J.R. Chartrand's Blog
May 25, 2012
When Hollywood Ruins Books
When I was a youngster, I liked stories that ended all neat and tidy. The hero always crushed the villain. The good guy always got the girl. Justice always triumphed over evil.
I first realized just how much I craved these conclusions when my mom suggested I read Bernard Malamud's classic "The Natural." The movie starring Robert Redford and Kim Bassinger was enormously more popular than the book ever was -- and likely for the dramatic and highly stylized ending. Rob Hobbs, who refused to accept payoff money from a bookie to strike out and throw the game, literally knocks the cover off the ball and the lights explode in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. He circles the bases to claim his glory to the infamous sound track. But in the book, Hobbs takes the money and strike out ... and I threw the book across the room as a 13-year-old boy when I read that. It wasn't supposed to happen that way.
Fast-forward 25 years and my taste in fictional endings have changed. My real life experiences have taught me that the good guy doesn't always win or get the girl. And sometimes evil people get away with atrocities -- even if only for a time to do more harm. That's not how I wish things went, but it's real life.
So, does fiction need to mirror real life? Or would readers prefer an escape where the wheels of justice run like a finely-tuned vehicle free from corruption or any evil too big?
I still like Hollywood endings ... in my movies. But in my fiction where the characters are flawed and the stories dance around the bounds of believability, I don't like tidy endings all the time. I like it more like real life ... where some things just never seem to get fully resolved and we must co-exist with such tension.
The Natural
I first realized just how much I craved these conclusions when my mom suggested I read Bernard Malamud's classic "The Natural." The movie starring Robert Redford and Kim Bassinger was enormously more popular than the book ever was -- and likely for the dramatic and highly stylized ending. Rob Hobbs, who refused to accept payoff money from a bookie to strike out and throw the game, literally knocks the cover off the ball and the lights explode in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. He circles the bases to claim his glory to the infamous sound track. But in the book, Hobbs takes the money and strike out ... and I threw the book across the room as a 13-year-old boy when I read that. It wasn't supposed to happen that way.
Fast-forward 25 years and my taste in fictional endings have changed. My real life experiences have taught me that the good guy doesn't always win or get the girl. And sometimes evil people get away with atrocities -- even if only for a time to do more harm. That's not how I wish things went, but it's real life.
So, does fiction need to mirror real life? Or would readers prefer an escape where the wheels of justice run like a finely-tuned vehicle free from corruption or any evil too big?
I still like Hollywood endings ... in my movies. But in my fiction where the characters are flawed and the stories dance around the bounds of believability, I don't like tidy endings all the time. I like it more like real life ... where some things just never seem to get fully resolved and we must co-exist with such tension.
The Natural
May 23, 2012
Writing Believable Fiction
One of the things I enjoy about writing fiction over investigative journalism is that you can steer the story in a direction that you want it to go. However, a complaint I often hear of readers is how unbelievable some fiction is. Good fiction can suspend belief for the sake of the story but must not insult the intelligence of the reader or make up something so fanciful that it belongs in a sci-fi novel only.
In one of my favorite stories told on the big screen in the classic comedy, Major League, the Cleveland Indians put together a team that won the pennant. At the time the movie was released, it was an unbelievable thought -- but it happened only a few years later. We all had to suspend belief that this lousy team could actually become good.
As I'm in the midst of writing "Over the Line," the follow-up novel to "Under Your Skin", I've chosen to have the Seattle Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl against the Miami Dolphins. Am I stretching the bounds of believability here? Maybe with both teams I am -- I'll let you decide.
What do you think? Do you like your fiction to be believable or to stretch the bounds a bit?
In one of my favorite stories told on the big screen in the classic comedy, Major League, the Cleveland Indians put together a team that won the pennant. At the time the movie was released, it was an unbelievable thought -- but it happened only a few years later. We all had to suspend belief that this lousy team could actually become good.
As I'm in the midst of writing "Over the Line," the follow-up novel to "Under Your Skin", I've chosen to have the Seattle Seahawks playing in the Super Bowl against the Miami Dolphins. Am I stretching the bounds of believability here? Maybe with both teams I am -- I'll let you decide.
What do you think? Do you like your fiction to be believable or to stretch the bounds a bit?
