Over the past two days, I have published the first two parts of my sci-fi writer’s manifesto: five simple statements intended to guide my writing. This is the full set.
- Write only about what is real, or about what can reasonably be foreseen based on what is real.
- Be honest about what is real and what is not real.
- Do not write if you have nothing important to say.
- Write in a clear, simple style, so as to be understood.
- Look forward and outward from where we are to where we might one day be.
Today, I elaborate on the third item. As usual, please remember, I’m not saying these statements should apply to anyone except myself.
3. Do not write if you have nothing important to say.
I read too many books that leave me thinking, “Why did anybody bother writing that?” Almost all television drama has this effect. There is violence, humiliation, degradation, torture, rape, a thousand cruelties that seem to be inflicted for no purpose other than to titillate. The “high concept” description of such pieces would read like the typical description of a film in a TV listings magazine. “Destruction Vector: An ex-cop vigilante tracks down the cyborgs who killed his wife and who plan to destroy Mars with a stolen doomsday bomb.” These books might be well-written, they may be great stories, they may be page turners, but wouldn’t it be better if they were all that and said something interesting or worthwhile?
As with the impossible worlds problem (see yesterday’s post), the argument for pointless melodrama (or romance, or angst-ridden divorce stories) is that they’re fun. And again, they can be – especially if the writer shows some constraint on the rape and torture front. They can even be fun to write. But I would like to do more than this. I would like to be able to answer the question, “What is your book about?” with a statement of its idea rather than with a list of action scenes.
Fiction with a message, they say, is tedious and boring. If the characters become mouthpieces for the writer’s agenda, they become two-dimensional and unrealistic. Perhaps the people who say this are only remembering bad fiction, perhaps they have forgotten books like 1984 and Brave New World, The Martian Chronicles, and Fahrenheit 451.
Setting myself the task of saying something important isn’t all that hard. There are many things I’ve learned in life, many things I want to say. I feel I have a contribution to make to understanding the human condition. It sounds pompous and arrogant, I know, but there it is. What kind of a person would I be if I had learned nothing? How much of a waste would my life have been if I could contribute nothing? And what is writing for if it is not to communicate ideas?
Simple entertainment, filled with clichés instead of ideas, and platitudes instead of arguments, has its place. Someone once described television as “bedtime stories for tired adults.” I’ve used TV that way myself many a time and been grateful for it. But writing this kind of entertainment is not what I aspire to. I would like my writing to mean more, to myself and to others.
