What is Good Fiction?

Jan 18, 2020

6 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

"The world is a book, and those who don't travel read only one page."

-- St. Augustine

When your prose is compelling, your readers become someone else in a different time and place. They leave their living room and enter your book. And not just to visit: they sell everything they own and move in.

As a reader, I want to be taken far away. Not because I hate life, but because reading is so difficult for me, I require an excellent reward for making the effort. This is what attracts me to science fiction. I want to read about something different. If I wanted to experience the anguish and drama of real life, all I'd have to do is go to work in the morning.

My parents don't like science fiction. When I arm-bend them into seeing a sci-fi movie (there's no chance of their reading a sci-fi novel), almost without exception, their first comment to me afterward is, "Where was the story?"

The truth is they reject where the story takes them. But what if a science fiction tale were so overwhelmingly good that even my parents liked it?

I've witnessed my father enjoying exactly one science fiction movie in my lifetime. It was the original adaptation of Planet of the Apes (1968) with Charlton Heston. How could he not like a screenplay written by Rod Serling—who wrote it backward—three times? (Serling finally gave up and fired himself, not realizing the film's producers loved his screenplay.)

Therefore, fiction can achieve the impossible!

Allegory, parable, imagery, or vignette

However you classify it, good fiction casts a spell over the reader. When a hypnotherapist prepares her patient, she turns down the lights, provides soothing music, and puts the patient in a comfortable chair.

The more I learn about writing fiction, the more I realize the art isn't in the story or plot or even the characters. Rather, it is by creating a virtual comfortable chair and quiet room that is free from distraction. This is done by framing a relatable story using clear images and simple sentences.

I challenge you

Pick up any famous novel. Flip through the pages and read any random sentence. You'll find that the writing is clear and simple.

Stop trying to be clever. Imagine you're lying on your deathbed. You have only enough energy to say one sentence to your surviving family. You think in silence and then whisper it to them.

There is your sentence.

Repeat this process thousands of times, and you will create a fine novel.

The challenge along the way is to,

Learn the rules of writing
Gain experience
Develop infinite perseverance
Not let your readers know you're going through all this work

"Wait, what about that last part?" you ask.

I have a friend who tells her friends, "Show me the baby, don't tell me about the pain." Likewise, your readers want to see your results, not your work.

I heard the following sentence from one of my work associates:

It's easy when you're talented.

To me, talent consists of,

Possessing the knowledge of how to write a story.
Telling the story in the most straightforward manner possible.

The problem is we make it more complex by trying to impress. Stop it!

"Show" don't "tell"

"Showing" (reliving; unfolding; demonstrating) a story is better than "telling" (lecturing; announcing) a story.

Years ago, I played the video games called Dishonored and Dishonored 2. They were outstanding games until the last scene when a narrator comes on and literally tells how the story ends! The endings left me feeling hollow because I wasn't allowed to be a participant. The player is not included in the finish but is "told about it via narration." Bethesda Game Studios may make great video games but don't know how to present a story.

Watch the following link which shows opening scene from the movie Game Night (2018), which demonstrates an awful example of "telling." The couple is put off by the cop neighbor before the viewers are given any reason for their rejection of him. It's just "announced" by the couple's behavior. What should have happened is as they drive up, they say to each other, "I hope Gary doesn't find out about tonight. He's a terrible bore, and he's so strange." This way, we can empathize with and feel for the unlucky couple when they find Gary standing there. Instead, it is thrown at us all at once, and we're expected to feel for them as if on automatic command.

Game Night (opening scene)

Additionally, the jokes in the movie are uncomfortably long, but that's a topic for another post.

Four rules

For those of you who want more red-meat advice, I have four rules for you to follow. I promise you haven't heard these before, as evidenced by how rarely I see these rules upheld in print and on the screen. I decided that if I'm to write fiction, I will impose these rules upon myself, so my readers won't have to experience the torment I endure.

The rules are as follows:

Employ no stupid or 2D characters
Respect authority
Employ no coincidences
Use no silly science (if the genre is science fiction)

Conforming to these rules makes writing fiction much more difficult. But, doing so forces richer, more expansive, and original stories.

No stupid or 2D characters

By “no stupid characters,” I mean no irritating 2D place-holder idiots lazily plopped in by the writers to forward the plot. How many stories rely on clichéd villainous governments, corporations, or religions? What does Hollywood have against governments, corporations, and religions?

Most people like "heist" movies, where the good guys are clever robbers. While these stories may be fun, they bother me because they teach that theft is heroic. One movie that made me angry was called, Flawless. It was about a victimized female employee who worked for a jewelry company. She ultimately stole extremely expensive diamonds. At the end of the story, she sold the jewels and used the money to philanthropically help other people. The movie made her out to be a generous, giving, heartfelt heroine. The problem is, she was generous with someone else's money! It was not her money to give.

Had she been a genuine, heartfelt character, she would have given the jewels back to the company but not before revealing to the world how poorly the company secured its assets and how badly it treated its employees. The management of the jewelry company would then replaced.

Speaking of jerks, I don't enjoy stories whose main character is a jerk. Yes, there are villains we love to hate (Darth Vader), but they are not typically the main character. I have no interest in seeing the musical Sweeney Todd because the main characters are cannibalistic serial killers. I have the same problem with the musical Wicked, which idolizes the green witch, which incidentally in the musical never does anything wicked. Just how confused was the author of that story?

Respect for authority

Why not make the situation in the story the villain instead of the authority?

Examples:

Susie can suddenly no longer speak. No one knows why.
Dad gets in a car crash, and he feels so badly he can no longer function.
Problems arise from the neighborhood kids finding a large stash of cocaine hidden in a tree.

Let the situation dominate rather than the clichéd bad cop or evil priest.

Instead of making authority the problem, how about letting the criminals be the problem? I realize there are criminals in positions of authority. But does every story have to feature an evil government, corporation, or religion? Can there be any variety?

No coincidences

Next are the amazing deus ex machina plot surprises that, through incredible luck, just happen to get the hero out of trouble. Like the incantation mumbled by a sidekick mage, a phrase never revealed prior to that moment. How convenient for the author. Poor readers.

Instead, have the incantation introduced in advance but make the characters afraid to use it because it allegedly produces green warts. Then, finally, at the moment of greatest danger, one of the characters steps up and mouths the magical words. This way, a shallow fix isn’t sprung upon the readers that causes their deeply invested, empathetic feelings to be tossed away. All because the author was too lazy to write better.

No silly science

Finally, as far as science fiction goes, the author must create a story that is either compatible with current science or one that involves a yet-unknown area of science, thus maintaining literary plausibility. Otherwise, the story becomes fantasy. See this post.