One of the things I like most about writing fiction is the
opportunities it affords you. You can be
anything you ever wanted to be. You can
be everything you never wanted to be. You can play in a world full of things
that haven’t existed for centuries, or in the future with things that haven’t
even been thought of yet, except by you.
In my last post I wrote about the lack of infinite
possibilities. In the world of fiction,
you’re probably closer to infinity than anywhere else. You can play with the world and make it
another way. You can take people and
make them different. You can be thinly
veiled. You can cast your most hated
colleague blatantly in your story and
be mean to them in ways you never could in the real world – should you be of
that inclination.
I've just started reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. The main protagonist, Cath, is really into
writing Fan Fiction for a book series that sounds very similar to Harry Potter. She found an idea she loved, characters and
people and places that interested and intrigued her and she makes her own
parallel world.
I'm battling with a piece of my own fiction at the
moment. If any of you are old enough to
remember Sliders the main
characters spend the show lost in alternate realities, trying to find their way
back home. That’s what I'm battling
with. I'm re-running a real life event
and I've picked the moment I want to change from my own life and run the rest
of the events as fiction and see what happens.
It’s sort of life fan fiction… but no one has read the story because the
story is my life. I've never done it
before. To be frank, I don’t think I
ever will again.
When I was in my late adolescence, I became consumed with
the concept of “What if?” It was an
obsession. I was studying philosophy at
A-Level and discovered the idea of the Thought Experiment, and I was running
these experiments in my head all the time.
The difference is, I wasn't Sartre attempting to explain the idea of
shame proving the existence of other minds.
I was playing with my own life, wishing for things to be different and
picking a point at which things had gone wrong, and making different choices. I was deeply unhappy – probably depressed
even – in my later teenage years and felt very out of place in my own
life. I turned meddling with my life
into a game. I referred to it as ‘The
What-if? Game’ for a very long time and I was always playing.
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| Image borrowed without permission from http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2013/06/5-tricks-for-overcoming-writers-block-and-artists-block-too/ |
I think it was when I got to university and began to settle
into a lifestyle I liked, found true friends and was enjoying my course that I
began to realise that the life I had was the only one I was going to get. This was before I even studied Sartre; he
would agree with me later in my third year.
I can’t change the things that have happened to me. Nor would I have had the fantastic
experiences I was having then and have had since were it not for certain events
that changed me and made me how I am. I
gave up playing the ‘What-if? Game’ back then and whenever the thought popped
into my head, it was just in passing and I banished it, almost as quickly as it
arrived.
But…
The problem is with fiction and writing it, you’re doing
that over and over again. You play the
‘what if game’ with people’s made-up lives and you make all the decisions. If you don’t like the consequence of the
game, you change it and make the characters play a different one. If you like the conclusion but it doesn't fit,
you rewrite the cause to give the effect.
The problem I have hit upon with this piece is that I have started
playing the age old what if game with my life.
I'm making fiction happen on a keyboard based on life events of my
own. I've change the name. That’s all.
He is me. I can’t even think up
names for the other players in the piece, so at present, they’re all
as-per-the-real-world. That’s a problem
for editing.
Why am I playing this game again? Most specifically, I have been trying to
figure out whilst I've been battling with this piece for over a month is this:
Why am I playing this
game again when it’s so hard to give yourself the alternative you didn't
choose?
I was sat at my keyboard trying
to write an alternative life event for myself – its how I've come to write this
post actually. That was the question I
had in my head as I walked away, annoyed at myself for not just letting me get
through it. I don’t like leaving things
unfinished and I can’t move on to anything else until this project is complete,
but I don’t want to finish it. I had
landed myself in a catch-22 and needed tea.
As I was waiting for the kettle
to boil, I was wondering how exactly I was going to make the alternative play
out. It was difficult to do and make it
convincing to me – if I couldn't convince myself, I wouldn't ever be able to
let anyone else read it. How could
I? I knew they wouldn't believe the
story. No one picks a fiction book to
read the truth but you do expect truth to be there. Readers know when a story doesn't work; when
the actions of the character stray from their motive, when the shark gets
jumped and when the writer has just lost their own plot. The kettle boiled and the answer to the
question of why I was playing the game was answered.
There seems to be a unilateral
consensus amongst the writing and reading community that people should write
what they know. J.K. Rowling knew wizards? George R.R. Martin got lost on his way to
Tesco and landed in the Seven Kingdoms, characters posturing to take the Iron
Throne? Who knew! Of course they didn't. I picked fantasy to be awkward. But what do these stories tell you about,
really? They’re both about family,
friendship, betrayal, darkness in human hearts and what happens when people do
the right and wrong thing. All fiction
is the what-if game.
So, the answer to me of why I am
playing the what-if game with one specific scenario? I want to know what could have happened is
the first answer. The second, if I'm
ever going to write something big, big enough to publish, how can I write a big
enough what-if with people who aren't real, if I can’t even start with myself?
Self-discovery aside, doing it is
another thing, and procrastination is calling my name – the washing machine is
finished and I've just [picks up cup and drains it] finished my tea.
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