The fictional dream is a term coined by the late writer John Gardner, author of several books about the nature of fiction writing. The book I will be referring to is “THE ART OF FICTION: NOTES ON CRAFT FOR YOUNG WRITERS.” I read this book while going to graduate school and it was an eye-opening experience because it taught me so much about creative writing in a way that I had never heard it expressed before. Whereas other craft books discuss writing from a simple direct approach, THE ART OF FICTION delivers its information in a more persuasive manner to some readers. If you have a chance to get a hold of this book, I suggest you get a copy and study the hell out of it.
And while there are many, many pages that are helpful in the book, I will be just discussing one specific chapter that really only mentions the fictional dream a few times, but leaves a perfect impression of how a story should consume a reader. Let me explain:
What is the Fictional Dream?
For an author to produce the best story so well told that a reader forgets he or she isn’t following words on the page, the writer needs to be in the zone. Have you ever saw an athlete perform extremely well in a game that was unlike anything that athlete has ever done? It was because they were in the ZONE during that moment. Like Michael Jordan during the NBA finals against the Utah Jazz or Tom Brady in the Superbowl. They never missed an opportunity because they were so focused and disciplined in their talent that they produced the best possible caliber of work.
An author can do the same. You can do the same. This is how.
“In any piece of fiction, the writer’s first job is to convince the reader that the events he recounts really happened, or to persuade the reader that they might have happened…” –John Gardner
There have been scenes of pages and pages of Stephen King’s prose where I just lost the realization that I was reading because I was picturing the characters face the vampire Barlow in Salem’s Lot or hurry away in a wheelchair from Annie Wilkes’ in Misery. King created a scene so realized, so livable that it was as if it was sincerely happening. And that talent isn’t just allowed to a few writers. It is possible for everyone. It might come easier to some than others. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying and practicing. If you really want to make it as a writer, then you have to go for it. You just need to practice.
The characters need to seem like real-life individuals with joys and sorrows, vulnerable yet powerful when needed. The setting must be relatable and possible to see and smell and touch and written with enough genuine lucidity and physicality that you could imagine yourself there at that moment. And regardless of which genre or plot you are writing in, the choices of the characters must make logical sense to the character himself and the situation at hand. If the choice is unusual to the character, it could result in a break from the fictional dream—which is a topic we will come to later on.
Vivid Detail in the Fictional Dream
If you pick up any craft book, they will tell you that an author needs specific and believable detail to tell the story. John Gardner does the same in his book, however, he approaches professing that information from a different angle.
“…the writer in effect argues the reader into acceptance.” –John Gardner
What Gardner means here is that it is an author’s duty to prove that what the reader is reading is real. But it isn’t easy. You see, the reader knows they are reading a story. They are sitting in a chair or lying on a couch reading your story. According to Gardner, a good writer must prove to the reader that they are not there on the couch or on the chair, but in the haunted house with the demon or in the courthouse watching the lawyer battle for a client’s freedom. The goal is to get the reader into the fictional dream by way of superb attention to detail.
What does the courthouse smell like and how does it affect the lawyer that day? Did it remind him of a moment in his youth when a bully beat him up and now he has doubts that he can fully do a good job? But his client’s life depends on it! Or does the dust of the dark mansion create a haze so thick the neighborhood kid who entered on a dare not know which way the front door was? As the eerie footsteps approach him quicker and quicker, what will happen to him? Does the demon really eat people? Both of those examples can expand more and more until pages of dialogue and prose spill into the reader’s mind and take them there.
“Vivid detail is the lifeblood of fiction…the reader is regularly presented with proofs—in the form of closely observed details—that what is said to be happening is really happening.”—John Gardner
There might come a moment when your reader is losing doubt of your depiction of the haunted house’s credibility or that the uneasy lawyer will save his client. This is when you “must argue” the reader back into acceptance that yes, it is real, and you are living in the fictional dream.
Observe People to Create the Fictional Dream
This should be a no-brainer to anyone studying to be a writer. You need to look at people, study them, just as you are studying for a test. Pay attention to how they talk, tell a joke, how they strut instead of walking, how they speak with their hands, and cross their legs when they sit.
Many things a good writer can imagine are on his or her own. However, keeping a constant eye out for the little things, for how people connect with one another they like or don’t like or must tolerate because certain situations call for it, will all provide you with a plethora of vivid details for you to use. You don’t need to write these observations down necessarily, but they should be easily recalled when you are typing away at your laptop.
“He must present, moment by moment, concrete images are drawn from a careful observation of how people behave, and he must render the connections between moments, the exact gestures, facial expressions, or turns of speech that, within any given scene, move human beings from emotion to emotion, from one instant in time to the next.”—John Gardner
Every writer must be a good observer. They must listen and see who is around them, what is around them, how are scenarios handling themselves around them. They must be ready to involve all five senses and then go from there, take the next imaginary step and begin to tell their original story with those observations. Once you have set sail with the details and observations as your artistic weaponry, the fictional dream is yours to make.
Symbols in the Fictional Dream
Now, you might think I am referring to actual symbolism in a story, such as the clock tower in Back to the Future or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. You would be wrong, at least according to Gardner. To him, symbols are not necessarily a conscious act when a writer is devising a story. Symbols made from vivid detail, therefore, arise from the unconscious when writing and will take on a meaning of their own.
“Good description does far more: It is one of the writer’s means of reaching down into his unconscious mind, finding clues to what questions his fiction must ask, and, with luck, hints about the answers.”—John Gardner
If we look at this method through the lens of the fictional dream goal, then any potential symbol is from character depth or narrator depth, depending on the point of view the author decides to write. The key here is to know the character so well that anything they might say could be subtextual, lending a layered meaning to their dialogue or their narration of objects or landscape.
“Good description is symbolic not because the writer plants symbols in it but because, by working in a proper way, he forces symbols still largely mysterious to him up in his conscious mind where, little by little, as his fiction progresses, he can work with them and finally understand them.”—John Gardner
Gardner goes even further and suggests that when describing a scene through the eyes of a specific character, the mood of that character and how he describes what he experiences at that moment is key to creating the fictional dream. For example, a man who just walked in on his wife cheating on him wouldn’t describe the room setting immediately afterward in a cliché way. The reader might expect that character to describe the room with negative detail because of the character’s shock. However, what if that character described the room by fixating on certain objects and what they represented to the character and his cheating wife? It could be a fantastic shift from negative to positive and back to negative again if done correctly.
Don’t Break the Fictional Dream
All dreams must come to an end. They can’t keep going on forever. A person must wake up. The key, however, is to try to dream as long and as good as you possibly can. But just how well do you remember that dream? Very rarely do we recall exact details from a dream, let alone remember a dream a year from now. The dreams we do recall are the ones that left a powerful emotion on us. As a writer, you need to do everything in your power to keep the fictional dream going.
“By detail the writer achieves vividness; to make the scene continuous, he takes pains to avoid anything that might distract the reader from the image…”—John Gardner
Where I disagree with Gardner is when he suggests that it is okay, let’s say, to temporarily interrupt the vivid detail of an important scene to tell another one. According to Gardner, this brief, short interruption, if still told within the talents of your fictional dream, shouldn’t awaken the reader from the dream. My suggestion to you is not to allow anything that will distract a scene until that scene is over. Write the scene in its full completion and expert detail as well as you can first. Then, if you decide to interrupt that scene later on during the revision process, do so. But not until then.
Maintaining the fictional dream and the cohesiveness of a scene is vital to any story.
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