Il faut interésser
On conflicts internal and external
･:*:･ Updates ･:*:･
I’ve been working on my second novel and it’s been going very well! It’s another speculative novel, but unrelated to my first. It’s a joy to be at the beginning of a project. Which is a big part of why I’ve been lax here. The other reason is that I moved/immigrated to Toronto, Canada. I’ve been busy nesting!
If you liked my dissection of “Ghosts,” you might be interested in Vauhini Vara’s own reflection on her work, “Confessions of a Viral AI Writer,” in WIRED.
I’m currently on the hunt for an agent for novel #1. It’s stressful. Iykyk.
I’ve been thinking lately about what makes readers cry. A few weeks ago I listened to the very popular Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin on audiobook and a funny thing happened. I was hooked by the beginning, I read it quickly, and I thought the portrayal of chronic pain/disability was—to me, as someone who has neither—well-depicted and an unusual topic to find in upmarket (am I using the term right?) fiction. I’ll admit I was vaguely disappointed because for some reason (the cover? the subject matter of video games?) I’d thought that the novel was going to be sci-fi, but I got over it.1 I guess that means it’s outside the mandate of this substack, but whatever.
Point is, I was trucking along when the story took a turn at the halfway point. Or at least, I think it was the halfway point because I listened to it on audio.
GNARLY SPOILER AHEAD SO STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED!
I suspect that Zevin wanted to avoid the more obvious plot progression, which was a romantic one. Because Sam and Sadie (the two main characters) are a straight man and woman, of course there is that narrative assumption baked into the intimacy of their friendship, which is the novel’s core. I was totally down for them not to become lovers! Straight men and women can be close friends, lol. But then, what does Zevin do? She looks outside her two leads for the plot.
Spoiler is here!
Armed gunmen arrive to try and shoot Sam, because he is a public figure who sort of supports gay marriage before it’s cool. He’s not at the office, so they kill his friend, who is also Sadie’s husband, instead.
It’s melodrama. It comes pretty much out of left field. Still I cried, because it’s a sad turn of events, and because the first half of the book made me care about these characters. And look, it functions. There’s a reason this book was a hit. Problem for me is that, because Zevin looks externally rather than internally for the material of the second half, pummeling Sam and Sadie with a plot that does not stem from their actions,2 in important ways, the second half of the novel has nothing to do with them. It doesn’t tell me much about their friendship, or them as individuals. Anybody would act something like they act, in the aftermath of this sudden tragedy.
I’m being a little harsh, which I hate to do with contemporary fiction, but this bestseller can handle it.
Now, I’m intrigued by coincidence in fiction. (While I think this craft book is more aimed at teachers than students/writers, there’s a good, if brief, section about this in Craft in the Real World, by Matthew Salesses.)
When I’ve come across coincidence that works in fiction, it:
Doesn’t solve the character’s primary problem3
Occurs at the very beginning of the story, OR
Emerges from a well-built world
The first one is easy, because coincidence that solves character problems kills plot. There’s nowhere to go after. I’ve seen it to set up the Happily Ever After, but see the footnote on that. On the other hand, at the beginning of the story, we as readers are open to artifice. We are still descending into the story, waiting for it all to begin. The coincidence is merely one of the “givens” of the premise. Ok, so the last point, that’s the gravelly one.
When I say a coincidence emerges from a well-built world, I am essentially saying that the external plot has its own logic. To steal Charles D’Ambrosio’s phrasing—although he applied it to backstory—it has its own weather pattern. The coincidence is motivated, just not by the characters. The coincidence is that it happened to these specific characters, and not another.
“Flaubert’s ‘Il faut interésser.’ Stress on manner of telling: keep in mind, ‘I will a tale unfold.’
Interest of watching silk handkerchief drawn from conjuror’s watch.”
-Elizabeth Bowen, Notes on Writing a Novel
Honestly though, I don’t think this is the problem for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Zevin created a compelling plot which was internal in nature, and I don’t think the novel needed an external weather system to generate momentum. In fact, it sucked out the air of the internally-derived plot.
The core of the novel is in relationships. So why didn’t it develop them further? Why is Sam’s love life so stunted, as if in waiting for an event? Personally I was betting on a threesome, which I say facetiously and not. I thought there would be some sort of cheating. Wrongdoing. There are germs of these. Was it decorum, a desire to keep these characters morally upright?
Why not, why not, make somebody really go for it?
When I think of Tomorrow, excepting this substack, I only think of the first half. It’s as if the characters simply stopped. And to be honest, for a book I inhaled, I nearly forgot about it, until now.
Does it matter, if Tomorrow still entertained me, and made me cry? And what about those ranks of other books that entertained me, interested me, and yet did not illicit tears? Curious if any of you out there in this cozy nook of void have thoughts on what makes us cry in literature.
Are tears a good barometer?
It’s a weird moment, realizing a book is a different genre than you’d expected. A subject for another post, I suppose.
Sure, the gunmen only knew about Sam because he got famous and let anybody marry each other in their popular game, but that’s quite tenuous.
Genre conventions matter here! When Jane Austen solves problems with coincidence, I don’t mind. Probably because her plots are so intricate, and the major hurdles are always solved by characters finally getting over themselves and making choices. So coincidence just sort of tidies the loose ends for Austen characters. But could it be the romantic genre of it clearing my naysaying? Or my expectations more generally? As Salesses points out, these are cultural in nature. But that’s yet another subject for another post.
"Are tears a good barometer?" I say sometimes. I know that there are certain topics, events, happenings in a book that will make me cry because of my own deep fears or life experiences (like a child being abused, or death of a parent for instance) no matter how well or poorly written the book is, but then there are those other tears when I am so moved by the marvel of a phrase turned just so or an author's way of putting into words something I can only feel. Those are the times I want to name it weeping rather than crying.