Intentional Incongruities

By Kasie Whitener

I hate magical realism. It’s deceptive. It uses modernisms like cars and airports and government incompetence to make you feel like the story is real.

Then a horse flies (Winter’s Tale). Or the main character leaps off a cliff and sprouts wings (Song of Solomon).

Magical realism gets to a point in the story where the reader believes all of this could happen and then says, “I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona, too.”

Wait, what? If I’m reading fantasy, I want to know as early as the first page. Do not trick me.

Trust between reader and writer is a fiction writing tenet. It’s one of the things the professors in MFA programs tell you is sacrosanct. To betray a reader’s trust is to produce terrible fiction.

So what about historical fantasy? We accept that fantasy fiction will have mythical creatures like werewolves and witches and that historical fiction will have limited technology (horse-drawn carriages are ever present).

What are the conventions of historical fantasy when we know historical fiction should be accurate but fantasy fiction is more permissive?

In my current work in progress, my vampires are time travelers. Although the vampire narrator was born in California in the 1970’s, he’s been able to travel back in time to 1816 and earn Lord Byron’s friendship. What kinds of conventions must I observe in the telling of this cross-genre story?

I don’t want it to be magical realism. I don’t want to trick my readers into believing this is a historical fiction novel and then suddenly my narrator bites Mary Shelley.

So I’m honest about the character’s abilities and his purpose in 1816. But he’s not from that era; his values and expectations are more modern.

The biggest challenge has been managing the incongruities between modern vampires and the historical setting. In some ways, I have adapted my character to 1816. His narrator voice is a formal, Jane Austen-style voice. But he smokes cigarettes which did not exist in 1816.

Incongruities are a valuable story-telling tool. They are used to foreshadow (Why is the second story window open?) and to sow doubt (That traveling salesman doesn’t have any samples of his product?). Incongruity isn’t meant to trick or befuddle, it’s meant to provide that subtle nudge toward the writer’s vision.

While magical realism responds to a reader’s confusion with, “Because magic,” subtle incongruity can provide valuable contrasts between characters and create the very circumstances the protagonist must overcome.

Incongruities have proved troublesome for some of my beta readers. Time travel is a complex fantasy genre. It’s a type of uchronia, or a re-imagining of history. It requires suspension of disbelief. To avoid the arbitrariness of magical realism, historical fantasy must use its incongruities purposefully.

As I work through revision, I am mindful of the incongruities that indicate displaced persons. The hints I’m giving as to the characters’ adjustment in their environments should not be too distracting. It is not my intention to trick the reader.

A Playlist for Inspiration

By Olga Agafonova

Certain kinds of music conjure up entire cinematic sequences in my mind and I’d like to share a few of these compositions with you along with some comments.

“Loud Places” by Jamie XX from the album “In Colour” (2015)

This understated, soft and yet vivid song brings to mind a relationship that blossomed in a remote cityscape, two lives intertwined in London, New York, Singapore. There is that one apartment light in a city of a million lights and I watch the couple, her making him a part of her life and him experiencing things he never had before. Then it all falls apart one day and she is there all alone at a bar at the top of a skyscraper looking for him in a crowd and finally spotting him arm-in-arm with a stranger.

“Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed/In My Time of Dying”

This is a gospel song recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1927 and covered since then by numerous artists, including Josh White, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan. Led Zeppelin’s version is exploding with almost too much energy for a song about a man contemplating his end but I do like the repeating “Oh my Jesus” and the “I can hear the angels signin’ ” at the end. I don’t hear the angels signing yet but I do like the idea of going out with that kind of fearlessness. 

“The Four Seasons: Spring” by Max Richter from “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi, the Four Seasons” (2012)

I like the entire album. Richter’s variations on Vivaldi are exquisite: he brings enough of himself into the music to make it startlingly new and raw.  A thousand stories can bloom on this fertile soil – after all, this is classical music, abstract enough to project whatever we want onto it.

“Endless” by Dave Gahan from “Hourglass (Studio Sessions)” (2007)

I’ve been listening to Depeche Mode and Dave Gahan for over a decade now. Their albums from the 80’s have an excess synth-pop sugar for my taste but starting from the mid - 90’s onward, their music has matured into something deeper. The acoustic version of “Endless” brings forth images of hovering above the Earth at night, being drawn to the stars and then being in the back of a taxi, going together with someone special in some other world, some other life where things work out the way exactly the way we want them.

LET’S BE FRANK

By Mike Long

Actually, let’s NOT be Frank, at least not until we’re forced to.  See, Frank is my closest friend, and Frank is fighting Parkinson ’s disease.  Frank is almost 85 now and is my latest excuse for not working on my fifth novel.

A few months back I went to pick up Frank for our weekly “lunch date” and found him on the kitchen floor, after his wife left for Bible study.  I called 911, and Frank has been in the Memory Care Unit of NHC since then.

Parkinsonism is also called Shaking Palsy.  The shaking can often be lessened or eliminated by medication, but the medication can lead to confusion and delusions.  At Frank’s age it is hard to differentiate between this disease and Dementia. 

Frank is happily married but this horrible affliction has stressed his wife and family to near breaking points.  She is here, but the rest of his family is scattered.  They have been real troopers, but they all work.

His wife visits him once or twice a day except when she’s sick.  Another close friend, Gale, goes by at least two or three times weekly. I live closest to the facility, so I go by four or five days a week.  We sit in the courtyard or walk in the hallway (he uses a walker), or we take him out to lunch.  Sometimes we have to help him with his food, but only sometimes.

He sees people who aren’t there and sometimes he talks to them.  Occasionally he thinks the nursing home is a cruise ship; it does have long corridors, a cafeteria, good food, attentive caring staff, and lots of nice “cabins.” He worries it will sail without his wife.

He is always happy to see us and really likes it when we bring Blueberry Donut Holes, Yogurt-Coated Pretzels, or Rum Raisin Ice Cream.

Sometimes, though, he asks me, “If the medicine isn’t making me better, why do I have to stay here?”

Then I cannot take the easy way and pretend I see “the man in that tree” or someone long dead, when Frank does see them.

I say, “Frank, this is your home now.  You are a big man, and you’re often confused.  You see things.  You’re starting to have accidents, and your wife can no longer dress or clean you.  This is home, and it’s a nice one.”

He’ll give me a sad smile and say, “Oh.  Of course you’re right.  Do you see the man in that tree?”

If I say no, he’ll respond, “Sometimes I see things that aren’t real.  I have to touch them to tell.  Last week I saw my father, but he’s been dead a long time.  I always shake your hand when you visit to make sure it’s you.”

Tonight, Mary and I are meeting Frank and his wife for dinner.  We’ll have great conversation about cruises we’ve done and watch him pick up an imaginary glass, sip from it, put it down carefully and then dab his lip with his napkin.

And we’re going to keep fighting this incurable nightmare with him, as long as we’re able. For now my fiction writing will take a back seat to real-life drama.

TABLE READINGS

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.vimeo.com/ondemand/disability

My writers’ group (SCWW Columbia II) is filled with a bunch of solipsistic pseudo-intellectuals who think they know more than the next guy – especially the guy sitting next to them at the writers’ group. It’s horrifying. Even the African-American members seem too White. A meeting is likely to give you mental snow blindness.

But the group is fun, and I fit in. I love eating at Casa Linda with these clowns.

Another good thing that happens is when I bring in ten pages of a screenplay and other writers take on the various roles of my characters. Reading your own stuff aloud is helpful. You grow a third ear. When somebody else reads your stuff to the group, your errors shine bright like Swedish fish jellybeans.

I think we should mix things up. Once a season, exchange pages with each other at the beginning of the meeting and prevent each writer from reading aloud her own work. I’d love to hear Rex pound out some of Bonnie’s poetry in that sarcastic staccato of his. Let Bonnie tackle the corpses piled “as high as a house,” and Rex read about wrestling with religion in the New South. It would be fun to hear Kasie shoot everyone in sight in post-Civil-War Texas and Mike lecture us about death-defying vampires. I’d like to listen to Ginny read about golf and Fred tell us stories about living with a disability. Just once.

Writing a stage play or a screenplay is miraculous because, eventually, others read your words. Like the experience of the Marquis de Sade in the movie Quills, hearing the mentally ill read your work and change it – consciously or unconsciously— often improves the writing. We are, after all, writing for others. The purpose is to convey a message. However solipsistic we might be, we are attempting to communicate what makes us human.

On April 9, 2016, a group of actors (experienced and new) will be reading my stage play, Bermuda, at Tapp’s 1644 Main Street). The show starts at 6 p.m. Everyone is invited; it’s an absurd comedy filled with messages.

I am no actor. Although I want to read with more expression, I still need to practice and learn. Right now, I hear myself sounding like dry oatmeal. Listening to my play being read by professionals is a learning experience. The same could be true of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.