Speculative Fiction Writers Must Set Ground Rules for Their Stories
Fantasy, horror and science fiction authors serve their readers best by knowing the rules of the worlds they create.
The old saying is “truth is stranger than fiction,” and there is truth to that. Even though fiction, especially speculative fiction, isn’t about real things, it must seem so for the reader. Otherwise, the reader will lose interest and will go on to read something else. Writers don’t want that. They need to keep their readers.
But how does a writer make things like wizards and ghosts and spaceships seem real? By setting some ground rules for the story the author is writing, and knowing and sticking to those rules.
For example, let’s say you are writing a horror story. Our hero locked in a house is being chased by a big, bad monster with gigantic teeth and fur running down it’s back. Your monster seems unbeatable. The hero has stabbed the monster, shot it, shoved it down some stairs, beat it over the head with a shovel, all kinds of things. But the monster keeps coming. Eventually, tedium will set in for the reader if this goes on too long. There hasto be a way to defeat this monster. And the hero of our story has to figure out how to do so, but only after many trials and tribulations for building tension and reader sympathy for the character. Finally, the hero figures out the monster chasing him is a werewolf. Oh, where is that gun the hero used earlier? Down in the basement. The hero runs down, grabs the gun and loads it with the only silver bullet he has, a family heirloom left by his great-great-great grandfather who was a Civil War general and had the bullet molded as a memento to mark the end of the war. The hero slams the bullet into the gun, then pops up our monster and BANG! Monster is dead. Totally impossible, you think. Couldn’t happen in rule life. But the reader’s mind wants to believe this could happen; in fact, the reader’s mind needs to find this acceptable to be fully entertained. And how is the reader’s mind convinced this story could be real? Because of the rules set down by the author. What rules? Well, rule one is that werewolves can only be killed by silver bullets. In fact, that’s probably the most important rule in our little story. But there are plenty of other rules here, too. Where did the silver bullet come from and why does our hero have it? The plausibility of this has to sound rational.
Speculative writers shouldn’t have antagonists who are too powerful and seemingly invincible. This is even more important for protagonists. Where’s the fun reading about a monster the reader knows can’t be defeated no matter what? Where’s the fun in reading about a protagonist who passes his or her trials far too easily? It’s unrealistic and it’s boring. On the flip side, you don’t want a hero who fails all the time and a villain who is incompetent all the time.
Striking a balance is what can help your fiction. You can have a bad guy who seems invincible, but somehow the protagonist has to figure out a way to save the day. You want that balance between the good guy and the bad guy of your story. Even if you’re writing a tragedy, a tale of woe where the hero fails, there at least has to be the impression that the good guy could have won. Otherwise, the reader won’t be interested, and you as a writer won’t have an audience for very long.
Knowing the rules of the universes you create can help strike that balance, and draw and keep readers.
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July 16th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Good advice.
Inna
July 17th, 2009 at 2:51 am
So true! My daughter was complaining about the “Twilight” series because they break the rules about vampires.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Hi, JH, how are you?
I like this little article on ground rules; it has some advice, and emphasizes balance between protagonist/antagonist, and encourages writers to know and remember the rules of the universe they are creating.
All good points. However, your example did not set any rules. Instead, it borrowed one from another speculatvie fiction author; the silver bullet rule. I find the use of the silver bullet to kill werewolves too traditional, too old and unoriginal of an idea. If you ask me, blunt force trauma can kill anything, and if your book is based on a setting of Earth, well, it stands to reason that a werewolf can be decapitated and die; can be burned to death; can have its head bashed in and not live to tell the story. To a point, the writer does want to stick to some pre-conceived ideas on such well-known subjects. Werewolves for instance should be half-man, half wolf. Vampires should suck the blood of creatures to survive. Such pre-conceived ideas are easily recognized and help to define the subject after all.
Yet, the reader is not the writer. The writer is the creator of the universe in question and it is the writer’s whims that decide the particulars, like how to kill a vampire or werewolf, or how magic is used and what effects it should have. The writer writes the story that HE/SHE wants to read. Readers very rarely have a say. It may turn some readers off when they don’t find the story they want, but the best stories are not written for readers, they are written for only one reason: to satisfy the “what if” question the author has posed. That’s why so many fans of Twilight didn’t like The Host.
Balance is important, but when a writer doesn’t create enough of his own world for these inhabitants, the person that reads lots of stories will wonder what new thing an author has to say, what new idea he/she has to present. The newer or younger readers and the ones who can’t get enough of such stories may not care if there’s not much new or different about it, but personally, I find it discouraging when I see a writer not using his or her imagination.
In creating a backstory, and by setting down the parameters that govern the lives of the characters/creatures, a writer has begun the process of helping their universe to feel real to the reader. Every story has its past. Every world has its history and its physical and meta-physical limitations. Yes, there should be similarities to ours, such as gravitational pull, limited life spans, gestation periods that are alike, et cetera. However, most speculative fiction deals with realities that are very far removed from ours, so while there should be similarites, it is the differences that make a novel speculative. The writer has “speculated” on how things might work out if x idea was skewed to a new angle.
To Karen G I’d like to say: Stephenie Meyer breaks more rules than just those, but she is warranted in changing some of the parameters surrounding the lives of the vampires she writes about. She is warranted in doing so because she is creating her own setting and her own universal rules to make her story work. Changing a small rule about vampires to make them unique to her stories is not only her prerogative, but it is her obligation to her creative self. Don’t get me wrong: I hated many things about Twilight: not because of the rules she changed about vampires, but because of the rules she changed about protagonists and heroes, and the sensibility of the average teenager. That last one was what destroyed the experience for me.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Adam, yep, I didn’t create the rule of the silver bullet. I merely meant it as an example of the type of rules speculative fiction writers can create. As for it being too tradition, I don’t disagree, but that’s a matter of opinion for both of us. Whether blunt force trauma can kill a werewolf or not is up to the writer since he or she is the one in control of the story, as you pointed out.
I’ve yet to read Meyer’s work, so I can’t comment directly on that. But I’ve always found it humorous when readers complain about an author changing the traditions behind certain monsters/villains/etc. The vampire mythos, for example, that we all know (vamps can’t go out at night, vamps can mezmerize others, etc.) was mostly created by Hollywood. Stoker’s Dracula could go out in daylight, he just didn’t have all his powers. And if I remember correctly, I think it was a knife stab to the heart or chest that killed Dracula in the book.
Adam, I actually think we’re talking about the same thing when you mention world building and I mention rules, since I’m basically talk about the rules of the world created by the writer. I think these rules or world building are probably most important in fantasy, which doesn’t have to have any real connections with reality unless the author wants it to, though horror and even science fiction generally need to sound a little more plausible. Straight horror (not dark fantasy or science fiction horror) is based to some extent or another in a version of the real world, thus must follow real-world rules to some extent. Science fiction can bend those rules much, much further, but still, to be classified as science fiction and not fantasy, the story must adhere to at least some realistic or plausible science. While fantasy often is based in realistic worlds similar to our own, it doesn’t have to be, which is one of the reasons I believe world building and knowing that world’s rules is most important for that genre.
July 18th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Great!
Now you’ve let your readers know what they need for your article.
Thanks for the opportunity, take care.
July 20th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Setting the rules for your story is so important! Once you have the rules in place, you know what can and cannot happen, and that helps the world become more real to the reader. This is great advice, thank you.
July 20th, 2009 at 9:35 am
It’s interesting how a fictional world must have rules and regulations just like the real world. And if the writer (or one of the characters) in this fictional world breaks one of these parameters the reader will know it. You can’t trust a writer that breaks his or her own rules.