Real Fiction

The book that I am writing is heavily inspired by Plato’s idea of Forms. Given the subject matter, it would be downright hypocritical of me to not do some thought exploration on what books and stories are; specifically fiction.

Real fiction is entertaining. There’s a whole host of authors, artists, and all around snobs who are both smarter than me and disagree, but I stand by my statement. As a reader, I am devoting a significant portion of my free time to read lies. That’s right, lies. If I’m going to read about something that never happened I’d better not be bored while I’m doing it. This isn’t to say that the story needs to make me happy. Make me sad, make me angry, make me laugh, but for the love of Gutenberg, don’t make me indifferent.

Real fiction makes you think. The best fiction makes you think differently than you did before (unless you already had perfect understanding of the world around you). Entertainment is great, but something has to be happening to the ethos at the same time as the pathos. Everyone laughs when they read Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but if you view the world exactly the same way as you did before you read the book, then you are either Douglas Adams’ clone or you weren’t paying attention.

As with anything, however, there is a balance that must be struck. Real fiction is not preachy. Preachiness is for non-fiction. The ideas that fiction presents should seep into your brain and marinate for a while, not hit you in the face.

Finally, real fiction is packaged neatly. I’m a picky reader. I like my authors to have a bigger vocabulary than me. I hope they don’t abuse the word “irony.” I want the prose to fluid, and the cadence to be entrancing. I want to be fully immersed in the story with steady pacing, dramatic character arcs and memorable, dangerous villains. I want to get so caught up in the story that I forget that I’m reading, that I lose track of time, that I have to take the book with me into the bathroom because I simultaneously have to pee and know what happens next.

Lacking any of these elements, fiction is lame. Without entertainment you get “Moby Dick,” an incredible story that no one reads unless they are forced to by sadistic English teachers. You read the Cliff’s notes, maybe the wiki page, and write a report that is exactly uninspiring as you found the book to be. Without the polish, readers will not be satisfied. Polish is that simple, difficult, time consuming ingredient that carries a mediocre novel into brilliance. Without deeper meaning you get the hundreds of thriller novels that grace Barnes and Nobel's new fiction rack. There’s nothing particularly wrong with these. They are page turning reads written by career authors, they might even be on the venerated NYT best seller list, but they are inherently replaceable. No one will have a reason to read them a second time, and most importantly, those sadistic English teachers won’t make it required reading, making the piece timeless.

I am uninterested in writing anything less than real fiction.