Fiction imitates life.
That’s the idea, anyway.
Fiction sets out to create situations, scenarios and settings with which we, as readers, can identify, relate or at least imagine.
Yet in many ways, fiction is utterly unlike Real Life.
Take the turning points the author has to create and inject into the story to propel the plot on its way.
Those sudden realisations or revelations where the protagonist spontaneously becomes aware of something crucial or makes a life-changing decision.
It’s part of the plotting and pacing of a novel – a moment at which the author has to take control and head the narrative and characters into the downward straight towards some sort of conclusion and the final page.
It might take the form of a character realising a supressed love or equally an antipathy for another. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, for example. Jane and Mr Rochester.
Or there might be a poignant epiphany where the protagonist suddenly has a sense of revelation about the direction of their life.
In E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End Margaret Schlegel has a sudden and startling – both to her and the somewhat sceptical reader, it has to be said – discovery of her unexpected love for Mr Wilcox:
An immense joy came over her. It was indescribable…on leaving him, she realised that the central radiance had been love…waves of emotion broke, as if a tide of passion was flowing through the night air.
One of my favourite self discoveries or epiphanies is at the very end of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers as Paul (thinly veiled fictionalised version of Lawrence himself, of course)
But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.
(and how perfect is that use of the adverb quickly to define his steadfast intention!)
But in Real Life, such discoveries are rarely so neatly confined to a moment, a carefully staged scene on a page in the manner of a novelist.
In fact, it’s only with the gift of hindsight, looking back down a tunnel of years that we unfictional mortals think in such a way.
It’s all in retrospect that we ponder such matters as:
There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when I sat with my small child at bedtime and read a story.
There must have been a last time, a final occasion, when same said small offspring wanted to hold my hand out in the street, have his tears wiped away with my kisses, held up his arms to be lifted high and embraced into the safety of mine.
Perhaps it’s just as well. The poignancy of these moments would be too much to bear if we realised them at the time of their occurrence.
Then there’s Love. Love in life and Love in fiction.
Of course there’s the whole matter of coup de foudre. Falling in love at first sight does inhabit the Real World rather than purely the fictional.
Or does it? Is it more a case of coup de lust or coup de convenience?
Not so much a turning point as a gradual and slow burn towards something more substantial?
In novels, characters have to be depicted as coming to conclusions.
They have to be described in a certain situation or place and some sort of inner dialogue has to be written to indicate this – and all within a matter of a page or two.
Whereas in life our busy and muddled lives rarely offer such carved out moments for us to see or think quite so clearly. We gradually swim our way a little blindly towards discoveries and decisions until we find it’s too late to turn back or change our minds.
So no wonder writing stories is such fun!
Controlling characters’ lives and destinations, having a clarity of thought and direction for them that the real world fails to offer us!
If only we could live in a fictional universe with such control over the timing and outcomes of our lives, it would all be so much more comfortable and rewarding!
In the meantime, clear tipping and turning points remain solely in the hands of the author – who really does require them to serve the needs of the novel!
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