I’m writing a fantasy novel. After a few rounds with realism, I am finally ready to say it—I’m writing the kind of story I love to read, one that blends elements of real life with that which stretches the borders of belief. Through the Looking Glass. Lost Horizon. Robotech. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Left Hand of Darkness. Kushiel’s Dart. The Fifth Season. Supernatural. Modao Zushi.
It’s been a journey to get here, to the point where I’m even comfortable admitting to it. Some of that comes from the overwhelming number of voices that say “That’s kids’ stuff. Silly. Immature. Not literary.” From having to explain to people that I can read either Euripedes or fan fiction, and one is not less fulfilling than the other.
But another part of it has been a long-held belief that you can’t write about a world unless you can live in it, and if you as the author can’t believe in the aliens or vampires you’re writing, no one else will.
It’s very hard to be in a STEM field and believe in vampires. I’ve taken numerous courses on how to make sure the magic of the world I’m building is coherent, and how to avoid trying to explain the physics of things. It’s sleight of hand, misdirection, making people focus on the emotional, human truths of a story so they don’t wonder why your explosions are making sound in the vacuum of space.
Another thing that’s helping is reading Sunny Singh’s excellent A Bollywood State of Mind. For years I couldn’t understand why people liked Bollywood movies. They were so unrealistic. Who suddenly starts dancing in a revealing sleeveless dress in the middle of the snowy Alps? Weren’t they just in Delhi? In what city can a woman start dancing on the street and have everyone just join her chastely and in perfect synchronization? And is traffic just waiting for the dance number to end?
It took me a while to stop dissecting the culture with the lens of so-called scientific objectivity. Emotional truth makes up for a multitude of storytelling sins, which is something I know well as a reader. Sunny talks about this in a chapter on discovering queer female desire for the first time, in an old movie—Razia Sultan. Here’s a song video from that movie. You don’t have to understand a word to know what’s happening. This was 1983, when laws against homosexuality stood strong. To me, this song is a mirror of a moment I experienced in college, when I first heard (and saw) Leo Delibes’ Flower Duet. You stop asking questions like why are these two women in a boat, don’t they have things to do, where did a servant train in music like this, it’s clearly dubbed—and just live in the world.
Permitting yourself to truly inhabit that imaginative space allows you to see and feel things you weren’t ready to, things the real world isn’t ready for you to know. These stories are always ahead of their time, battling censorship and questioning social norms and yet doing so with all the subtlety of a sushi knife. You don’t even know the cuts have been made, they’re so fine. Every author wants to change the world, and creating a story like this reshapes the collective imagination.
It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and yet doubted my ability. Well, it’s happening now. Let’s see where this road goes, because it sure isn’t going to any place I already know.
Also, read Sunny’s book. It’s glorious!