From deep inside the world of fiction writing, I see classic elements of screenplays and novels playing out in our public life.
Every day brings disruptive incidents to start new plots. We face increasingly large obstacles with higher and higher risks and cascading disasters. Conflict erupts everywhere, and point-of-view characters (each of us) keep going through round after round of profound inner changes, adapting to the changes around us. Settings themselves are characters (fires, floods, storms, viruses, extreme heat or cold): they interact with us, going through changes themselves.
This sense of unreality is heightened by AI and algorithmic webs woven through everything, fractionating our perceptions. In witnessing this happening in the “real” world, I’ve noticed that this unsettled and unsettling state of affairs seems like the atmosphere of “speculative fiction.” ‘Speculative’ is a fluid concept here, sometimes meant as the merging of genres: science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, magic realism, and even horror – much like watching the daily news. In fiction, the author’s aim is to guide the reader toward an emotionally and intellectually satisfying resolution of the chosen story within the wild complexity of characters and their circumstances; so it occurred to me that literary techniques to organize the chaos and perceive a path forward may also be worthwhile for what we call “real” life.
Themes and Inner Arcs
This path forward may be a classic solo hero’s journey at the inmost personal level of transformation – the call to adventure, overcoming of obstacles, returning with literal or figurative treasure. But In the surface story, both personal and public, with more characters and issues involved, theme can provide a singular coherence: Themes undergird the meanings, the values, the why, that hold the story together and move it intentionally. For all of us living in an increasingly unfamiliar world, it can be personally grounding to discern our own conscious and unconscious themes for living, which influence our worldviews – with the added benefit of offering deeper insight into themes guiding other people.
In a chaotic shift, the art of concocting an arc, a path, serves best when our chosen direction includes all the layers of our impulses and wishes – from the ideas we choose, through the feelings we have, and all the way inward to our nervous systems, all of which evolve to respond to novelty and especially threat, then to morph – instantly or over time – for an effective response to the environment. We’ve been shoved into a dangerous new world, unevenly equipped, and we need to find ways of transforming, knowing we’ll never return to the way things were.
Settings and Outer Plots
Techniques of the speculative genre can create new worlds – on the page and in the flesh – known in creative writing as “world building.” Focusing on the desired qualities of a future setting (as in Biomimicry mentioned in the closing paragraphs here) might also light up ideas for story plots, metaphors, new and adaptive technologies, and characters. What do the obstacles look like? What needs to happen for the vision to unfold? What are the best choices to move the story ahead? Who is best suited to lead, and what are the most beneficial ways to follow?
Characters
This is where creating multiple point-of-view characters (POVCs) can help – especially when reactions to our situation keep alternating between hope and despair, fear and apathy, anger and compassion. These reactions can be embodied in POVCs, each of whom writes narrative in distinctive ways through language and action. The author who fully inhabits each one in turn, jumping into characters’ emotional and mental lives, can have a mind-expanding, intensely felt sense of what it’s like to be that person (good for writing fiction and for living social life). For instance, I physically feel an energetic shift when I gaze at a frightening new event through the imaginal eyes of a ferocious grandmother moving mountains to protect her offspring. I feel a different shift when I look through the eyes of a POVC who’s a “doomer,” collapsed into hopelessness in the tide of scary news. A more complex character might vacillate between the two ways of being. There are many more POVCs in our current world to choose from, to understand fully, to express.
Current Context for Life and Art, the Ground of Meaning
Our global drama reflects years of accelerating catastrophes. They’ve been predicted and portrayed in public and literary life for decades, and now even the mainstream is starting to focus on the potential of speculative fiction as a helpful response. For example, I received a link to a book-publishing blog post titled “Can Science Fiction Writing Change the Future?”, and Smithsonian Magazine published an article: “Can Climate Fiction Writers Reach People in Ways That Scientists Can’t?” So this subgenre community is growing beyond its original speculative niche, freeing up imaginations in traditionally “normal” venues.
New stories, new narratives, are possible, in inner worlds and the worlds we see, which for me are in full communion. I still believe there are patterns we can discover and adapt for good purpose, for ourselves and others. Since much of our current existential threat is about imbalances in our relationship with aspects of Nature other than ourselves, I’ll close with a link to an inspiring note and chart from the Biomimicry Institute: “An Introduction to Life’s Principles.” Emerging from each Principle, each theme, I can already see dozens of plot ideas and relevant characters. Some of them are already playing out in “real” life.
Maybe a reader here will be similarly inspired.
Photo credit: Bruno Sersocima via freeimages.com