Writing Popular Fiction Page 6
"You're afraid of heights. Naoli aren't supposed to be afraid of anything. Do you know that? Naoli are vicious fighters, hard, ruthless opponents. Nowhere does it say they are permitted to fear anything."
"Well…" Hulann said weakly.
"We're almost there," Leo said. "Just steel yourself for another minute or two, and it'll all be over."
Because he has irrational fears, the alien becomes that much more of a believable character, amusing and sympathetic.
Appearance, habits, gestures, expressions, sexual and non-sexual value judgments, actions and reactions to plot incidents in accordance with his other-worldly origins all serve to make a non-human character real. You must further explore his eating habits, manner of dress, social customs, forms of entertainment, religion, government, philosophy and a hundred and one other facets of his unusual daily life.
Then, when you have created a believable extra-terrestrial race, you must be certain that the various aliens in your story-if more than one appears-are as unlike each other, personally, as one human being is from his neighbor. Certainly, they will all share attitudes and reactions. But just as certainly, their personalities and opinions will differ wildly from one alien to another-unless, of course, you have postulated a race of ants with a group mind and single social goal.
Remember, too, that not all members of an off-Earth race will be soldiers, bakers, or candlestick makers. Each will have a different career and will have his worldview colored by his talents. One present-day science fiction writer continually portrays alien races-in a consistent future history he has been writing in a number of stories and novels-as each being interested in one pursuit: the building of spaceships, the making of war, and so forth. His fiction lacks credibility because of this simplistic touch, this lack of individuality among separate members of the same alien group, and he is the only major writer in the field who gets away with that inadequacy.
As with science fiction, fantasy has improved in recent years, both in the substance of its themes and the depth of its characterization, though it remains less relevant to the real world, on the whole, than science fiction. This lack of relevancy is an unavoidable part of the form, by its very definition: a literature dealing with magic and/or the supernatural, without the scientific rationale for its "wonders" that science fiction must contain. Because it lacks a reasonable, scientific explanation, fantasy is divorced from reality and requires more "faith" on the part of its readership, a greater willingness to suspend disbelief. The moment you begin to explain how a werewolf could exist, how a disease can cause lycanthropy (as in Leslie Whitten's Moon of the Wolf), how a man might become mentally disturbed enough to actually live as a vampire (Whitten's Progeny of the Adder), you are writing science fiction or, possibly, psychological suspense. Fantasy generally lacks these levels of meaning and exists as pure escapist literature-a function it fills admirably well.
The similarities between science fiction and fantasy are so obvious that many writers have a difficult time understanding they are not the same category of fiction. Both kinds of stories are usually set in times and places alien to ours. Both are filled with fantastic incident and bizarre problems for the hero to overcome. Both forms often employ non-human characters. Yet science fiction and fantasy are different, are bought and published and read under different labels.
Except in especially unique stories, fantasy does not deal with extra-terrestrial creatures, time machines, strange new inventions, or space travel. It employs, instead, many sorts of superstitions: ghosts (Richard Matheson's Hell House), vampires (Bram Stoker's Dracula), werewolves (Guy Endore's Werewolf of Paris), demons (James Blish's Black Easter and Day After Judgment), banshees, witches (Keith Roberts' Anita, Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife), sorcerers (David Mason's The Sorcerer's Skull), elves, leprechauns, dwarves, fairies, inexplicably sentient beasts and other mythological beings, charms, incantations, chants, spells, curses, and devils, all of which exist without rational explanation. Usually fantasy is set in its own richly detailed world with no overt comparisons to our place and time (which would destroy the reader's suspension of disbelief in such delicately wrought tales; except in some Dark Fantasy-which we will soon discuss-the reader should be made to forget his own world and settle thoroughly into the fantastic one). The author usually makes no attempt to explain how this other world came into existence or where it is in space/time. The fantasy may also be set at the dawn of time on Earth, in that period of pre-history when, some say, great cities-influenced by the laws of magic rather than by the laws of science-flourished. If set in the far future, a fantasy must not provide scientific explanations for its miracles; for example, if the hero's magical abilities are hinted to be extra-sensory perceptions which have evolved in human kind since our own day, the story becomes science fiction and not fantasy.
In short, fantasy is mystic. It is shrouded in mystery and a psychic sense of "other lives, other places" which require in the reader a special faith in magic and the supernatural for him to be fully snared-while science fiction is predicated on our present-day knowledge of the universe and upon what we rationally expect to discover in the future.
This does not mean, however, that fantasy may be illogical. Once the oddities of the imagined world are given, all events must flow from the background conditions within the world. A hero may not escape from a dungeon simply by "magically" snapping his fingers, unless you have prepared the reader for this development from the outset by establishing that the hero has such a power. (And if you do make a hero's lot this easy, you destroy any suspense you might otherwise be able to build; if he is all-powerful, the hero generates no sympathy or concern from the reader.) Nor may you postulate a land in which the citizens have all sorts of magic powers-and then fail to postulate a set of controls and balances that would insure social order among these men who could circumvent most laws. For example, if everyone could perform feats of magic, would the police use magic too, instead of guns and handcuffs; a stronger magic than criminals might possess? Because of this need to order the basically unorderable, to reason with the unreasonable, many writers find fantasy far more demanding than science fiction.
Like science fiction, fantasy can be broken into sub-types. Unlike science fiction, characterization differs from form to form, as do, in some cases, the motivations. Let's look at the four sub-types of the fantasy story and their individual characteristics.
DARK FANTASY
The foremost writer of dark fantasy in this century is H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), whose stories remain in print (even though some were written as much as fifty years ago) and enjoy regular, cyclic bursts of extraordinary popularity. With stories like "Pickman's Model," which deals with a painter who fashions portraits of monsters that, the narrator learns, are not imaginary, as they first seemed, "The Rats in the Walls."
"The Dunwich Horror," and dozens of others (The Dunwich Horror and The Colour Out of Space are two excellent paperback collections from Lancer Books), Lovecraft created the ghastliest, most horrifying non-humans ever to shamble across the pages of fantastic literature-not the plastic fright-wig monsters of cheap scare movies, but believable and sinister creatures that can frighten an adult as easily as a child. Because of Lovecraft and other fantasy masters before and of his time-August Derleth for his many stories, Bram Stoker for his immensely powerful Dracula and other weird tales-the conditions of the dark fantasy have been established, providing certain things the readers expect. To be successful at this sub-type, one must be familiar with these early masters and with the perimeters they established.
First of all, dark fantasy-unlike all other fantasies-most often takes place against a normal contemporary or recognizable historical setting. Though it could be placed in pre-history, in the far future of Earth, or in another imaginary world altogether, it seems to work best if its supernatural elements can be put in contrast with an otherwise common background.
For example, William Peter Blatty's enormously popular The Exorcist, which is the s
tory of the demonic possession of a pre-teen girl, is set in the present-day environs of Washington, D.C. Its cast of characters is typically American: a moderately popular movie actress, her director, her servants, her child, a clever police detective, a priest troubled by doubts of his calling and his religion, a lady occultist, and assorted minor characters. The day-to-day lives of the characters are full of problems we've all known and can identify with: busy work schedules, concern over a dying mother, and grief at the loss of friends. The only things at all out of the ordinary are the wild, careening changes in the child as she is in stages possessed by a demon, her fits of physical, emotional, sexual rage. Because all else is ordinary, the girl's condition is as moving, terrifying, and fascinating as it could possibly be for the reader.
Likewise, in Ira Levin's best-selling Rosemary's Baby, the fantastic element is the only "impossibility" in the story. The hero and heroine are a nice New York couple, with a bright future, newly married. When they move into an enormous old brownstone apartment house, the husband's career seems to move less quickly than it once did. In frustration, and unknown to his wife Rosemary, the husband makes a deal with an older couple in the same building, an older couple who are Satanists: for his own success, he will allow Satan to have a son by Rosemary. By the end of the book, this comes to pass, and the anti-Christ has arrived. This fantastic plot is developed in such a levelheaded manner, with so many references to "normal" life-Rosemary's morning sickness, going to an obstetrician, buying playpens and baby toys-that the impact of the fantasy element is optimal.
In a fantasy world of miracles and magic, one cannot really fear the villain, because of the hero's superhuman powers. The reader knows the protagonist can handle anything, meet any danger, and that he doesn't deserve much concern. When the setting is work-a-day, however, the hero plainly mortal, the terror blooms and is genuine, for the hero might die, be maimed, tortured, go mad, or lose his soul.
Indeed, a second requirement of dark fantasy is that at least one and perhaps all of these gruesome possibilities do transpire. Since the theme of dark fantasy, stated or implied, is "there are things in this life men were not meant to know," and since the hero often pokes deeper and deeper into a curious circumstance in order to learn what's behind it, it follows that more of these tales must end pessimistically than optimistically. In fact, if your protagonist is destined to die, the circumstances of his passing should be as hideous as you can make them, in order to reinforce the theme and provide the reader with the thrill of horror he is seeking. For instance, one of your characters might die by crashing through a window, wrestling with the insubstantial form of Satan, falling to the street below where he ends up with his head twisted clear around on his shoulders, so it's staring behind him (Blatty's The Exorcist).
This presents a major problem for the writer: whether to show the hero's final disaster on or off stage. If, being cornered by the foul-breathed and grave-rank vampire, the hero must clearly die, should the bloody bite and bloodsucking be viewed by the reader in gory detail, or subtly suggested? The answer: subtly suggested, more often than not. Having spent pages to build the reader into a frenzy of suspense-and dark fantasy relies on anticipation of the encounter between hero and villain, rather than the actual physical encounter itself-it is nearly always impossible to make the climactic confrontation between good and evil as terrifying as the reader, himself, has imagined it. The understatement, here, is more valuable than anywhere else in category fiction.
It is less effective to write:
And then there was no more room to run. The great banquet hall lay behind the vampire, the double doors back there where Roger could not get to them without first running the fanged gauntlet. He had but a corner, a cubby of cold stone, with no weapon, no hope. The Count approached, grinning, his two longest teeth protruding over his lips, his eyes aflame, both hands raised with his cloak flowing out around him like a piece of the darkest night. As he touched Roger, Roger seemed terrorized into immobility by those white, icy fingers. Then, the Count pushed the man's head to the side and went quickly for the jugular, his razored teeth slashing flesh, drawing blood which ceased to flow as his hollowed fangs sucked it down. The sound of this inhuman feast-obscenely loud, slobbering-was the only sound in the banquet hall-other than the feeble, guttural whimpers Roger managed to give out with.
than it is to write:
And then there was no more room to run. The great banquet hall lay behind the vampire, the double doors back there where Roger could not get to them without first running the fanged gauntlet. He had but a corner now, a cubby of cold stone, with no weapon, no hope. Mesmerized by the Count's inhuman stare, his bloodshot eyes, Roger thought he should lower his gaze, should look out for those wicked teeth. But he could not. He couldn't look at them until it was too late, until they glistened with his own blood.
When selecting a non-human creature that will serve as the antagonist within your story-be it vampire, werewolf, ancient god, demon, ghost, ghoul, or monster of your own creation-you must apply the same conscientious thought to him as you would to a human character. Furthermore, if your beast is not of your own manufacture, you should research its history as well as you can. This will not prove easy, but there are two ways you can learn the mythos of, say, the vampire. First, you can haunt a couple of libraries, perusing as many books on the occult and the history of myths as you can find. Second, and far easier, you can read other novels which concern vampires. For example, once you have read Stoker's Dracula you will know that vampires avoid sunlight because it can kill them, are otherwise immortal unless a wooden stake is driven through their hearts, are repelled by crucifixes, have a great revulsion to garlic and wild onion, and hundreds of other details.
Last of all, in dark fantasy (as against other fantasy), even if your hero does not perish, even if the supernatural creature is destroyed, a mood of still-existent evil must fill the last scene, a sense of undying forces waiting for their next chance to do evil. In this manner, a reader is left satisfied with the solution of the immediate story but aware that an ultimate victory has not been won. Readers of dark fantasy enjoy this lingering uneasiness, as is evidenced by The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. In the first, though the child is no longer possessed in the end, the ultimate war against Hell is yet to be waged. In the second, though Rosemary's terror is abated after the baby's birth and after she accepts her role as the anti-Madonna, the evil is very, very much alive.
Considering the consequences of the dark fantasy story-a horrible death for someone and maybe for the hero himself; confrontation with pure evil; lingering evil in the end, so that no one triumphs completely-you might wonder what would motivate a character to become involved with this sort of thing in the first place. I believe you can use all the motivations mentioned in Chapter One, except Duty, to involve the hero in occult or religious experimentation to get your plot moving: He loves a particular woman and wants to enchant her so she'll love him, and he thereby gets mixed up with the Dark Powers; or he wants to become rich and seeks Satanic help towards this end; he seeks a more horrible revenge on an enemy than society could ever take; his own world is not as he wants it, and either to preserve his emotional-mental state or to preserve his physical state, he deals with the Dark Powers; or he is simply curious, without realizing the dangers involved in consorting with demons (as in James Blish's Black Easter), And, of course, as in The Exorcist or Dracula, he may find himself the victim of supernatural beings, without generating the situation himself.
As for characterizing your supernatural villain, just remember that he must be deeply evil, that his every goal should be connected with death or pain or eternal damnation. He is motivated, always, by a supernatural drive, a lust for blood or death, that a man could never quite understand. He may, at times, rue his own fate-he may, on rare occasion, have a fleeting thought that he is trapped in a hellish role-but he can never disavow that role.
SWORD AND SORCERY
The plot of a sword and sor
cery novel invariably concerns a quest-at the order of the queen, king, sorcerer, or some-such-for jewels, wealth, magic totems, sacred relics, magic texts, a charmed locket or mystical artifact, or for a lovely and nubile girl kidnapped by evil, barbarian people. Subsequently, the hero engages in a long journey and/or chase, searching for the missing quantity, encountering beasts and magics that try to stop him. He usually finds what he wants. The form takes its name from the action of the story, which is nearly always generated by the clash between swords and sorcery-the hero preferring the more human weapon in his battle against inhuman forces that have magical powers.
Like Lovecraft's work, sword and sorcery novels are always being reprinted-primarily in paperback-and enjoy a cyclical popularity boom that can widen the market considerably for several years at a time before the readership is satiated. Robert E. Howard's books about Conan the Barbarian-a muscular soldier of fortune, barbarian king, saviour of virgins, slayer of dragons, antagonist of sorcerers, and all-around superman-enjoyed enormous popularity beginning in the middle 1960's (Conan, Conan of Cimmeria, Conan the Freebooter, Conan the Wanderer, Conan the Adventurer, and so on). Michael Moorcock's novels about Elric, another swordsman, and Fritz Leiber's excellent series about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have also won steady patronage from a large number of readers.
The end-all and be-all of sword and sorcery is action. The delicious anticipation of horror in the dark fantasy is sacrificed for one explosive fight and chase sequence piled atop another. Whereas, in science fiction, the background is the most important element, the pace is the most vital thing about this sub-type of fantasy; it should be breakneck.
Unfortunately, the bulk of sword and sorcery fiction is distinctly inferior, regardless of its color and verve. This is true, primarily, because too many writers forget that plot complications must be generated by a character's actions and not by one whim of Fate after another. Desperate to accelerate the pace, writers construct series of obstacles which they then propel the hero through, never realizing that the lack of cause and effect in the plotting eventually leads to boredom.