On Fiction
03 The Demon Inside: Searching for Your Story's Soul
I have been telling myself that it is presumptive of me to write about writing when I haven’t written anything. Of course, I’ve written several things. But none of them are fantasy who-dunnits, sci-fi westerns or cosmic horror ethnic literature. So who am I to start telling you how to do it?
But this is shame talking.
This is the tale end of an fantastic battle in which the self-destructive parts of my soul are waging war to talk myself out of doing any writing at all. This is really about never giving myself the chance to finish Earth. This is about the fact that writing good fiction is emotionally dangerous.
That is what is behind the inner critic bludgeoning me with all the ways I might fail. The purpose of such fears is to ensure the failure by stopping me from ever trying, buried beneath excuses.
It wasn’t in the cards. It’s out of my league. I just can’t do it right now. I need to…instead….
Why would I want to sabotage my own writing? I don’t! At least, not with my thinking, planning, cognitive brain. But my brain is not my soul. My thoughts might be in my heart from time to time, but my heart is substantially more than even the sum of all my thoughts.
Inner self talk is best not ignored. When it gets nasty, it is best not tolerated.
I know the game my flesh plays. I know the corrupted path of procrastination and avoidance all too well. For all of my successes, there are more incompletes, barely starteds, and maybe-somedays gathering dust in my guilty conscience.
It is on these foundations that I suggest the following:
The first step to writing excellent fiction is acknowledging that your story is symbolic expression of your own inner struggle to come to terms with your soul. The stories that you make up are always a meet manifestation of your own psyche. In the same way, what people crave from the fiction that they read is to make peace with their own psychology.
For this reason, unaddressed struggle with your soul is likely the main reason you want to write fictional stories. If you think you are the exception, I suggest it is doubly true!
Fiction stories are the dark dreams and fears of our hearts, the ones that we cannot bear to face in the real forms that haunt our waking lives. Some giants are too titanic to contend with in their horrible rawness. Some demons need skin on before you can fight them.
Fiction, then, is the wrapping up of the fight for your soul in the best justifications the imagination can collide.
I do not believe this is either bad or good. I believe it is the way that it is. Thereby, I also believe you will be much better at writing fiction when you know that exorcising your soul is what you are doing.
I am discovering that the single greatest inhibitors to my success in completing either D.U.S.T., or Earth, or Athanasius Audacity, is the fact that I’m afraid of finding out how the story really ends. It’s not about happily ever after or tragic flaw. It’s about disappointment with my own, real life when I uncover, buried deep within the roots of these childhood expressions, the fact that my story, however it came about, is something different than what I’ve always told myself it would be. It won’t be no story at all, but as a true and real extension of me, I might not like what I see after I peal away the pretend.
Giving the demon flesh so that you can fight it is its own battle.
To put this in English 101 terms for you who want the gist in your smart notes:
Your story is not about a theme.
Your story is about a plot.
Your plot is about the characters.
Your characters are about their dialogue.
Your dialogue is the manifestation of your soul.
And, the take away…
6. If you don’t know what’s in your soul, you might sabotage your work in order to avoid finding out what’s there.
The solution? Finish the book! Slay the demon. The skeleton in the closet isn’t alive but is blocking the secret door, the other side of which contains refreshments beyond all wildest dreams.
You wanted an adventure, did you not?
This is what I was waiting for. This is a breakthrough.
Spot on. Thanks for this.