What's your power source?

[What powers your fiction? Source]

I've been blogging about how to make any piece of writing more literary or meaningful. There are different kinds of power in fiction. If the power that runs your fictional universe, the power that makes your characters able to do what they do, is technology-based, you likely have a variant of science fiction (hard or soft sci-fi, steampunk, etc).  If magic, even simple magic like magical realism, runs your world, you have something like unto fantasy.  If there's a combination, it may be fantasy sci-fi, which could include superheroes.  But regardless of what shapes the power in your world, your actual story must have some kind of actual human drives, actual social power, or your story will fall flat and have little meaning.

[Literary Greats-source]

Most authors know that the source of power that drives your fictional world dictates the genre, but if that's all the power your story features, your story will be forgettable, sometimes unreadable.  It's easy to see that love and other social impulses drive romance and women's fiction.  Social pressures and social commentary drive most literary fiction.  Think of everything from Shakespeare to Bronte to Austen to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird to modern fiction. One can have long and extensive discussions about what social pressures, character drives, meanings, and literary devices affect the characters and the narrative.  

[fantasy-source]

However, genre fiction often gets a bad reputation because it will many times lack anything deeper than a story about a mage with a wand, a knight fighting a dragon, a super fighting a monster, or something like that. If it's all plot and no depth, what is the point in telling that story?  Even if you come up with clever and unique conceits and twists, how will it impact the reader or the world? 

[The Tempest-source]

This doesn't have to be.  Think of Shakespeare's Tempest.  The main character was a mage whose assistants could be classed as a fairy and an inhuman creature.  The tempest in the title is the result of his magic.  Centuries of people have debated the deeper meanings and symbolism of this play.  Most if not all of modern fantasy novels can trace their roots to the popular and literary Lord of the Rings series.  Many social messages can easily be interpreted from children's fantasy like Peter Pan and Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile, generations have seen the depth and symbolism of science fiction or proto-sci-fi like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the works of H.G. Wells, as well as the works of George Orwell, among others.  

Genre fiction can be just as meaningful, just as symbolic, and just as life-changing as any other genre if we think of it as being driven by the heart and the mind instead of magic or technology or even just some cliched plot. What drives your story? Why do you write it?  What meaning can you bring out through the power of your words? Read the greats and see how they do it. 

Empowering the Normal World

 

[Keep the reader in mind as you craft your normal world; source]

I've been blogging about how to make any piece of writing more literary.  The novice writer will just throw in a bunch of details about the character's life just to show what it's like.  I've read too many stories like that, and I wanted to put them down before I even got to the heart of the story. If you're writing a first draft, it's all good.  But with a later draft, it won't work at all.  Unless each detail is chosen with care and meaning, unnecessary moments and descriptions of the character's mundane life will bore (and lose) the reader.  

[Beginning with the normal world; source]

If you're writing using the hero's journey or anything akin to it, the character(s) generally start in the normal world. You'll want to show how life is for this character, which will likely include mundane moments or descriptions.  But if you're going to do so, you'll want each detail, each moment, to mean something later. Everything in a book should build on character, plot, or setting. As you craft either a mundane scene in the beginning or somewhere else, it has to serve one of those purposes.  Think of each feature of that normal world as a possible way to foreshadow or in some way build up toward something later.  

[Wonderland-source]

A lot of literature starts in a mundane world that can only be appreciated in retrospect after you've read (or at least dug into) the book.  Dorothy starts out displeased with Kansas, frustrated and bored, but then it becomes all she longs for when she's launched into her colorful adventures in Oz. Alice only sees the charm in her mundane life in contrast to the uncontrollable wackiness of Wonderland.  We wouldn't understand either character if we didn't see the world from which they came.  

[Into the story-source]

There can be individual figures or events in the normal world that later take on greater significance. Think of Charlotte Bronte's classic novel with Jane Eyre's early friendship with Helen Burns.  That name, that character, gives the protagonist hope for humanity and love as she's the child's first friend, but also is part of her crucible of fire through her death of a fever.  She then foreshadows later literal burning in the story, a burning of a bed and of the whole home.  What seems like a mundane character foreshadows the entire story.  Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo starts with the protagonist in possession of a most marvelous mundane life, with his successes being rewarded by wealth, a fiancee, titles, etc.  This life suddenly becomes more significant as each is torn from him by plotting rivals.  Then, they become the core of his revenge plot.  He'd just seem angry and mean-spirited if we didn't see the world from which he was torn.  The normal world is at the foundation of the whole story. 

[Pack your suitcase for the journey-source]

The key is to make sure you don't bore your reader with that mundane world before they can get to Oz, Wonderland, Thornfield Hall, or wherever the drama is in your book.  If you're writing a children's book, the normal world should give way to the underworld, in whatever form it takes, as quickly as possible, preferably within a page for very short kids' fiction or a chapter if it's a little longer.  Even if your reader does have a longer attention span, the normal world should not take up more space than is absolutely necessary and should include as much meaning for later as possible. Think of it as a very small suitcase you're packing for the journey. Does the mundane world foreshadow or set up for some character or plot development?  Does some daily item later show up as a symbol or an emotional or plot trigger?  Is it a rifle on the wall, an item or character, which will later turn up and become critical to the story?  Can it be?