Thoughts on a fun novel I'll probably never write

[rynling]

Around this time last year, I had an idea for a novel that I abandoned after ten chapters. I dropped the project partially because I was dying from overwork, but mainly because the story was too cringe to exist.

Lo and behold, this year I have another idea for a novel that is very interesting to me but too cringe to exist.

In the stupid stories I tell myself in my head, everyone is smart and competent and only has enough flaws to keep the plot moving forward. Meanwhile, the stories I actually set down in writing are populated by losers who only manage not to fuck everything up by the grace of me, the writer.

In real life, I do know a fair number of people who are attractive and intelligent and hyper-competent, and I do like spending time with them (obviously), but their lives are kind of boring. Like, an opportunity will be given to them, and they will take advantage of it, and they will succeed. That's not really a story, you know?

If you're going to have a story about extremely competent people, they have to be facing world-ending, fantasy-novel problems. And while I sincerely love that sort of power fantasy, it feels a little too "teenage boy jerking off into a sock while reading Dune in his bedroom" for me to be completely comfortable with in public.

Still. I love my power fantasies as much as I love my magical realism, and I wish I had the energy to write both. For me, energy comes directly from positive feedback, and that's in short supply these days. But who knows? Maybe one day I'll make it as a writer, and then the world will be subjected to my cringe.

Comments

[lassarina]

So, I feel like there are a pair of spectra in speculative fiction: one I'll call the "Mary Sue to Worthless Loser" spectrum, and the other is "low vs high." The former is probably pretty obvious but it's the power/competence vs flaws thing. For a while I think it was very popular to have speculative fiction protagonists be like litfic protagonists, which is to say, miserable unlikable assholes whining "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" (the one and only thing I remember from the movie Clerks.) They aren't heroes, they aren't even antiheroes, they're just terrible people on multiple levels. And that was obviously a reaction to the Mythic Hero Without Flaws, but for my money it went too far the other way. There are enough douchebags in real life. I don't want to be expected to identify with them in my fun time.

The low to high is basically the scale from "solving the personal problems of a small village" to "oh shit the world is ending if we don't find the Macguffin in time." And I feel like both of these can be done really well--I love seeing competent people triumph over massive difficulties, and I also like the kind of minuscule, day to day thing of, e.g., Legends and Lattes where it's just a half-orc lady trying to figure out what to do with her life after adventuring. I actually read a super fascinating book recently, A Turn of Light by Julie E. Czerneda, that managed to be both of these things at once: the action takes place entirely in a village of nine families, not straying beyond its borders (except at the very beginning when it follows someone new coming to the village), and many of the concerns are extremely hyperlocal and specific to this place, but also, there is something Really Big going on that slowly unfurls as you go along, and I thought it was a really cool combo. (The book is very long and very slow paced, so be advised.)

My point is that if you combine the two spectra into a basic quadrant graph, there are people who will be here for each of the quadrants. Often more than one! and, let's be real, my biggest original project is epically cringe and self-indulgent and when a friend did an alpha read for me, her primary comment was "go harder." And you know, she's right. When I revise, I'm going to lean really hard into the self indulgence because fuck yeah, that's why.