Writing Popular Fiction, Page 2

  Self-discovery. This is an acceptable motivation for a category hero, though the writer must not get bogged down in long paragraphs of character analysis and lose the storyline in the process. The hero should only uncover truths about himself through his reaction to plot developments, not through any long, detailed soul-searching.

  Duty. In Shakespeare's day, duty was a valid motive for a writer's characters but is now dated. The masses no longer blindly give their loyalty to king and state. It is not sufficient, for example, to establish that your detective or secret agent is investigating the case because it is his job. The reader finds little empathy or escape in the exploits of a man just doing his job. Your protagonist must have a reason for his actions aside from the fact he's paid for them. Why is he a spy or detective? What is there about him that makes him want to do these things, what need is satisfied? Therein lies your real motivation.

  Revenge. This was also a Shakespearean tool-Hamlet was motivated by revenge-but is also dated. In Shakespeare's time, it was often necessary that a family revenge the murder of one of its own because little organized authority existed to handle such things. A novel set in the last sixty years, however, will deal with a social background in which society's revenge has replaced the family's revenge. Most people are content to allow established police and judicial systems to take care of their own revenge. If this is your motivation for a present-day hero, he must be one of three things: (1) mentally or emotionally unstable and blinded to rational procedure, (2) seeking revenge for some matter that does not fall under the jurisdiction of elected authority, (3) a member of a racial or occupational or religious minority who cannot expect justice at the hands of the regular officials. Aside from the Western (set temporally and geographically in a place where law and order were not reliable) or historical novel, revenge must be used only as a prop to more acceptable motives.

  Of course, in almost every story, a combination of two or more of these motivations is necessary to produce a well-rounded hero and a well-rounded villain. In a Gothic, for example, the heroine is likely to be motivated by curiosity, love, and self-preservation, as in A Darker Heritage by Gerda Ann Cerra or Shadow of the Lynx, the best-selling Gothic by Victoria Holt, or in Anne McCaffrey's excellent The Mark of Merlin.

  Thus far, we've listed the kinds of motivation you have to choose from, but how do you decide which motivations best fit your characters and story? There is only one rule of thumb: no character should be motivated by something which is at odds with his basic personality. For example, your hero, if he were to be admirable, could hardly be motivated by an insatiable greed for power and wealth. And your antagonist, if he is to be a fearsome character, should not be motivated by great, enduring love for the heroine.

  Okay. A strong plot, hero, and believable motivation have been covered; only two more qualities are essential to the success of the category novel.

  FOUR: A GREAT DEAL OF ACTION

  A strong plot consists of a story that is reinforced by the plot skeleton we mentioned earlier; that simple, linear formula. But a strong plot can seem weak and bland without action: movement from place to place, confrontations between characters, personal confrontations between a character and himself. The reader wants to be kept in perpetual anticipation. The hero and heroine must constantly be engaged in conquering some barrier that grows logically from their own actions in trying to solve their major predicament. Action can come in the form of the fist fight or gun battle-or as suspense, the psychological game-playing which leads to the fight. Suspense is usually more desirable than the fight itself, because the anticipation of the fight is always more nerve-wracking than the actual confrontation.

  FIVE: A COLORFUL BACKGROUND

  Not every suspense novel must take place in Jamaica, Istanbul, or Singapore. One of my own, Blood Risk (under the pseudonym Brian Coffey), is set in Pittsburgh and the surrounding countryside, certainly a mundane place. No matter where the story is set, the writer should create gritty background, a stage on which hotels, houses, streets, and people are uniquely painted. This is part of the escape a category novel provides and is as important to the suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader as is an intriguing plot or solid characterization.

  In short, what distinguishes category fiction from mainstream fiction is its use of all five of the elements named above-a strong plot, a hero or heroine, clear and believable motivation, plenty of action, and a colorful background. With this in mind, let's look at the seven major genres and see how they are similar-beyond these five rules-and how they differ. When you have learned to write well in one category, you will be able to write well in others.

  CHAPTER TWO Science Fiction and Fantasy

  Rayguns, helpless maidens stranded on alien planets, bug-eyed monsters, invasions of the Earth by wicked creatures, arch-fiends bent on the destruction of the race, super heroes-if you believe this is what science fiction is about, you either stopped reading it circa 1930, or have formed your opinion from motion pictures and television programs. The science fiction stories of the 1930's and 1940's were often ludicrous, but they have long ago given way to the same sophistication of theme, background, characters, and style found in other genres. The film medium has rarely done justice to the field-notable exceptions being 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Village of the Damned, and THX-1138. Before trying to write science fiction, read it (a truism applicable to each category of fiction, because each has its special requirements). When you read the work of Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Arthur Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein, Barry Malzberg, Samuel R. Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, and Roger Zelazny, you'll discover that the rayguns have been packed in mothballs; the helpless maidens have taken to women's liberation; the heroes, once flawless, are now quite human.

  Of the five required elements of genre fiction, perhaps background is the most important in science fiction novels.

  Since most science fiction takes place in the future, the background must be wholly of the writer's imagination. The future can be researched to only a limited extent (even the most well-informed scientists can only conjecture what it will hold). The writer's vision must be detailed and believable, or the reader will ultimately not believe anything-not the characters, motivations, or the plot. This intense detailed creation is a challenge, but a fascinating one for the writer willing to invest more of his mind and soul than he would have to in the average Gothic or Western.

  THE NEAR FUTURE

  Structuring a story background of the near future-twenty, thirty, or forty years from now-is in some ways more difficult than creating an entire alien planet in some impossibly distant future, because it cannot be made up wholly of the imagination. You must research to discover what engineers and scientists project for each area of living. From this data, you must then extrapolate a possible future, one which might logically rise out of the basis for the future which we are building today.

  This doesn't mean that every science fiction novel set thirty years from today must be placed against the same background. The future, even extrapolating it from today's conditions, may go a million different ways.

  For instance, a writer may set two different stories in the same future period, though he builds utterly different backgrounds for them. In The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, the authors project a future within this century, a society in which high-pressure advertising agencies have gained terrible influence over the minds of the masses and have become, in effect, rulers of the world. The same authors, in Gladiators-at-Law, intricately develop another near future in which big business has grown so large it's begun to collapse from within, society collapsing with it. Each future is believable; each could come to pass.

  The trick lies in how well you detail your future. If you paint it in broad strokes, no one will accept it, including an editor. When considering the background for any science fiction novel, be sure to give careful thought to each of the following:

  Moral co
des of the future. Assume that morality will change, and that it will change radically. Don't assume your own morality will inevitably dominate the future or that present-day morality will continue to be accepted. Remember that, in the early 1950s, no one would have believed that "free love" and "group marriage" would become commonplace two decades later. Though morality will most likely continue to be liberalized, even this is not a certainty. The future has infinite possibilities. All you can be certain of is that it will be different from today. A few moral questions for you to consider in the context of your future society: Will marriage exist as an institution? Will pre-marital sex and adultery be frowned upon or not? Will murder still be considered immoral? Will murder, in the service of your country, still be considered moral?

  Domestic politics. Will there still only be two major political parties in the United States, and will they still be Republican and Democratic? Will the U.S. still be a democracy? What effects will data banks on private citizens (being put together even today) have on the conduct of politics? Will the war still be an issue? Another war? The space program? Will poverty be a political issue?

  World politics. Will the U.S. still exist? Will Russia or China? What new power will have arisen as a major agent in world affairs-Brazil, perhaps, or Israel? If your novel is set on an alien world, what is the nature of galactic politics and diplomacy?

  Religion. Will the U.S. remain predominately Christian? Set aside your own religious views and extrapolate honestly. Will religion play an even more important role in politics, accumulating even more establishment power? Or will the boom of scientific discovery eventually be the death of belief in supernatural beings? What new religions might arise?

  Day-to-day life. This is the most important area of background detail in the future you are constructing, for it is the one which will be constantly in the reader's eye. Morality will play an important part; politics may be mentioned marginally in your story; religion may figure only vaguely in your tale; the international situation may influence only a few paragraphs in your book; but day-to-day life in the future will be visible in every scene. Will the population explosion do away with private dwellings (as it presently appears it will have to), thereby forcing everyone to live in space-conserving high-rise apartments? Will people eat the same foods or be forced to consume flavored algae because of vast food shortages? Will automobiles exist, or will they have been replaced with other transportation systems? How will people dress? Over the last century, as man has gained control of his environment, he has had less need for the protection of clothing. Will nudity then be casual in the future? Will books exist, or will they be replaced by mechanical devices? Will children go to public schools or be taught at home by television and robots? Will marriage exist? Will the pollution problem have been solved, or will people wear gas masks on the street and salve their skin to ward off deterioration caused by a caustic atmosphere?

  Will marijuana be legal? How will food be prepared, perhaps without human contact? Will cancer have been cured? Will madness have been cured? Will we have settled on the moon? On Mars? Beyond?

  The questions go on and on, and you must have answers to them; you must know your future so well that, if a friend quizzed you about it, you could answer him with the same alacrity you'd answer questions about the real world, the world of today.

  As a potential writer of science fiction, you would be well-advised to read Dune by Frank Herbert, a science fiction classic set in the far future that has sold more than a million copies and which contains one of the most detailed futures imaginable. Likewise, Robert Heinlein's million-copy classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, a book which details a near future so well that few authors have ever approached its catalogue of extrapolative minutiae, is well worth your perusal.

  You should understand that not every novel in this genre requires such a wealth of background in the finished draft-but you should have your future so well thought out that you can apply detailed background in any scene that demands it. Some writers keep elaborate notebooks full of background data for the future they're drawing, and Robert Heinlein has even gone so far as to plot a Chart of Future History, outlining major events over several hundred years and slotting his stories into this future. I find that careful thought, before beginning the first page, plus a few notes is all that I need. I don't keep notebooks or charts, but hold the entire scheme in my head, to keep it more flexible than it would be if I wrote it out on paper. Each author, through trial and error, must find out which method best suits his temperament.

  A warning: When considering all of the researched and extrapolated elements of your near future, be sure that they mesh into a coherent whole. For example, if you extrapolate a future U.S. run by a right-wing military junta, democracy abolished, do not also portray a society where the arts flourish. These two elements-dictatorship and artistic energy-have never co-existed in one country at the same time, and seem unlikely to in the future. Do not portray a future where the Christian Church governs the world and sexual liberty is encouraged; the church would have to change drastically for this to be believable. In short, a society works only when the majority of its parts are compatible and when few if any of its parts are downright hostile to the majority's philosophy.

  THE FAR FUTURE

  When the story is set centuries from today, on this or another world, you have a greater imaginative freedom and correspondingly less research to do. No one can know what life will be like in 4000 A.D., nor how it might be structured on an alien world. No amount of research into the sciences can prepare the writer for accurate prediction when such spans of time are involved. The only rule, for far future stories, is this: your future must be consistent in its detail (not such a different rule than the last one we talked about in discussing near-future backgrounds).

  For example, don't build a future in which mankind has made robots as able and intelligent as human beings-and then have your hero and other humans tending mundane, daily jobs. In that sort of future, unless a logical alternative is given, the robots would do all such work.

  Nor should a writer set his story on an alien world with three times Earth's gravity, then let his heroes move about as if they were at home. Earthborn men would move slowly, painfully, and clumsily in such an ambience, for they would weigh three times what they weigh on Earth, and they would feel as if they were carrying a huge, heavy burden. Nor should the writer create aliens for this world which look like men, because triple gravity would produce short, heavy people with only vague-and perhaps no-resemblance to humanity as we know it.

  Researching these backgrounds is not a simple matter. For instance, how could you expect to find a book about life on a planet with three times Earth's gravity-a non-fiction book with tables, charts, and graphs? If your idea is to use a world with heavy gravity, you have to start your research by learning everything you can about Earth's gravity, then extrapolate or extend from there. Unless you're accustomed to the often dreary and difficult prose of science books, juvenile and even children's non-fiction on the subject most concerning you will prove to be a treasure trove. In these books, the fundamentals-usually all you'll need to begin your story-are simply explained, easily grasped and retained. And whereas the average library may be short on available science books, it will have thousands of children's books covering everything from the nature of stars and suns and gravity, to the operation of a jet plane and the construction of an oil well.

  If you're embarrassed about checking out children's books, you can always say they're for a grandchild-or that you're intending to write one yourself and are doing a bit of catching up on your competition!

  Once you've delineated your background, you are ready to develop a plot to set against it. It is advisable, of course, to have some idea of the nature of the story before devising a detailed future setting, since the plot will affect the back ground and vice versa. There are eight major types of science fiction plots, each with its own sort of background-and each with its own brand of pitf
alls you should avoid.

  IF THIS GOES ON . . . STORY

  The "If this goes on…" story is the kind most likely to reach the widest audience and receive critical acclaim, for it not only deals with the near future, but a present-day situation which has been extrapolated to its ultimate conclusion. Already concerned by the subject matter and somewhat familiar with it, the average reader will find the story believable and immediately applicable to his own life. You begin with a single area of society that disturbs you and build a future in which that area has become the focus of society. Most such stories cannot escape being "warnings" to the reader, and therein lies half of their entertainment value. The most frightening things, after all, are those which are so familiar that we have come to discount them-until we abruptly see a dark and ugly side that shows us what we have been living with all unawares. A few examples should explain the form.

  In a short novel, appropriately enough titled /f This Goes On…, Robert Heinlein writes of a future in which the church's tax-exempt status and the gullibility of the masses propel a backwoods evangelist into national politics and, eventually, into a religious dictatorship that covers North America. Heinlein's argument that the church should not be given an inch of influence in government, lest it take a mile, is given plausibility by the manner an which churches, in recent years, have pyramided their moral influence over government into a multi-million-dollar-a-year pro-church lobby in Washington.

  Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! gives a vivid and terrifying view of an over-populated near future. Here, a man is fortunate to have one tiny room to call his own, lucky to share a bathroom with only a few strangers. Drinking water is precious; decent food is almost unknown. If our present rate of population growth, world-wide, continues, Harrison says, look at the nightmare we'll be living in.

  John Brunner's The Jagged Orbit deals with a near future in which violence and racism have made America a land in which each man goes armed against his neighbor and must live in a fortified house with armor and weaponry and deadfalls. If we don't curb racism and misdirected violence, Brunner says, we'll end up in a nation where sudden death is the norm and no one knows peace and quietude.