Untold Backstory — some notes
The evolution of this piece (“Untold Backstory,” published here on December 25) surprised me. It started as a simple experiment. I was curious to see how difficult it might be to write a few paragraphs of narrative that make connections which were actually idiotic and not connected at all, but in a tone that seemed realistic and authoritative.
This interests me because I admire the way Frank Herbert was able to evoke in Dune so much elaborate but solidly plausible motivations, backstory, cultural history, international intrigue, etc., without ever quite defining all these seemingly specific past events his characters were reacting to. In a vaguely similar way, John Fowles creates connections and implications in The Magus without ever really specifying anything. The reader believes that sufficient information is available, even if it doesn’t happen to appear in the novel. This is a wonderful subterfuge . . .
At first, writing the “Backstory” piece seemed quite easy, and the first few coincidences were obviously arbitrary and irrelevant. But then the tone and flow of the writing began to win me over, even as the writer, and it grew increasingly difficult not to tie things back in realistic ways. I had to force myself to break the logical thread over and over — the thing kept trying to make sense!
At the end, I decided to loop back in a completely unjustifiable meaningless way to the first character mentioned (David Vivian). The idea was to make a connection so ridiculous that the reader would realize once and for all that the whole chain of connections merely sounded like connections while in reality (did I say reality?) they were utterly unrelated and irrelevant to one another.
Unfortunately, the tone of presumed authority was too effective — even starkly pointless connections come across as weirdly logical. If the new guy sitting next to an established character has nothing to do with the story, the reader assumes it will become clear soon enough. If it doesn’t, though, what does it matter? The flow soon obscures the fact that we couldn’t possibly know what this arbitrary new character does. The author plunges on and doesn’t even vaguely justify this arbitrary fork in the plot, but it’s too late — instead of being outraged, the reader has re-engaged with the new story line.
To my surprise, the majority of readers or listeners I’ve discussed it with feel that they’ve heard a reasonable tale of coincidences, much like those science history programs on TV. If I don’t tell them in advance that it’s a big irrational bowl of spaghetti, they almost always end up saying, “Wow, that’s pretty amazing.” Which means that as a writer, my original intent of the piece is an utter failure. (Plus, it’s not really funny at all unless you’re into the ironic value of mere tone overshadowing content. And even then it’s not very funny.)
I think what this exercise reveals is that we humans connect everything. I don’t think it would even be possible to write something so illogical that people would not still spontaneously connect everything. I think I could pull a series of random events out of 20 novels and stick them together without any continuity at all, and people would find order and connections throughout the whole mashup.
This strange tendency to make connections, however contrived they may be, makes it a lot easier to understand why so many people get hooked by vastly implausible conspiracy theories — just string together a handful of assertions, whether or not they’re individually proven, and even if they’re not at all logically relevant. If the tone is one of proving something — anything — then readers will tend to honor the “proof.” This is especially true if the writer’s voice is serious and authoritative.
For a fiction writer, rather than a propagandist, the positive outcome of this exercise came from learning how hard it is to prevent intentionally unrelated events from turning into a real story. Like the Mafia segment, around the middle of the piece — damned if that wasn’t turning into a Damon Runyon tale, in spite of my concerted efforts to keep it illogical, irrelevant, and inexcusably random.
So now I can’t help considering writing an entire novel this way — just a bunch of random scenes, focusing on the content of each scene, while the “plot” can go wherever it wants. In fact, no plot. And yet, truly plotless? I don’t think it would be possible for it to end up with no plot. But the exciting side of it is that I’ll have little or nothing to do with the plot until it’s emerged on its own, and it will be fascinating to see what turns out to be.
Addendum: Long after writing the original “Untold Backstory” piece, a fleshed-out rendition appeared in my word processing program. It found its way into print in my collection, Brain Frieze, under the title “16 Degrees of Correlation” The latest revision has it renamed as “Mobius Trip,” a much more appropriate title.