Posted: July 5, 2023

When Worlds Collide

It's hard enough to create a single fictional world, one that's internally consistent, gives your readers enough details to feel they're actually there, and is a background that enhances the drama. This is why, when they're creating a world different from the one we all share - in historical novels, fantasies, science fiction - most writers only create the one world.

Thing is, the character of your world depends on who's looking at it. All of us filter what we see through our own lives. We assume some things are true and tend to see them whether they're there or not. Our fears, even fears we aren't conscious of, change how we feel about what we see. Creating a world actually means getting so deeply into your main character's head that you make your readers see the world as they see it. As I say, it's hard enough to do once.

What if you could do it several times?

Many years ago - long enough that I have forgotten the author's name - I edited a manuscript about a land dispute on a Navajo reservation in the southwest - a sacred site was going to be developed. The story started out with a scene from inside the head of an old Navajo woman whose grandfather had settled the land confronting a Bureau of Indian Affairs lawyer and the Hopi Sheriff who was helping him. Through the Navajo's eyes, readers saw the Sheriff as a sellout and the BIA lawyer as a burned-out bureaucrat who didn't care about the people he was supposed to be helping.

The next scene was from the point of view of the Hopi Sheriff, whose grandfather had lived on the land until the Navajo woman's grandfather had taken it away from him. He saw her as a self-righteous troublemaker who didn't know the history of her own people. He also saw the BIA lawyer as a cynical bureaucrat.

Then you got into the BIA lawyer's head and found out that he joined the Bureau because he wanted to do some good in the world. But he didn't have the budget or the resources he needed, and didn't have the support of anyone whom he was trying to negotiate with. And so it went. Every new character whose head you entered had a distinct take on the same situation.

So why would you want to put in the thought and effort of changing your readers' perceptions of major characters with every new point of view?

It can make for some great drama, for one thing. Most fictional conflicts involve someone who's right and someone who's wrong. But where both sides have a point, the drama moves to a deeper level. Readers aren't simply worried about who will win. They're worried about who they want to win.

You can also work conflict into your story by putting two worlds on collision course.

Elizabeth Cadell's The Fledgling tells the story of Tory, a young girl raised by aged maiden aunts in Portugal, who is going to England for schooling. Her father has arranged for a chaperone, Mr. Darlan, for the train trip. And Mr. Darlan and Tory see at least one aspect of the world very differently. Here is Tory as Mr. Darlan sees her. (Note, the book was written more than 40 years ago, so the narrative voice is a bit more distant than I'd encourage a client to use today.)

Mr. Darlan, having no powers of divination, filed her as a mousey, well-mannered little thing, not pretty and certainly no conversationalist; one of those tongue-tied children out of whom monosylables had to be dragged.

And here is how Tory sees herself.

Tory . . . sat motionless but relaxed, her expression serious and attentive, her mind elsewhere, lending as always a dutiful eye and a deaf ear. She never fidgeted, never interrupted; she had never been heard to contradict. She agreed with everything that was planed for her and made her own arrangements later, for she had discovered that the easiest way through life was to set out obediently upon the appointed path and the slip away down a side turning.

At this point, readers know it is only a matter of time before Mr. Darlan and Tory's worlds collide.

If you want to create clearly distinct views of the world, you've got to be able to hold two different values in your head at once - to see that the same character could be a mindless bureaucrat or a frustrated idealist, or that a young girl could be both reserved and mousy and precociously independent. This involves letting your characters be who they are without judging them, which isn't easy. But developing this kind of non-judgemental observation is one of the way that writing can make you a better person.

And it can often make for better stories.