Saturday, January 3: Mississippi Mud
A PACK OF LIES
by John M. Floyd
I once heard an aspiring author say, “Since I’m writing fiction, I don’t have to worry as much about logic in my stories.” Her point was, it’s all make-believe anyway, so her plots don’t always have to make sense. Right?
Wrong. Fiction has to be even more believable than nonfiction.
What a Coincidence
In real life, things often happen for no apparent reason. A seemingly-healthy person drops dead, long-lost lovers spot each other in an airport and are reunited, your neck-deep-in-debt neighbor wins the state lottery. In fiction, however, writers have to be careful about that kind of thing. If something too incredible occurs in one of your stories, your readers won’t believe it. (Well, that’s not exactly true. What happens is, your editor won’t believe it, therefore your readers will never get the chance.)
This reminds me of an incident in nearby Jackson, Mississippi, a few years ago. An industrial mowing machine malfunctioned on a golf course and threw its spinning blade a hundred yards through the air and onto an adjoining interstate highway, where it crashed through the car window of a motorist and decapitated her. Anyone reading about that in the paper or seeing it on a TV newscast might spit out his coffee and bug out his eyes — but he would believe it, because it’s real life. It really happened. The thing is, if that had happened in a short story or a novel, let’s say to the villain as he was fleeing the authorities, readers would throw the book or magazine almost as far as that mower blade and would probably never again read anything bearing that author’s byline. Life is indeed stranger than fiction.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
If blatant coincidences happen in your story, or if your characters speak and behave in a way that doesn’t seem reasonable or believable, the reader is likely to feel he’s not being told the truth. And the only time you can get away with that is if the rest of your story is so good that the reader will overlook the lapse.
I can think of a couple of examples: The movie “The African Queen” had one of the most farfetched endings I’ve ever seen, but I loved it — and the conclusion of the horserace in “The Black Stallion” was simply impossible, in light of what had happened at the race’s starting point, but I enjoyed it too. The stories themselves were good enough to override the unbelievable plot events. The point is, if you’re a writer, don’t try this at home. Contrived twists — or any departures from logic — are dangerous, anywhere in the course of the story.
To paraphrase Lawrence Block, fiction is indeed a pack of lies — but they have to be convincing and acceptable.
Credible Incredibility
Sometimes being logical just boils down to making sure that real events in your story happened on the correct dates and that real places are where they’re supposed to be. Authenticity, when it doesn’t stifle the flow of the narrative, is a good thing. But the main thing, again, is that when something happens in your story, give it a good reason to happen.
In Hallie Ephron’s recent article “The Deadly Dozen Mistakes in Mystery Writing” (The Writer, October 2008) she lists the #1 offender as “Coincidence or an act of God.” She says: “If it doesn’t feel plausible to the reader, then it’s not.” As an example, she points out (and you can almost picture her rolling her eyes, here) that writers should avoid things like identical twins separated at birth. Don’t laugh — it’s been done many times.
Smoke and Mirrors
The funny thing about all this is, we as readers want to be fooled. It’s like watching a magic act — we know cards don’t disappear and fluttering white doves don’t appear from nowhere, but we don’t want to think too much about the fact that we know that. We want to be entertained. Sure, it’s make-believe, but during the course of the performance — or the story — we’re willing to forget that. All we ask is that writers treat us with a little respect, and play fairly, and make it easy for us to suspend our disbelief. Don’t be so lazy in either your research or your plotting that the reader feels cheated. (Part of making a storyline believable, of course, is the proper use of foreshadowing, but that’s another subject for another day.)
What, you might ask, ever happened to the writer who thought her fiction didn’t need to be logical? Well, actually, she’s writing nonfiction now.
Believe it or not.
Excellent column, John. A few of things leaped to mind, including the night I arrived in the Jackson bus station at midnight and had to wait until 6 a.m. for one headed to Memphis.
Then there was the story told by Eleanor Sullivan when she was editing both AHMM and EQMM. In one of her rejects a man who had not appeared in the story up to that point rushed into the room in a high-rise where the detectives were gathered, cried, “I did it!” and leaped out the window to his death.
And finally, the long night I spent in a bar trying to get Walter Gibson to discuss the days when he was writing “The Shadow” stories and all he would talk about was the art of being a magician.
Somebody put it this way: The difference between reality and fiction is that God doesn’t have to be believable.
A bizarre coincidence may be a good place to START a story, but is a bad way to climax it. (As the comedians say, you buy the premise, you buy the bit.)
And another rule: you may be able to get away with one coincidence, but not two.
I sold a story a year ago (still waiting for it to come out…sigh) that depends on a huge coincidence. I surround it with a ton of foreshadowing, characterization (it makes sense that X would have done that thing, as unlikely as it was that the chance would occur), and other set-up… but the big stinkin’ coincidence either gets past you or it doesn’t. If/when the story gets published I’ll be interested to see what people think.
Rob — I’ll have to remember your “difference between reality and fiction.” I like that. As for the coincidence in your upcoming story, if you’ve done the foreshadowing and preparation for it maybe the reader won’t see it as a coincidence at all. At any rate, I look forward to seeing the story — Can you reveal where it’ll be published?
And, Dick, I love the one about the guy who confessed and jumped out the window. I can just picture the writer trying and trying and trying to come up with a logical ending, and finally just giving up.