emphasizing the real in paranormal

Following hot on the heels of my ode to paranormal, here is Sarah La Polla's take on the realism inherent in successful paranormal and how to harness it.  While I love the entire post, point #1 jumped out at me.  Plus, anyone that can reference Kafka and Buffy in the same post just makes me happy.  Read, ponder, comment.

ode to paranormal

Holding this particularly episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer up as an example of what made the show transcendent is a bit of a cliché, but I’m going to start my blog post here anyway.  “Surprise.”  It is the episode in the second season wherein Buffy and her vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend Angel have sex.  The unanticipated consequence of which is that Angel loses his soul and becomes evil.  More than any afterschool special or high school health class could possibly hope to accomplish, this episode and the rest of the season manifest a terrible truth for many young women: “I thought he loved me, we had sex, and then he became a monster.”

Women don’t ever say, “I thought he loved me, we had sex, and then he started behaving in a way that made me feel as hurt and betrayed and scared as I would if he had become evil.”  No, they say, “he became a monster.” 

Therein lies the weight of Buffy and all of the best in paranormal/sci-fi/fantasy/magic realism.  By shirking the boundaries set by realism, these genres allow artists to get to the emotional truth of a story and put it forward in a concrete, literal way.  

This is how life feels.

There are a myriad of other brilliant scenes and episodes in Buffy that exemplify such emotional truth, as do any great zombie stories, vampire fiction, Hogwarts escapades, what have you.  (Almost all of my favorite YA is paranormal because everything feels so high stakes and raw when we are young.  The time lends itself perfectly to the literalization of emotion.)  Paranormal fiction is metaphor writ large.  It is emotion made literal.

I am a great lover of John Donne’s poetry and one of my all time favorite lines is from “A Fever.”  Donne writes about the woman he loves being fatally ill and says, “The whole world vapours with thy breath.”  A beautiful and profound statement.  Technically a metaphor but you get the sense for this grief-stricken poet, it is quite literal.

When Villanelle loses her heart to her lover in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, she does so literally.  It is years later that she is strong enough to break into the woman’s home and reclaim her heart from the glass jar in which it has been kept.  Sethe is literally haunted by the ghost of her daughter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.  For characters in these hyper-real stories, nothing “feels like,” it only “is.”

My MS, FLIGHT, is the story of a woman who is so unable to accept who she is that she destroys her own happiness and that of the people she loves the most.  It’s a favorite character type for me (Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, anyone?) and by writing a work of magic realism, I could make the stakes real.  Maria doesn’t just go through a “self destructive phase” after her father dies or a boyfriend breaks her heart, she literally self destructs.

The high stakes makes for great fiction.  But it also, for me at least, feels much more true than any realism I know.

to amuse. or to take very seriously.

Via http://jaimealyse.tumblr.com.

For me, that's a post it note.  I'm fucked.

beta learning

While letting FLIGHT sit with two beta readers, I am taking on a new role... acting as beta for another writer.  I have done this in the past for short pieces written friends, but never a full length MS.  Though the story is fun to read, I am also feeling the responsibility of a beta.  And I am learning a lot as a writer.

It is not often that I get to see works in progress.  It feels a lot like seeing an open body.  I am fortunate enough to have a clearer view of how the muscles and tendons and bones and circulatory system all work.  (A view that allows me to reflect on my own body.)  It is a tremendous learning experience and rather humbling.  It is also incredibly personal.  I've never had to wonder what my bedside manner is like and now I will have to see.

I am currently making my way through a first read.  I want to get a sense of the book as I would if I were a casual reader.  Then, I will go back through and make notes.  Still, even as a casual reader, I have noticed a few aspects of the writing that I really like.  But more difficult to deal with, I see a major problem in the plot.  A huge problem.  As I read, I am chewing over how best to present this criticism to the writer.

Of course, I plan on using Nathan Bransford's sandwich style for critiquing -- positive, negative, positive.  But beyond that?