Summer's here and with a bit more leisure and focus on writing, I'm considering good stories and what they need in order to be good.
On the front of the burner right now, my online interactive novel, "Forward in a Strange Land" (working title, you can suggest another), which is about an American who follows his dream of playing ice hockey professionally to the mysterious, hockey-mad nation of Borschland and finds more than checks and pucks waiting for him.
Ice hockey is a violent sport. One of my Boston-bred friends once called it "an ancient blood sport," and I'm fine with that characterization. In Borschland, in the novel, ice hockey is more ballet and drama, and the anticipation of violence without its literal fulfillment is what makes Borschic fans so passionate for the game. In Borschland, the biggest cheers come from a player avoiding a collision rather than being leveled by one.
I realize this is contrary to human nature, especially male nature. Give us some beer and thousands of like-minded, reptile-brained dudes next to us, and we will roar and shake our bone clubs when grown men smash into each other with brutal intent.
I am coming to dislike this type of sport, and not just because recently one of my favorite baseball players was badly injured by the unnecessary violence of one of his opponents. And I am coming to dislike violence in stories as well.
One night about a week ago I pulled a random book from my son's bookshelf-- he is a much more avid reader than I-- and came out with "The Silmarillion," the compilation of myths and tales that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote as backstory to "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."
Oh, good. I thought. When I was younger I could hardly wade through the stuff. I was much more impatient and undiscerning. It will be fun to see what my younger self missed.
The book tells the history of Middle Earth, Tolkien's master creation, from the beginning of the world to the "Lord of the Rings" era. And despite my aged wisdom, it was still pretty hard going with all the names and unfamiliar geography. Son's paperback edition only had one map, and you needed an atlas to keep up with all the places mentioned.
But that wasn't really the problem.
I found my older self much less willing to be interested in the endless parade of kings, jealousies, intrigues, battles, wars and finally, armageddons, that the book chronicled. Is there anything else in fantasy writing besides climactic and cataclysmic violence?
Also in the past week I gave in to Netflix promptings (this is what you like, isn't it, isn't it?) and watched the Cohn Brothers' flick, "Barton Fink." I was creeped out and mesmerized by the first half of that film, which was almost entirely a study of what it feels like to have writer's block. Then the whole tone changed drastically because of an unexpected and ugly act of violence, and the thing went down the tubes for me.
Finally, in my continuing attempts to find common ground with stepson, I ordered the 1935 Errol Flynn classic, "Captain Blood," because I figured there'd be some fun sword-fighting in it for stepson, whose passion is fencing. He got bored and did not appreciate the presence of the porcelain-skinned Olivia de Havilland, Flynn's love interest. He finally walked away an hour or so in and just before the sword play began and the cannons started booming and the guys with the knives in their teeth were boarding the French ships.
I don't know if the film could've been saved for stepson if all of that action had come earlier-- after all, it was a black and white film with special effects that were spectacular for its time but lame compared to today-- but to a generation raised on first-person shooter video games, it feels like you've got to have violence now, continuously, and to the end if you're going to engage the young male attention span.
I, on the other hand, loved the de Havilland-Flynn scenes. Good writing.
So I feel out of step with the world and with popular storytelling, and wonder about the novel I just finished, "Healing Knowledge," which is about the peoples living in the islands of the Aegean Sea in the 20th century BC. It tells a story about strong emotions that are mostly not expressed in violence. I hope that the magic, sea travel, kidnapping, gold, and love in the novel can carry the day without having to resort to that cataclysmic battle scene at the end.
Maybe it's telling that this type of painting, by Genie Maples, is the kind of cover I see for my novel. There are no people in it and no swords, boats, or violence of any kind. Yet I feel as if it captures the spirit of the world I create in "Healing Knowledge," of sky, water and land pushing themselves together and in that tension creating every kind of possibility.
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