The Fire in Fiction (20 page)

That's a shame because paradoxically heroes and heroines can be the most winning when they are the most different. Mark Haddon in his novel
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
(2003) chose as his narrator Christopher Boone, a boy who is autistic. Christopher has a savant quality. He relaxes by doing math problems, but he cannot understand other people's cues or use intuition. He fits the world and the way it works into formulae and physical laws.

When he is falsely accused of killing a neighbor's poodle, Christopher undertakes to learn who actually did the deed:

This is a murder mystery novel.

Siobhan [a social worker at his school] said that I should write something I would want to read myself.

Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, "I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus." What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

Siobhan has long blond hair and wears glasses which are made of green plastic. And Mr. Jeavons smells of soap and wears brown shoes that have approximately 60 tiny circular holes in each of them.

But I do like murder mystery novels. So I am writing a murder mystery novel.

There is no mistaking Christopher's literal and linear mind for a normal boy's. He writes things down as he sees them, focusing on details and missing the context. He cannot interpret, he can only observe, which in a way makes him a perfect detective and successor to Sherlock Holmes, one of whose famous remarks is the origin of the novel's title.

You would think that seeing the world from the perspective of an autistic savant would be exhausting, but instead it is exhilarating. Granted, Haddon gives us a structure, a mystery, onto which to hold and through which to filter Christopher's unfiltered narration. As solid as that strategy is, it's not a gimmick. Christopher is more than accessible; he is alive and so is Haddon's novel in ways that it would not have been had he chosen a safer way to write it.

When thinking about voice it is easy to focus on words, as if painting pretty pictures, capturing moments, and building metaphors is all there is to it. I'm not opposed to any of that, but the more I read the more I feel that skillful use of words and an author's ability to get down a fleeting illusion of reality can cover up a novel's core emptiness.

Not all beautifully written novels have a voice, or much of one. Potboiler plots may be exciting, but also may have little flavor. It is when the words on the page demand that I, the reader, take notice that I begin to hear the author's voice. It isn't words alone that do that, I find, but rather the outlook, opinions, details, delivery, and original perspectives that an author brings to his tale.

Above all, a singular voice is not a lucky accident; it comes from a storyteller's commitment not just to tell a terrific story but to tell it in a way that is wholly his own.

Do you believe in vampires? No, seriously. You don't, right?

Here's another question: Do you read vampire novels? Whether or not you do, a great many readers enjoy them. To do so they suspend their disbelief. They must. How do authors get them to do that?

The same question can be asked about novels in which justice is done, love triumphs, and lone protagonists save the world. In real life those things don't always happen, or at least not easily and despite the high odds posed in a well-plotted novel. Even character-driven stories such as sagas, coming-of-age novels, and women's and literary fiction present events that are not everyday occurrences. What happens in all fiction is to some degree preposterous and yet readers go along.

Or not.

Have you ever felt that a novel you were reading got ridiculous? When fiction feels far-fetched we cease to enjoy it; indeed, we may even hurl it across the room. Then again, there are those novels in which the very premise defies logic and yet we breathlessly turn the pages. Even realistic fiction can put its characters through things that would send ordinary human beings into therapy, yet we identify with those characters and praise the author's powers of observation and ability to capture the "truth" of human experience.

How do those authors pull that off? We may speak of them
getting away with
something, but I do not believe that any fiction writers get a free pass. When novels work, they build a feeling ofbelievability. For us to enter into the story and experience it, they must. For us to buy in we must be sold.

What, then, are the methods by which a story is made to feel real? More than that, how can we construct the high level of dramatic events that make a novel a powerful and transformative experience—and at the same time do so in a way that has our readers never doubting and even cheering all the way?

To find out what makes the impossible feel real, let's absorb lessons from some of the most outlandish stories on the shelves today: thrillers built around conspiracies, cloning, killer viruses, genetic engineering, and the supernatural.

THE SKEPTICAL READER

Are you paranoid? No, I mean seriously and deeply paranoid to the point that your friends think you're obsessed and you've wondered if you might need professional help? Do you know way too much about the grassy knoll, Skull and Bones, the Masons, Majestic 12, or MK-Ultra? If so, congratulations. You have the makings of a conspiracy novelist.

You're in good company, too. Michael Innes, Graham Greene, Don DeLillo, Richard Condon, Robert Ludlum, and Dan Brown are just a few whose conspiracy-driven novels have entertained millions. Margaret Atwood, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, and Philip K. Dick also have given conspiracy fiction a literary pedigree.

Whether your purpose is commercial or high-minded, clearly it pays to believe that the cartoon character Pogo got it wrong when he famously declared in 1970, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Oh no, no. It's actually us against
them
! There's a lot to be paranoid about, too. Just watch the news.

Judging by queries that arrive at my agency, though, there are certain fears that in our times provoke extra degrees of paranoia.

Control of government by a self-selected few, the far reach of ancient secret societies, cloning and genetic engineering, and supernatural beings such as vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters all seem to preoccupy us.

Why these dangers and not communists, nuclear bombs, cults, giant meteors, aliens, or any of the other unsettling worries that have preoccupied us in the past? Obviously, paranoid fears are topical. They reflect what is new and unknown. Well, I suppose except for vampires. They've been around for a while, in entertainment at least, which may explain why they've morphed from scary monsters to sex objects.

But we'll get to that.