Reason #17 Why I Want to be Stephen King When I Grow Up

This is the first reason. Go read it. It’s not long. I’ll wait.

(Back now? Isn’t that elegant and infuriating and utterly magnificent? And infuriating?)

Anyway. I’ll probably mention most of the next fifteen reasons at some point.

Which brings us to this, the subject of today’s post.

There’s a lot to chew on here, but I think this is the “pull quote” (for anyone who didn’t click over, he’s talking about the first sentence of a book and the fact that it should invite the reader in, and then how you accomplish that):

“So an intriguing context is important, and so is style. But for me, a good opening sentence really begins with voice. You hear people talk about "voice" a lot, when I think they really just mean "style." Voice is more than that. People come to books looking for something. But they don't come for the story, or even for the characters. They certainly don't come for the genre. I think readers come for the voice.”

I suspect there’s some hyperbole at work here, but he’s fundamentally right. I do want story, and characters, and (to a lesser extent) genre, but above all, I want to trust the author. Cor ad cor loquitur. If I’m going to trust you with my heart, I want to know something about yours.

So for fun (read: narcissistic masochism), I went back and looked at some of my own work in that light. I’m ruling out the screenplays, since I think that there a slightly different principle is at work. That left me with two mostly-outlined-but-mostly-unwritten novels, one drafted short story, and one short story that popped into my head six days ago - characters, plot, and setting all complete - and that has been consuming me ever since.

Now, I could analyze these to death (and have...and will...), but see, I know all of the stories. So for purposes of the “voice” test, I’m going to throw them out here and ask what you think. Here they are, in alphabetical order by title. Speaking of genre, they are all spy stories - a predilection about which I have theories, which will have to wait for another post.

I’m going to cheat a little with the novels: since each has a prologue, I’m going to give you that first sentence and then the beginning of the first chapter. With that said, have at it:

Acceptable Loss

By all rights, Yelena Zelenko should not have been in the Friedrichstrasse station that day.

Not for Profit

They asked me to change the names.

Within His Wounds: A Novel of Recusant England

Prologue opening:

Blood is curse and blessing; for a Howard, it is doubly so.

First chapter opening:

He gave his name as Mr. Edmunds, diamond merchant, neither of which was entirely a lie, though in private he would have exchanged the diamond for a pearl of great price.

The Younger Son

Prologue opening:

30th July, 1809

My Dear,

I have spent the greater part of the night praying that you have already heard the news, so that it will not be me to tell you.

First chapter opening:

My Lord Barham was late.

So. There they are. I was going to ask, Which of them make you want to read further? But perhaps I’d better take the safer route and ask, Do any of them make you want to read further? And of course the follow-up: Why or why not?

Meanwhile, I’m off to finish that short story. Whether or not it needs a new opening sentence.

Trusting in Princes: A Defense of the Aragorn Complex

I have a respect for Steven D. Greydanus that I extend to few film critics. And I really like most of his Very, Very Little Movie Glossary. But seeing as, lo these many years ago, I wrote a script celebrating the Aragorn Complex, I have a couple of thoughts on the trend.

Mr. Greydanus defines the Aragorn Complex thus:

Contemporary Hollywood no longer believes in rock-ribbed, confident, heroic leaders, such as Charlton Heston’s Moses in The Ten Commandments. The Moses of DreamWorks’ excellent The Prince of Egypt — self-doubting, conflicted, reluctant — is much more in keeping with our more skeptical view of heroism and leadership.

The archetypal example, of course, is Peter Jackson’s Aragorn, whose virtue, complexity and all-around worthiness to lead the filmmakers telegraph by vastly punching up the themes of reluctance and self-doubt in Tolkien. (Moses in Exodus also initially resists God’s call, but the DreamWorks film goes way beyond Exodus in this regard.)

I would argue that the real tragedy here is not that “Hollywood” has stopped believing in such leaders as characters, but that “Hollywood” still does believe in them - as politicians. But I digress. (Not really.)

I’m not sure that an unwillingness, or even inability, to believe in such heroes necessarily bespeaks a “cultural poverty,” as Mr. Greydanus calls it in the comments. I admit that, if it does, it is a cultural poverty that I share. Or more precisely, I don’t find such heroes useful. A “rock-ribbed, confident, heroic leader” does me no good. He just leaves me hoping that if I’m ever in trouble, he’ll come along.

I am afraid. I believe that the world is a dark and broken place, and that man is a dark and broken creature. So in my fiction, I don’t want someone who is not broken to fix everything. I want someone to tell me that brokenness does not make heroism impossible. I want someone to tell me that even I still have a chance.

(Necessary caveat: Of course there are stories that pile on the doubts and the flaws until we are left with a hero who is not a hero at all. That’s not what I want, and I admit that drawing the distinction in individual cases is extremely difficult. All ll I want to do here is address the trend.)

And there is this: If we continue to deconstruct our heroes, to remind ourselves that they are not idols or demi-gods, perhaps we will be more likely to search for the source of their heroism as something outside themselves. Perhaps, if all of them are broken, we will more clearly want Someone who is not broken.

Or perhaps not. I realize that I am advocating the more dangerous road. But in a post named for Estel, I prefer to hope.