write." In other words, thoroughly research whatever you aren't already familiar with from personal experience or study.

I admit I've usually adhered to "write what you know" in terms of my characters' occupations. Most of my heroines work as librarians, proofreaders, bookstore clerks, college instructors, or, yes, authors. Since their work usually isn't the central focus of the story, I figure it's just as well to give them jobs I know enough about not to make blatant errors. Where the protagonist's vocation does play a major role in the plot, I default to "writer."

The internet makes research easier than ever before, provided one takes care to distinguish accurate sources from their opposite. And for in-depth exploration, reliable websites can direct the searcher to books, which can often be obtained through interlibrary loan—which can also be arranged online. A public library might even have access to that one necessary book in electronic format, eliminating the need to go out to pick it up. For example, once when I wanted to insert a few sentences about a heroine's psychic vision of a mountain trail in Afghanistan into a story, typing and clicking on a single search phrase gave me all the images I could wish for. We truly live in wondrous times for "knowing what we write."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Rule of Six

RWR, the official magazine of Romance Writers of America, has a regular article series called "Your Writing Coach," by Shirley Jump. In the April 2021 issue (alas, planned as the final print issue, with the publication switching to digital-only) Jump explains the "rule of six," a term originally derived from the advertising business. Since RWR articles aren't available to non-members, I want to summarize this thought-provoking concept here. According to research on human memory, the most items we can easily remember at one time equal five. Therefore, in the realm of consumer goods, when we think of popular brands of commonly used items, four or five spring to mind immediately. It's harder to think of a sixth or higher-numbered item in a category. The purpose of advertising is to implant certain products in the audience's "top of mind" awareness, so that if we're looking to buy a new refrigerator (for example) the client's appliance brand will pop up in the customer's consciousness first.

Jump connects this principle with the craft of writing by applying it to brainstorming story elements such as characters, plots, and motivations. The themes, tropes, and scenarios we think of first will be those we've encountered over and over in our recreational reading and viewing. To come up with something fresh, we have to push ourselves beyond "top of mind" responses. The article urges writers to consciously attempt to think of at least six answers to each brainstorming question. When we reach the point where it's hard to dig up an idea that's not a variation on one of the others, we're getting somewhere. The author says if those fifth and sixth ideas flow too easily, we aren't doing it right. As she puts it, "you really have to reach deep into your imagination to come up with something truly unique." Now, I read that comment with reservations, since I doubt any "truly unique" plot twists, character types, or motivations exist. Just browse TVTropes.org with your "unique" concept as a search term, and you'll probably discover it isn't "something that hasn't been done before." In my opinion, Jump is more on target when she recommends trying for "a really cool spin."

So, to invent a fresh answer to the "what's next" question in plotting, you'd list the ideas that come to you most readily and dig deeper for those fourth, fifth, and sixth possibilities. Jump demonstrates with a scenario of a sexy guy driving a minivan. What's he doing there? She moves from the obvious (dropping off children at school, his own or a relative's) to the progressively unusual (e.g., "he stole the minivan to go after his kidnapped best friend"). She suggests exploring six external and six internal goals, motivations, and conflicts for each major character. Done thoroughly, this exercise in itself should generate a wealth of plot ideas. She mentions flipping gender roles as one way to freshen up a familiar scenario or character type. Long ago, I read a Western romance with a twist on the often-seen plot premise of freeing a criminal from prison to perform a task or participate in a vital mission. The title was something like "The Virgin and the Outlaw." The virgin was a bachelor needing help on his ranch; the outlaw was a woman from out of town incarcerated in the local jail.

Suppose I want to conceive of an entertaining, conflict-generating "cute meet" for my hero and heroine? Their children or pets get them together. (Been done a million times.) They clash as strangers, maybe literally bumping into each other on foot or in cars, or arguing in a store or other neutral venue, then walk into a business or political meeting or a job interview to run into each other again. (Been done in a multitude of variations.) One of them hits the other with a car. (I included versions of that in one of my vampire romances and in a shapeshifter novel, and I've seen similar incidents in other paranormal romances.) A volunteer in an animal shelter encounters a werewolf mistaken for a dog. (Not my idea but the premise of a novella I once read, and I wish I'd thought of it first.)

If you search the phrase "meet cute" on TV Tropes, you'll find several dozens of these kinds of scenarios. And, as TV Tropes reminds us, tropes are not bad. "Tropes are just tools. Writers understand tropes and use them to control audience expectations either by using them straight or by subverting them, to convey things to the audience quickly without saying them." Because "human beings are natural pattern seekers," the existence of tropes is inevitable. To return to the RWR article about the rule of six, the trick is to put your own "cool spin" on the familiar patterns by refusing to settle for the first plot twist, goal, motivation, or character type generated by the "top of mind" phenomenon. While the outcome probably won't be "something that hasn't been done before," it will display your unique touch as an individual creator.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dystopias

There's a podcast series called Extra Sci-Fi, produced by people who also create podcasts on Extra History and Extra Mythology. All these short (usually around 10 minutes) presentations are entertaining as well as packed with information. Extra Sci-Fi, which has been exploring the history of science fiction, recently completed a sequence about dystopias and apocalypses. This is the first, from which you can follow the subsequent installments:

Extra Sci-Fi

It's interesting to view their survey of dystopian fiction over the decades and witness the changes in what kinds of dystopias and apocalypses resonate with readers as cultural conditions evolve. 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD are very different types of cautionary tales from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, for instance. However, it's worth noting how different 1984 and BRAVE NEW WORLD are from each other, too. Orwell's novel portrays a society that's horribly oppressive for almost everyone, with the possible exception of Inner Party members (and they're constantly watched, too). The proles seem to lead their lives in an attitude of indifference to the all-pervasive surveillance, but still those lives can't be very satisfying in a society of perpetual economic shortages. In Aldous Huxley's world, on the other hand, life is comfortable and full of pleasure. Transient problems can be easily solved by another dose of soma (a happiness drug with no negative side effects) or a fresh love affair. Everybody enjoys his or her work because they're all conditioned from conception to fit into their destined social and economic slot. The only discontented people seem to be a few of the Alphas with enough intelligence and self-awareness to realize what they're missing in this shallow lifestyle. Since "even Alphas are conditioned," though, most of them accept that it's their duty to behave "childishly" for the greater good. Only from the external viewpoint of the reader, and John the Savage as the reader's representative, does the society of BRAVE NEW WORLD appear dystopian.

Ira Levin, author of ROSEMARY'S BABY, wrote a superficially utopian novel called THIS PERFECT DAY. While not very original, it does have some points of interest. For example, the F-word in its sexual sense is commonplace, but terms referring to violence (such as "kill") are taboo. All citizens enjoy security and happiness as long as they obey the rules. Under the surface, though, this conformist society turns out to be cruelly oppressive. In this kind of world, naturally the hero is the character discontented and curious enough to probe beneath the surface and rebel against the ruling authorities' violations of human rights and dignity.

TV Tropes labels a dystopian society that looks pleasant, cheerful, and generally attractive on the surface a Crapsaccharine World:

Crapsaccharine World

The page includes BRAVE NEW WORLD and THIS PERFECT DAY as examples.

This topic came to mind for me while watching the third season of THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Like Margaret Atwood's novel, the TV series portrays the Republic of Gilead as a society that's oppressive and unpleasant for almost everyone except those who manage to reach accommodations with the roles they're forced into. Perhaps the children growing up in Gilead, if its regime lasts that long, will simply accept those roles as "normal." In the series, as opposed to the book (except in the epilogue set long after the fall of Gilead), we at least get some relief from horrors by way of the scenes set in Canada. The only people likely to be content in Gilead, the Commanders with their privileges, power, and material luxuries, still have to face competition from their peers, so they may not enjoy complete happiness either. Junior Commanders and the Guardians, one assumes, have to watch their backs all the time. The Wives, although pampered, lead very circumscribed lives, endure the monthly humiliation of the Ceremony (embracing a Handmaid while the Wife's husband ritually rapes her), and have no real power aside from their potential influence over their husbands. Presumably a Wife who becomes a mother (through the surrogate maternity of a Handmaid) may find fulfillment in her child. As for the common people, married couples have to face the lurking danger that an econo-wife who proves fertile may be forced to become a Handmaid. Then there's the threat of execution or a slow death in the Colonies as punishment for transgressions. The only women with any actual power seem to be the Aunts, who exercise control over the Handmaids and perform the vital function of midwifery.

Pioneering behaviorist B. F. Skinner wrote a book provocatively titled BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY. A society such as Huxley's in BRAVE NEW WORLD offers and generally provides happiness for all, except for the very few who still care about freedom and dignity. The world of THIS PERFECT DAY and Crapsaccharine Worlds in general seem to offer that promise of happiness, which works as long as nobody probes too deeply. Then we have the downright horrible dystopias such as 1984, THE HUNGER GAMES, and THE HANDMAID'S TALE, dooming all but the privileged few to a miserable existence. Maybe the underlying theme of all types of dystopian SF is that warped societies, including those that look pleasant on the surface, aren't good for anyone, even the apparently privileged elites.

Of course, as Cory Doctorow says in his blog on "fake news" (which I linked to recently), that kind of fiction doesn't give us predictions, but rather warnings: "If this goes on. . . . "

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Alternative Christmases

When is Christmas not Christmas? When its equivalent appears under another name in a holiday episode of a TV series or movie franchise. TV Tropes has a page on this phenomenon:

You Mean Xmas

It's not unusual for TV series to have "Christmas" episodes even if they're set in a time or place where Christmas doesn't exist. An episode of XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS featured "A Solstice Carol." MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC has "A Hearth's Warming Tale," set on the holiday celebrating the occasion when the three types of ponies worked together to save the fledgling realm of Equestria from the terrible Windigos. (This story combines elements of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.) Then there's the infamous STAR WARS holiday special, set on the Wookie home planet at the season of Life Day. (I've never seen this film, so all I know is what's summarized on TV Tropes; it has never been re-aired, because it's so abysmal that Lucas himself loathes it.) The inhabitants of Fraggle Rock celebrate the Festival of the Bell in "The Bells of Fraggle Rock," at the time of year when the Rock slows down and would freeze forever if the Fraggles didn't ring their bells to awaken the Great Bell. The characters in DINOSAURS have Refrigerator Day, appropriately commemorated by lavish feasting. Although BEAUTY AND THE BEAST takes place in the world as we know it, members of the secret underground community where Vincent (the Beast) dwells celebrate "Winterfest" instead of Christmas. Print fiction features a similar phenomenon. There's a Midwinter Festival in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe. The people of Discworld have Hogswatchnight, as portrayed in detail in Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER. The world of Steven Universe is an exception to this pattern. Its canon establishes that the invasion of the alien Gems thousands of years ago altered Earth so radically that Christianity doesn't exist, so there's no Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, etc. However, virtually every temperate-zone culture in the world has a winter solstice celebration with such elements as feasting, lights, greenery, and bells, so it seems likely that the people in this series would have one, too. If they do, apparently the producers and writers simply haven't considered it necessary to mention.

In the animated special ARTHUR'S PERFECT CHRISTMAS, Arthur's bunny friend gets so stressed out by his divorced mother's frantic attempt to make Christmas perfect that he wants to invent their own family holiday instead, "Baxter Day." An episode of SEINFELD popularized the anti-Christmas holiday of Festivus, which includes the Airing of Grievances (when everybody complains to everybody else about offenses committed through the year) and an aluminum pole instead of a tree. In short, the human spirit seems to crave festivity at the dark of the year.

A satirical essay by C. S. Lewis imagines what the ancient Greek historian Herodotus would have made of the modern British Christmas. Herodotus concludes that Exmas and Crissmas can't possibly be the same holiday, because even barbarians wouldn't go through all that expense and bother for a god they don't believe in:

Xmas and Christmas

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Acceptable Breaks from Reality?

The TV Tropes site has a page called "Acceptable Breaks from Reality," about the "unrealistic" things regularly allowed to happen in fiction and film in order to move the story along, even though the elements aren't true to life:

Acceptable Breaks

This trope came to mind when I watched last week's episode of NCIS, a favorite series I've faithfully followed since its inception (even though I didn't completely like the star, Gibbs, at first and could hardly stand Agent Tony DiNozzo for the first season or two). Despite my fondness for the show, I'm often distracted or outright exasperated by some of their routine plot devices. One of the most "acceptable," which bugs me anyway if I stop to think about it, falls under the TV Tropes category "The Main Characters Do Everything." They seem to have only one medical examiner, Dr. Mallard, and one assistant, Dr. Palmer, doing all the autopsies. This large, busy organization has only one forensic technician, who literally does everything, including conducting DNA tests instead of sending them out to a specialized lab. In one episode, while the forensic tech was absent for some reason, two of the regular agents temporarily took over her lab and analyzed evidence. With no training or certification in that field? Yikes. Yes, I realize programs want to keep the focus on the stars and don't want to pay a lot of actors to play minor characters just to make the staff look realistically large. How much would it cost, though, to have a group of extras in the background or walking in and out of the picture so that the spaces devoted to autopsy and forensics would appear to be populated in a lifelike way? The program does that for the main NCIS office. In those scenes, the stars are far from the only people on the set.

Most of the time, I don't think about this issue while watching the show. Nor do I gripe too much about the "murder of the week" template, despite the fact that real NCIS agents (as far as I know from having been a Navy wife for thirty years) work more on such crimes as burglaries and assaults in Navy housing than on murders and terrorist conspiracies. The former types of investigations, admittedly, wouldn't be very exciting unless a body turned up before the first commercial. Some other "breaks from reality," however, actively grate on me. For instance,the agents frequently travel to other countries in the course of investigations, although they're based in the Washington, D.C. area, their presumed jurisdiction and operational purview. And they often go to other cities for brief interviews with potential informants instead of calling on the phone. That office must have a lavish travel budget! Last week's episode included several of my "pet peeves." Usually, the number of days covered by an episode isn't specified, so the audience may assume, with a little indulgence, that enough time has elapsed for lab tests to get done. This one, however, explicitly begins and ends on Christmas Eve. The forensic tech uses her superhuman skills to determine whether an unidentified baby is the child of a dead murder suspect. In real life, DNA analysis takes between 24 and 72 hours to complete. (I looked it up.) Yet she gets a result from the DNA paternity test in only an hour or two, judging from how much story time the rest of the episode spans.

Throughout the series, the agents constantly delve into official records that they shouldn't be allowed to access without warrants. Maybe that issue can be overlooked in the interests of streamlining the action. Entering private dwellings without warrants, however, is a more glaring violation. In the referenced episode, two agents talk the suspect into letting them into his apartment, even though they don't have a search warrant. So far, okay. But then they force their way into a closed room he has forbidden them to enter. No warrant, no permission from the occupant, no probable cause. In an actual case, any evidence they found would be tainted. At some point the suspect produces a gun, and one of the agents shoots him dead. We never hear a word about her being suspended pending investigation, as she would be, or even a passing comment about that possibility. For that matter, throughout the series the agents are continually involved in car chases and shootouts with no apparent repercussions.

Then there are the often unintentionally humorous "flyover country" slip-ups in occasional episodes. I know that in many movies and TV series, southern California stands in for almost everywhere. But couldn't film technology have deleted the mountains from the background of a scene allegedly set in Norfolk, Virginia (on the Atlantic coast, a half-day's drive from the nearest mountain range)? As a resident of Maryland, I was especially amused as well as mildly annoyed by an incident when the agents visited the Carroll County sheriff. (Why, I don't remember; that seemed like another interaction that could have been handled by phone.) According to its website, that department is "a full service law enforcement agency" with a staff of 260 employees. To the writers of NCIS, the word "sheriff" must have been free-associated with "Mayberry." They have the sheriff claiming he can't leave the office because there's nobody on the premises except himself and one deputy.

Minor "breaks from reality" to avoid slowing down the story are one thing, but critical research failures or the appearance of just not caring are another. What unrealistic details in movies and TV programs can you overlook for the sake of plot streamlining, and which ones make your teeth grind in exasperation?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt