Actions “Versus” Introspection: A Defense of Literary Fiction

Action! Adventure! Romance! Inner turmoil!

Wait, what?

Yeah, you heard me. These are things I personally like in stories. And I don’t think I’m alone. Otherwise, explain why one of the biggest tenets in prose fiction screenwriting is create conflict!

This seems self-evident. After all, what good is a story where everyone gets along and everything is perfectly fine? That’s the realm of children’s books, which serve their purpose.

And let me say, as the parent of a young child, the above description actually fits baby books more. You’d be amazed at how soon some form of conflict enters into kids books. Look at Dr. Seuss books, for example. The Sneetches were basically at war! The bitter butter battle was a battle! That dastardly Grinch was out to ruin Christmas!

Even kids need to see conflict be overcome.

Which brings me to an interesting conversation held with several writing friends on Twitter. It started out with Gitabishi’s excellent post about “hard” versus “soft” sci-fi and veered into both the introspective and the ridiculous before Jill Domschot said something that struck me:

Some pulp rev enthusiasts want all action/adventure all the time. I like to slow down a little and focus on ideas, philosophy, and character. The exploration of ideas and philosophy are why I like SF.

— Jill (@JillDomschot) March 15, 2018

I’m inclined to agree with her, hence the use of quotation marks around the word “versus” in the title of this post.

The upshot of the conversation was that everything is a writer’s tool, and the writer uses the appropriate tool for the task at hand. But that’s a bit wishy washy, so I’m going to do something a little against the grain when it comes to action-packed fiction writing, and stick up for a much maligned genre of novel: literary fiction.

Yup. I’m a fan. Take a guy like John Irving, for example. Sure, he has a creepy fixation with characters engaging incest, as well as characters losing limbs (including a certain male member), but it’s not just his prose I enjoy. His situations are crafted to come to a head at the critical point, and his set-ups are expertly foreshadowed and deftly executed in ways that only seem obvious in retrospect–including the unfortunate inadvertent amputation of a man’s body part (I’m looking at you, The World According to Garp).

Or a writer like Michael Chabon. There’s a bit too much affectation in his characters–Telegraph Avenue was particularly painful at times–but their inner dramas are exquisite, and I like how he makes them intersect with the plot’s external conflicts, in explosive and often hilarious ways. .

My goal when I write is to take this approach, and just have more sword fights and explosions.

Reset: Chapter 37: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 (2)

Eyewitnesses report that Joseph Gallagher, eighteen, of Lowell, Massachusetts, burst into Logan Airport’s Terminal B running with his arms outstretched and shouting “ALLAHU AKBAR!” Other witnesses stated that Mr. Gallagher also let out a high-pitched ululation some likened to a cry of pain. Onlookers initially thought him to be a run-of-the-mill crazy person and didn’t react, mainly because very few travelers were aware of what typically followed shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” or what it even meant. However, most seemed well aware of the meaning of his next words and how they tended to affect those traveling by air.

“Bombs!” he is reported to have yelled. “Bombs on the planes! For the Glory of Allah, we will blow up your planes!”

Mr. Gallagher streaked around lines of passengers, focusing on the American Airlines service desk.

“We will fly planes into buildings! All across the country! I won’t tell you which ones! Allahu Akbar!” And he continued shrieking.

Mr. Gallagher dashed through the security line, pushing several customers and knocking over a guard who was manning the metal detector. He made it as far as Gate 23 before being tackled by two uniformed security guards and one concerned citizen.

The rest of what happened never made it to the general public, beyond vague assertions that a major terror plot was thwarted in the nick of time, thanks in large part to the Federal Aviation Administration showing great wisdom in grounding all flights nationwide. Shortly after Mr. Gallagher’s arrest, one Mohammad Atta, an Egyptian national, was arrested at Logan International Airport along with nine other accomplices.

At Dulles International Airport in Virginia, five men were arrested.

At Newark International Airport in New Jersey, authorities captured four.

None of the nineteen would-be hijackers had ever heard of Joseph Gallagher of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Reset: Chapter 36: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 (1)

Nick Christakos spent Tuesday morning sitting alone in his dorm room, staring at the television. Six turned to seven, seven turned to eight, and eight turned to nine. Nothing.

Nothing.

Nick relaxed, surprised by how much his body hurt. He had clenched himself like a fist and had sweat through his t-shirt.

Nothing.

But why?

* * *

When Joe didn’t come back Sunday night, Nick had figured he had spent the night with that Gwendolyn chick. When he called her, she wouldn’t say any more except that Joe was really mad at him. No surprises there.

He checked with Jonesy and Carlos. Nothing. Same with Game and Quinn.

Amy told him he should call the cops, but Nick didn’t. He couldn’t. What would he say? That his time-traveling companion was going to stop the worst terrorist attack in the history of the United States and left without so much as a hug and a kiss? They’d be right back where they started.

He even called Zack Henderson. Miracle of miracles, Zack picked up the phone. He was terse, but not rude. “He came by, yeah,” said Zack. “He was pretty steamed.” But Zack had no idea where Joe might have gone.

So Nick waited, spending his time, as usual, with Amy. Things were going great in that department. They clicked; Nick literally felt a click when he started talking to her at Zeta Zeta Nu. Love was a beautiful thing. She was the whole reason for this adventure, the Helen that launched him back in time. Now he would be happy, would maybe finally have the courage to get some help and work through his issues without resorting to hookers and blow (though those things had been fun for a time).

Joe had to be on campus. He had to. He had no car, besides. What was he going to do? Thwart the attacks himself?

Sunday night rolled around, and still no Joe. Nick waited.

When Nick sat in class on Monday, listening to Delino drone on about how Bush was single-handedly destroying the Earth, he began to worry. Amy had noticed it, insisting that they go to the police.

The jig was up. It would be too suspicious if he did nothing about his missing friend. So they went to the Hollister PD, bypassing the campus cops who tended to stick to parking violations, and reported Joe missing.

Reset: Chapter 34: Sunday, September 9, 2001 (3)

The dream was shocking. Audacious. Like it had come from the devil himself, designed to scare the foolish mortal to death in his sleep.

He was on an airplane, sitting with the other passengers, frightened but docile. He heard the shouts, the chanting–“Allahu Akbar!” and the ululating cries of victory. Some laughter, but mostly screams. The woman next to him started to talk; her mouth moved but Joe only heard sounds like drums emanating from her blurred face.

And then out of the window he could see, growing bigger, the North Tower, the plane drawn to it like it had gravity, inviting the impact the way a catcher calls the winning pitch. Put ‘er there, buddy boy. He can’t hit the ones that come in hard and fast.

Hard and fast . . .

He awoke before impact, jerking upright and gasping the way he thought only happened in movies. The buzzing in his brain began anew, the telltale sign of that cognitive dissonance born of the impossible. Something else that should be impossible was the woman in the bed next to him.

Reset: Chapter 33: Sunday, September 9, 2001 (2)

Her voice came crackling over the loudspeaker in an angry snarl. “Who’s this?”

“Hi Gwen,” said Joe into the intercom next to the door. “It’s Joe. Can you let me in?”

“Joe! Are you alright?”

Joe sniffed noisily and gave his nose a swipe with his arm. “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”

“Okay, stay right there. I’m coming down now.”

Joe nodded, as if Gwendolyn could see him through the speaker. But that technology was at least a decade away.

He glanced at his watch, groaning at the late hour. He shouldn’t have woken her up. He should have gone back to his own dorm room and into his own bed like a responsible adult, keeping his worries to himself. But he couldn’t stand the thought of Nick. And Joe knew he wasn’t a responsible adult. Not anymore.

When Gwendolyn opened the door, Joe marveled at how good she looked given the time of night. Dressed in a Navy blue pajama set with furry moccasin slippers on her feet and her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, she still appeared controlled, beautiful. She was also wearing glasses, big thick ones that would be all the rage among young women in another ten years.

Joe hurried through the open door to spare both Gwendolyn and himself from the chilly wind. The door shut behind him with a soft whump. “Are you sure you’re alright?” said Gwendolyn, “what’s going on?”

Joe sniffed again, corralling some errant snot. He looked around the lobby of Parsons, empty but still too public. “Can we talk in your room?

Book Review: The Ophian Rising (Soul Cycle Book IV) by Brian Niemeier

With a heavy heart, I finished reading The Ophian Rising, the fourth and final book in Brian Niemeier‘s Soul Cycle. And thus closes one of the most interesting, unique, satisfying, and fun book series I have read in a long time.

In my review of the first book, Nethereal, I described it as such:

Take the good parts of Dune and Star Wars, mix them together with a heaping dollop of Dante, a dash of high fantasy, and a whole lot of horror, and you’re beginning to almost approach Brian Niemeier‘s self-published Nethereal, book one of his three-part Soul Cycle series.

Is it sci-fi? Is it science-fantasy?

Who cares? It’s fun.

This description works across the entire series.

I refuse to get into spoiler territory here, as interested readers need to experience the Soul Cycle for themselves. What I’d like to do instead is explain why this series works so well, and encourage you to read it for yourself.

All I’ll say about The Ophian Rising is that:

1. Brian’s writing, good to start with, gets better and better with each book.
2. The Soul Cycle needs to be read from front-to-back in order to pick up on everything Brian has subtly wove into it. I plan on doing a re-read of the whole series soon.
3. Brian knows how to tell a lean story that’s still satisfying (more on this later).

And here is my only complaint about The Ophian Rising: I wish that it, and the series itself, was longer. That’s right: Brian has left me wanting more. Thankfully, I know he has no plan to stop writing anything anytime soon.

Why You Should Read The Soul Cycle

Regular readers know that I’ve written about Brian before. He edited the manuscript for my own novel, The Rust Man, and writes about many topics on his own blog that I’ve used as springboards for further discussion here.

I’m going to distill a few of Brian’s biggest points for you, and then explain why, if these sound good to you, you should read his work.

• The era of the doorstop novel is over.
• Readers want something they can pick up that will grip them from the start and keep them reading–the key word here is immediacy.
• Favor clear writing over clever writing.
• People crave heroes that are actually heroic–good and evil matter!
• Books are competing with TV, social media, movies, video games, and streaming video.
• Keep your politics out of your writing–shoehorning contemporary issues into your fiction is a recipe for disaster, or at least for severely limiting your audience.
• The era of big publishing is over. Indies are where it’s at.
• Indie does not equal low quality. Not anymore.
• And finally: If it has nothing to do with your story, get rid of it.

I can safely say that The Soul Cycle series embodies all of these principles.

Reset: Chapter 31: Saturday, September 8, 2001 (4)

For a moment, Joe felt like a parent again.

He and Nick found the rest of their little gang on the student union building’s second floor, sitting on some sofas near a TV showing a rerun of “The Simpsons.” Nick had finally relented to Joe’s insistence that they reconvene and had reached out to Zack and Carlos to round up the crew for an emergency meeting. Which was really just following through with their original plan, Joe thought, fighting the urge to scream.

Their faces fell when they saw Joe ascend the stairs, as though they had done something bad and were ashamed that dad had found out. Joe sat down in a plush chair, trying hard to ignore the sick, icy feeling in his stomach. “Anyone mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Alright, dad,” said Carlos. He sounded more annoyed than usual, but his focus on the students bustling around them rather than Joe belied his confrontational tone.

As the only one experienced in dealing with children of his own, the barb didn’t bother Joe. “Talk,” he said. “We’re running out of time and if there’s been a change of plans, I think it’s only fair that I should be in on it too.”

Nick grimaced, bobbing his head from side to side. “That’s the thing, really. We sort of did change the plan.”

Relief washed over Joe. He let himself slump forward, shedding his tension like old skin. “Okay. So we’re going with plan B instead of plan A.”

“Not exactly,” said Nick.

“We’re calling it off,” said Carlos.

“Excuse me?” said Joe, feeling his shoulders and neck tighten up again.

“We’re not doing it.”