Mark Twain famously said, “The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable.”
His quip was more a commentary on the absurdity of the real world than it was about the plausibility of fictional ones, but either way you look at it, it’s a point well taken. Readers walk into our stories with a set of expectations about how the fictional universe will work, and understandably will resent it if the author flouts them completely. It’s okay to push those boundaries a little—predictability is as bad as blithely ignoring the conventions of the genre—but it’s absolutely critical for a writer to figure out what the rules are ahead of time.
That’s not to say you can’t have a little fun with it. I’m doing that in my work-in-progress, The Accidental Magician, in which a completely ordinary woman finds out that magic actually works, and her great-aunt was in it up to her eyeballs. Among Great-Aunt Celeste’s accomplishments was creating a “pocket universe” in her attic—a labyrinthine magical creation where everything, even the rules of time and space, work differently than the “real” world outside. One of the characters, Deanna Searles, is sent on a reconnaissance mission into the
pocket universe to see what Great-Aunt Celeste was trying to get away with, and finds that it’s not uninhabited:
“I beg your pardon, dear?” the woman said. “I’m sorry, but these old ears don’t hear as well as they once did. Won’t you come inside?”
Curiosity battled with the desire to run. Something about this place felt… wrong. Like looking at an optical illusion before you’ve figured it out. Or, like peering into a kaleidoscope, knowing that the merest touch would cause the pieces to shift and reveal a completely different pattern…
The interior of the woman’s house held the warm scent of baked goods, with hints of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. The Gingerbread House of the old fairy tale came to mind—another unsettling association. Hadn’t the Gingerbread House been owned by a wicked witch who ate children?
One of the first lessons Dr. Griffiths had taught Deanna resurfaced in her memory. Names have power; if you know the true name of someone or something, you can learn to control it. Her voice a little tentative, Deanna said to the woman’s back, “My name is Mary. Mary Kelly.”
There was no hesitation, or note of distrust, in the woman’s response. “Oh, that’s such a lovely traditional name. I’m Síofra.”
“What does your name mean?”
She turned and looked at Deanna, her intelligent dark eyes full of sly good humor. “Why, whatever you want it to mean, dear.”
Síofra, as it turns out, does mean something—it’s Gaelic for changeling. Which, for readers who know that (or take the time to look it up), will give an extra little frisson of fear to the scene. Deanna, it seems, is in deep trouble, in part because she doesn’t yet know what the rules of this place are—she’s figuring them out as she goes, along with the reader.
Even if you don’t write (or read) magical realism, it’s still important to figure out what the ground rules of your fictional world are. Does Love Always Win? Do the Bad Guys Get Their Just Deserts? Do the Monsters Survive To Wreak Havoc Another Day? Unexpected twists can be fun—I got blindsided by the bittersweet ending of Shaun David Hutchinson’s hilarious The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried, but upon reflection, it’s clear anything else he could have done would have been tawdry. But there’s nothing worse than reading along, and suddenly going, “Okay, that’d never happen.” Once we’ve bought into the world of the novel, we want to stay in it, and not get yanked out because of some inconsistency, from a character doing something completely out-of-character or the writer breaking his or her own established rules.
But that’s part of the enjoyment of it, as writers—we get to make the rules. So come up with some interesting ones, and have fun!
