THE RIGIDLY PRESCRIPTIVE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE: Gwen Parrott

A strange title, you may think, as it’s the place all fiction writers inhabit, yet it’s even stranger than that. It has occurred to me, over many years of writing crime novels, that this land is one which has stricter rules than the ordinary lives we all live when we’re not writing. But surely the essence of ‘fiction’ lies in its name. It’s not meant to be true, so anything goes.  

But it doesn’t.

The irony of writing fiction is that authors can establish colonies on far planets or describe an alternative version of this world, invent machinery that doesn’t exist and create alien or supernatural beings, which readers will accept without blinking. However, if one alien being just happens to meet another who proves to be important to the story, you can bet your life that at least one reader will complain about the ‘unlikelihood’ of that happening, on Alpha Centauri when the two protagonists are blobs of sentient green jelly.

Coincidences, or serendipitous occurrences are, for some reason, unacceptable in fiction. I don’t know about you, but such things happen to me on a weekly basis and I have to admit I’m puzzled by the embargo on them. It may be that crime fiction, in particular, needs an in-built, ruthless and relentless logic to work. Nothing can be ascribed to luck or happenstance, even though real-life cases quite often involve a lucky break on the part of the beleaguered detectives. After all, the Yorkshire Ripper was caught because he had the tools of his horrible trade in the boot of his car. What if he’d been sufficiently plausible so that the police officers hadn’t opened the boot or hadn’t recognised their significance in the dark?

This emphasis on a logic that doesn’t apply to real life extends to the structure and the characters. Fiction, in many respects, is a kind of contraction of life to its essentials. Whereas life meanders, aimlessly at times, that cannot happen unless you’re willing to risk losing the reader’s interest. Every incident has to be pertinent and drive the story forward. Even in those moments of relaxation, which are needed between times of high tension or danger, there has to be a purpose to the casual conversation or the family gathering. This is why so many such pauses in the action are awkward or downright unhappy. As a writer, you take every opportunity to emphasise character or give an insight into background.

In the same way, there is no room in any scene for an irrelevant character. You will have noticed that life itself is full of them, but if you’re an avid reader of crime fiction, as I am, you become immediately suspicious of a character who doesn’t appear to play a role and is only briefly seen.  Experience tells you they’re going to turn up later – possibly wielding a sledge-hammer. Conversely,, an overly- detailed description of a minor character who doesn’t play an important part in the story is going to make readers resentful. They are likely to ask ‘What happened to the cleaning lady who was given two pages of description in Chapter One?’ There are authors who ignore this and give every single character a full back-story no matter whether their role is important or miniscule. It may be a clever piece of misdirection. I’m undecided – you’ll have to ask Stephen King about it.     

Once you know about the rules of fiction, you tend to look out for the signs of it in work that purports to be autobiographical or ‘true-life’. It’s surprising how often you realise that an autobiographical piece has been fictionalised and tidied up– nobody’s memory is that exact! Perhaps unfairly, the rules also mean that fiction reads differently from real-life anecdotes, no matter how entertaining they are. In anecdotes, there are coincidences, too many characters who are merely standing around and taking up space in the narrative drive and events that don’t lead anywhere. If presented as fiction, they don’t convince us even though they’re true. As readers, we’re a tyrannical, demanding bunch.

 As I said in the title, the ‘Land of Make-Believe’ is not a easy-going place. Enter it at your peril.

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The Della Arthur Series in English on Kindle.

Dead White

Beyond the Pale

Red Haze on the Horizon

Grey is the Grave (to be published shortly)

Dead White is also available in paperback (original publisher Gomer Press, now available from Y Lolfa).

Cyfres Dela Arthur yng Nghymraeg.

Gwyn eu Byd

Cyw Melyn y Fall

Gwawr Goch ar y Gorwel

Ar gael mewn clawr meddal (cyhoeddwyd gan Wasg Gomer, ond gellir eu prynu nawr oddi wrth Y Lolfa)

Aur yn y Pridd (i’w chyhoeddi gan Wasg y Bwthyn ar ddiwedd Gorffennaf 2024)

Nofelau cyfoes Maeseifion

Hen Blant Bach (Gomer, trwy law Y Lolfa)

Tra Bo Dwy (Gomer, trwy law Y Lolfa)

Yr Eneth Ga’dd ei Gwrthod (Gwasg y Bwthyn)

Gwen Parrott writes crime novels in both English and Welsh. Having been brought up in an isolated village in North Pembrokeshire, her childhood ensured that she is well acquainted with heavy snow, living out of tins and coping with an unstable electricity supply.