Paranormal: Simply Escapist Fiction? Or Much More?

Escape. I love the etymology of this word because of the picture it conjures. Escape comes from the Latin ex + cappa. Cappa means head covering or cloak. I envision the cloaked figure glancing back over his (or her?) shoulder before slipping into the shadows to get away from approaching footsteps. Already my mind is conjuring a story to go with this mysterious figure. Escape.

We do our escape acts all the time – usually minus the cloak. There are seasons and reasons to escape. After a long day in the real world, we settle down to an iPad or DVD or CD or book in whatever format, and we escape for a few hours. In general all stories can be a form of escape. In particular the Paranormal can be an escape if we need time off from the Normal.

But for me, reading and writing Paranormal is not escape. I walk through the wardrobe in order to return with a shield of courage and a sword of insight. When I choose to write fantasy, it’s because I want to explore human nature in a setting that exposes and challenges the raw basics, the depth and breadth of life. For me that’s best done in a world where the rules are different. The world of the Paranormal wakes us up, forces us to think, keeps us on our toes. You can’t take a fantasy world for granted.

The Paranormal allows us to cross barriers, to go beyond, to challenge taken-for-granted beliefs. The Para serves to shake us and shock us out of our ruts so we can grasp truths we may not see otherwise. We humans need to cross barriers, to go beyond, to be challenged. We need to attempt the impossible, even if only in our imagination.

And sometimes what we imagine comes to pass. I once read that in 1900, people scoffed at the idea that New York City might grow to contain even a million people. Why? Because there were not enough stables to stall all the horses they would need. People in 1900 couldn’t imagine streets filled with cars. But somebody imagined it. When I was growing up, the comic strip character Dick Tracy wore a watch he could talk into – a marvelous, imaginary device back then, but not curious at all now. A few months ago, I Skyped my son in L.A. at the same time his father-in-law from Japan Skyped in on another laptop. My son turned the two laptops to face each other, and we had a spontaneous three-way conversation – which is amazing to a person who didn’t grow up with computers. Those of you who did, are yawning. Right?

So sometimes the Para becomes Normal. If our imaginations DARE. Sometimes we DARE only in books. Sometimes we DARE because of books. Next blog: The Dare and the Otherwise.

Meanwhile . . . Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com

Why is Paranormal Popular? – Part 2

“When your mother says there are no monsters, sometimes she is wrong.” – Maggie Stiefvater, YA fantasy author

In my last blog, I listed three of my theories about why paranormal novels are so popular with today’s readers.

1. Our postmodern age ushered in a renewed interest in the spiritual.
2. As we go global, the issues are huge, and paranormal embraces that scope.
3. Our society emphasizes image; many paranormals are about revealing/hiding image and character.

Here are three more reasons for the surge of interest in the paranormal genre.

4. The paranormal is therapeutic, according to Maria Tatar, author of Enchanted Hunters. G.K. Chesterton had a similar opinion. He wrote, “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. . . .The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.”

5. The paranormal is a way to get to the heart of truth. What makes a paranormal story truly effective is the normal part, the universal struggles and emotions we can identify with. We know that while the story is unreal it is not untrue.

Maggie Stiefvater, a writer of some of today’s best YA paranormal understands exactly this point. She explains, “I write about magic in my novels because I want to write about the truth. To me, these are the things that are true about the world: there are heroes and there are villains. Great power comes with terrible consequences. The hardest battles are fought in your own head. Money shouldn’t change who we are or how people look at us, but it does. When your mother says there are no monsters, sometimes she is wrong . . . As a fantasy author, I’ve heard rumblings of folks who complain that all teens read these days is fantasy. Novels about magic. Novels about myth. Novels about things that aren’t true. But I’d argue that you can’t get much truer.” (from an interview in The Guardian)

Bruno Bettelheim, in his classic book Uses of Enchantment, wrote, “The unrealistic nature of these tales . . . is an important device, because it makes obvious that the . . . tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.”

6. We adults are expressing our own adult angst. Most of the writers of YA paranormal are adults. As I reported in a blog last fall, according to a study by Bowker Market Research, over half the buyers of YA books (for ages 12-18) are 18 or older, and most are 30-44. (For my theories about that, see my blog, Adults Reading YA.)

The paranormal is a venue where writers can face their own questions and fears, their hatred and their love. It’s where they can search for meaning in the meaningless, hope in hopelessness, and justice in an unjust world. In our stories the evil, the darkness, and the villains exist to get us to grace, light, and all that’s right. I believe that the best novels reveal chaos in order to get to calm, fear to get to courage, hatred to get to love, vengeance to get to forgiveness, despair to get to hope. That’s what most of us want. It’s what we need. It’s what we find in the best of the paranormal.

So there you have my theories. Next time: Paranormal in all its versions is often called “escapist” fiction. Is it? Or is it much more?

Meanwhile . . . Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com

Paranormal in the Spotlight: Why so Popular?

Nine of the top ten current YA bestsellers on Amazon are paranormals. Wow! And why? I have some theories.

1. Our postmodern age ushered in a renewed interest in the spiritual. After a modern age that tried to give us all the answers, we have a postmodern hunger for the mystical, the unexplainable, the questions, and the quest. The paranormal is, in a sense, a postmodern “thought experiment.” Patrick Grim, professor of philosophy at the State University of New York says, “Thought experiments are intellectual probes, often analogous to testing the extremes in mathematics and science.” He goes on to explain that testing the extremes may not answer the questions, but at least it shows you what you’re dealing with.

In the same way, good paranormal is not meant to answer questions, but to pose them. The paranormal is meant to show us what we’re dealing with and send us on a further journey when we return to real life. The issues raised in the paranormal lead us to ponder deep and universal concepts, the cosmic realities of life.

2. As we go global, the issues are huge. Sarah Clark, Waterstone’s children’s buying manager says that the 2012 teen shortlist for the Waterstone’s Children’s Prize “demonstrates how young people today are not afraid to talk about serious subjects, in some cases more so than adults.”

We often find courage and hope by living through characters who stand against and overcome horrendous obstacles thrown at them by powers and authorities over which they have no control. It’s the allure of the underdog. When we feel helpless, stories of supernatural power and winning against great odds appeal to us. We’re encouraged by seeing characters work their way out of intensely difficult situations.

3. Our society places an overwhelming emphasis on image, which leaves us hungry for character. Not character in the sense of protagonist/antagonist, but character as in values. Image is especially important to teens, who are in a stage of establishing their identity. Who am I? We cloak ourselves in blogs and Facebook entries and tweets – or we reveal ourselves there. The struggle is one of how much to reveal, how much to hide. Deep down we want to be understood, known, and respected – loved for who we are, warts and all. But is it safe to reveal ourselves? Werewolves, vampires, fairies, half-angels, and all sorts of otherworldly beings are cloaks. The struggle in paranormal novels often has to do with hiding or revealing character – and discovering where the true values are.

F.J. Molson writes that good fantasy is “explicitly concerned with the existence of good and evil and the morality of human behaviour … [it] takes for granted that good and evil exist and that there are substantive discernible differences between them. [It assumes that] choosing between right and wrong and accepting the consequences of that choice are marks of maturity.” So what to hide, what to reveal? What is my identity: is it my image or my character? Where do I find values I can live by?

I’ll leave you pondering those questions for now. To do justice to the rest of my theories – and to do you a favor and not keep you here too long – I’ll wait for my next blog to give you a few other thoughts about the why of paranormal.

Until then . . . Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com

Yes, They Dare: the Para and the Normal

Have you ever read Stan and Jan Berenstain’s picture book The Spooky Old Tree? Three bear siblings set off to explore the inside of a gnarled tree full of dangerous obstacles. As they approach each risk, the book asks, “Do they dare?” The answer is always, “Yes. They dare.” And off the bears go – with the shivers – to conquer the unknown. This is Paranormal for the preschool set.

We rarely stop to think that our children’s first books are paranormals, but it makes sense to start there. Preschoolers live in their imaginations. Big Bird is real to preschoolers. At night as far as they know, teacups and saucers escape their cabinets and dance as they do in Beauty and the Beast. In picture books, animals often talk, wear clothes, eat at a table, and even go to kindergarten. “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus” wouldn’t be funny if kids didn’t believe he could. At least in the book.

Around age five, children begin correctly distinguishing between the real and the imaginary – the normal and the paranormal. Reality, the Normal shows us “what is,” while the Para stretches our imaginations. Author Holly Lisle points out that fantasy, the Para, “entices you to envision how life could be – more, better, deeper, wider.”

Paranormal is perhaps the most ancient of story types, from creation myths to monster tales. Paranormal is the horror of Odysseus spearing the Cyclops in his one eye. It’s the chilling sacrifice of Iphigenia. It’s the treachery of Chronus’s cannibalism. For the ancients, Paranormal gave meaning to the Normal. Normal people took courage from the resourcefulness and faithfulness of Odysseus. They took warning from the web of consequences that resulted from a bad decision made in fear, as in the story of Iphigenia. Even today we can look up from reading the tale of Chronus and ask, “Do we still devour our young – in ways less extreme but just as damaging?”

We readers have flings. As the literary pendulum swings from time to time, different genres gain popularity and then swing out of favor. Not too long ago we had a fling with high fantasy, then vampires. Dystopia and steam punk are popular. Zombies are alive and well, and I hear aliens are gaining ground. The paranormal is surging in popularity today, and it comes in all shapes and sizes: dystopian, steam punk, horror, magical realism, high fantasy, sword and sorcery, sci-fi . . .

Why is paranormal so popular? In my next blog, I’ll serve you my opinion in five reasons. (At least I’ll begin the five. Depending on space, I may have to split them into two blogs.) So stay tuned! Should be interesting.

Meanwhile . . . Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com

I Can’t, I Am a Writer

I want to just sit back and read,
but I can’t,
I am a writer.

I want to simply watch the world,
to soak it in,
to revel in it,
to cry and laugh over it,
but I can’t contain it,
because I am a writer.

I want to just listen to conversations,
to mull over them,
discard pieces,
treasure others,
stay silent and private,
but I can’t,
I am a writer.

I want to dream,
to wander the shores of my mind,
jump the waves,
gather shells,
but I wash up on the shores of my own novel.
I am a writer.

I want to read the story,
but before I can,
I must write it.

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

What’s “Style” in Writing?

1. “It was a dark and stormy night. I was on my fourth cup of coffee. Diesel black. There was a knock at the door.”

2. “One high horn shrilled and ceased. The silence that followed was shaken only by the sound of many footsteps keeping time with a drum struck softly at a slow heart-pace. Through cracks in the roof of the Hall of the Throne, gaps between columns where a whole section of masonry and tile had collapsed, unsteady sunlight shone aslant. It was an hour after sunrise.”

3. “The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down.”

Which of these three comes from a fantasy novel? Which is a noir detective mystery? Which is contemporary YA? The first is my parody on noir detective. The second opens Ursula LeGuin‘s The Tombs of Atuan. The third comes from John Green‘s An Abundance of Katherines. As you can readily tell, each genre generally calls for a different style.

Of course style is not quite so simple, because within each genre, each individual writer has an individual, particular styles, twin to the writer’s voice, which I blogged about last week. As with voice, style is a natural part of the writer’s work. Just as a cover band can mimic the unique style of an artist or group, a writer can copy the style of an admired author, but the real artistry comes when a writer allows his or her own style to flourish.

How do you know – or discover – your style? Illustrator E.B. Lewis says, “Style is something the artist should never recognize or work toward. It comes naturally as you work.” Maybe that’s why we write best in the genre we like to read. The style of what we like gets into our bones and feels natural.

So what is style? Alec Rackowe, in an old issue of The Writer, said the primary factor in style is the ability to feel. “The way you tell your story is your style and the degree of emotional quality is the measure of your style, for as you learn to put what you feel into words, you will to a greater or lesser degree always tend to use the same phrasing.”

For me fluency is the key, relaxing with my work, not forcing it but letting it flow. That takes practice, and I’m just now getting a handle on it. Maybe that’s what E.B. Lewis was saying. When I let the story flow, my style will show up naturally in my word choice, in how I arrange those words to make sentences (syntax, phrasing), in my use of punctuation, in the emotions I emphasize, the images and symbols I use, in my choice of metaphor, in the themes I lean toward. All of these are elements of style.

One caveat: Don’t excuse bad grammar by calling it style. Bad grammar is not good style. A strong foundation in the rules of writing allows a writer to relax and let style appear. For example, a rule of thumb is to use active voice and not passive. (“Clouds blocked the sun” is active, better than the passive “the sun was blocked by clouds” or “it was cloudy.”) However, look again at the three opening paragraphs. “The silence that followed was shaken . . . It was an hour after sunrise,” writes LeGuin. Green says, “. . . one of his general policies in life was . . .” Both passive, both effective. Neither is a mistake. (That sentence is passive, too, as is this one.)

The style comes in knowing correct grammar but not letting it tie you in knots. You feel what’s right for each sentence, what contributes to the flow, what makes for smooth reading. And a good editor knows better than to edit out style.

Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com

Hearing Your Own Voice

Remember what it was like to hear your voice recorded for the first time? I wrinkled my nose and thought, “Horrors! Is that me?” Somehow our skulls change the way we hear our own voices. It took me a while to get used to my voice the way others hear it. It also took me a while to realize it’s okay to sound different from any other singer or speaker I ever heard. In fact it’s not only okay, it’s good. My voice is uniquely mine.

Voice comes out in what we write, too, but the concept of written voice seems as hard to grasp as smoke. We can pin down plot, corral character development, size up scene and setting, but when it comes to voice – and style, its elusive twin – we have a hard time defining it. What is voice? How do you find it? Can you develop a voice?

Elizabeth Berg, a fantastic and experienced writer, defines voice as “the way you tell a story . . . the personality beneath the words, the current that runs through a story, the thing the reader must be able to believe in, and trust . . .” Trust is a big deal here. You gain the reader’s trust, because your voice, from the first page on, says, “Listen. This is real.” Even if the story is fiction, it’s believable, it feels like it could have happened, and it’s emotionally true. It sounds authentic. You gain the reader’s interest and trust with a voice that’s authentically yours.

Writer Mimi Schwartz says voice is created in “a mix of words, rhythms and attitude . . .” To me, rhythms belong to voice’s twin, style. Words are both (word choice = voice, syntax = style). But attitude, now that’s definitely voice. “We all have many voices with which to tell our stories,” says Schwarz. “All can be authentic in that they reveal honest responses to experience, but one usually feels more comfortable, truer.”

Okay, but how do you get voice into your novel? One way is to use specifics: specific nouns (not flower, but rose; not car, but Lexus; not lunch, but BLT), active verbs (not ran, but loped), specific details in descriptions, and unique metaphors (as tense as a harp string wound too tight). The specific details that you choose come from your voice. Even filtered through the eyes of your point of view character, they’re your details. Berg says, “. . . it’s your eye seeing and writing those details in the most natural way you can that means you are writing in your own voice.”

Don’t listen to your edit voice in the first draft, just write. “Get out of your own way and let the story happen,” says Berg. “Write a first draft quickly,” Schwartz advises. After the first draft, let the story sit and cool for a while. Then read it aloud. You’ll hear your written voice. If you stumble over a passage you’re reading, stop, look away, and say it out loud the way you would tell someone. In other words, in your own voice.

Recognizing your writing voice – and becoming comfortable with it – may take practice. I think that only in my third novel did I begin to relax enough to flow through the story in my own voice. In my first two novels the voice was a bit tense, because I was worried about doing it right. My voice is there, but I can tell it’s self-aware. As for my fourth novel, voice seems to be flowing even easier than in the third. It’s worth noting that the first three novels were third person fantasy. The fourth is a first person contemporary. The voices in the different genres are definitely different, but they are mine. In fact this blog is me in my voice, and you can tell, can’t you? Not only by the voice, but also by the style (which I’ll try to tackle next blog).

Voice “makes your work distinctive,” write Bayles and Orland in Art and Fear. And that’s a good thing. Perhaps the best advice comes from Elizabeth Berg: “I believe the most important thing about voice is to respect your own.”

Happy Reading! Happy Writing!

© 2013 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com