Running the Gauntlet

As much as I've bitched and bellyached about grad school, I think it has done me some good. I've gotten some of the best literary exercise I could possibly imagine during the past two semesters, and I think it was exercise I sorely needed. As much as I really, really hated writing sci-fi and fantasy when every other person in the bloody world seemed to be writing realism, I think it was the best thing that could have happened. It forced me to pay as much attention to the human aspects of the story as I do to the fantastical parts.

I think I'd really, truly managed that in only one story up until I started grad school. And that story is still my absolute favorite of everything I've ever written. It was one of those that was like silk off a spool, right from the very beginning. At least, it feels like that, looking back on it. And I knew I had something special by the time I was even partway done. I just didn't realize why until much, much later. It was because, deep down at the heart of it, past the wizards and the royalty and the fantasy bric-a-brac, the two main characters were absolutely human, and they acted it. And their personal realness extended out to the rest of the story, despite its fairy-tale-ish trappings, to make the world they occupied real.

So I guess I understand what was going through Christian Bale's mind when he initially turned down the role of John Connor in the new Terminator. True, special effects are awesome. And that's what a lot of the trappings of fantasy and science fiction are: special effects. That is in no way meant to belittle them, either. I love the conventions of fantasy and sci-fi. They're great fun. And you can build a fun story based on special effects alone. It's absolutely possible. You get the literary equivalent of a popcorn flick, which runs on sheer enthusiasm in order to get its paper-thin protagonists from one plot point to the next. The problem is that, unless it is particularly uninhibited in its exuberance, few people are going to remember that sort of thing two days after they've read it. Just like with a movie that's all CGI flash and zero storytelling substance.

So if you really want to fill out a story, to give it genuine weight, to make it memorable, then your characters have to be people. In all their beautifully ugly glory. And that's really all there is to it.

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We were going to use the time machine to prevent the robot apocalypse, but the guy who built it was an electrical engineer.