Hopes and Fears and Fiction
By Donald Maass | February 3, 2021 |
What are your hopes and dreams? What are you most afraid of?
Search online for common fears and phobias, and you will quickly find that whatever terrifies you also terrifies others. Do you, for instance, suffer (as so many do) from Koumpounophobia, Alektorophobia, Sidonglobophobia, or Hippotomonstrosequippedaliophobia? Those are the paralyzing fears of buttons, chickens, cotton balls and long words.
No? Phew. Glad to hear that. However, I would not be surprised if you have a phobia—or a phobia’s lesser cousin, a fear—related to the animal world: spiders, snakes, dogs, birds, cats, butterflies, ducks, frogs, sharks, fish, horses, mice, wasps, or ants. (Butterflies? Yep, that’s a thing. Lepidopterophobia.)
People scare us too. We may be afraid of crowds, clowns, intimacy, men, women, doctors, little people, tall people or people in general. We may be made anxious by objects, sounds and abstract things: needles, holes, blood, germs, numbers, calculations, science, technology, balloons, dolls, bridges, the number thirteen, Friday the 13th, Halloween, feet, fire, mirrors, light, loud noises, thunder and lightning, rain, hair, bananas or Zombies. (The last three are Chaetophobia, Bananaphobia and Kinemortophobia, funny ones unless you actually have those phobias.)
Experiences are also fearful. We may be afraid of heights, depths, falling, small spaces, darkness, driving, flying, love, commitment, intimacy, abandonment, being alone, being forgotten, being buried alive, being hunted, haunted, stalked, failing, success, change, the unknown, crime, pain, pregnancy, sleep, choking, suffocation, getting old, school, work, roller coasters or getting rid of stuff (Disposophobia). We can even be afraid of God, ourselves, the future or fear itself (Phobophobia).
Is it any surprise, then, that thunder and lightening are symbols commonly deployed on screen to signal us to feel apprehensive? Is it any wonder that sad scenes are set in the rain? Is it any wonder that a protagonist’s low moment of defeat and despair is sometimes called the “mirror moment”?
You can probably identify the common fear which underlies many timeless stories, novels and tales: Jaws. It. The Stand. Rosemary’s Baby. The Man in the Iron Mask. The Hound of the Baskervilles, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Most Dangerous Game”, I Am Legend, Sleeping Beauty, The Stranger, or our own Kathryn Craft’s The Art of Falling. And hold on…buttons? Think Coraline.
Fear is the underlying basis of whole genres: mysteries, thrillers, horror and plenty of science fiction and fantasy. On the flip side, we read other types of fiction to feel hope. Fear is what we want to avoid. Hope tells us what we want to have.
The Flip Side
What many people want is surprisingly humble: education, work, marriage, children, to teach, to grow, health, happiness, peace. We may, of course, want experiences like travel, fame and wealth. We may want to be in a movie, write a book, win a competition, own a yacht or donate large sums to a worthy cause.
Still, many dreams are not so grand but are rather specific and rooted in the desire for adventure and joy: learn a language, play guitar, ride an elephant, ride a roller coaster, travel first class, hang glide, see a volcano, bungee jump, skydive, go to outer space, dine at a four-star restaurant, sip a rare wine, bowl a perfect 300.
People also desire experiences of comfort and security: living by a beach, buying an island, having a home which people want to visit, vacation with family, a girls’ weekend, snuggling by a fire. In addition, people want to find their purpose, pursue a dream and pay it forward. People want to quit their jobs, stop being afraid, know they are good and worthy of love, and feel that they are making a difference.
It is any wonder, then, that novels about fame, bring rich, adventure, whacky friends and ocean-front houses are called “beach reads”? Are we surprised that so much fiction in general concerns love, healing, family, unlocking the mysteries of the past and affirming values like forgiveness, courage and love?
What would you say is the foundation of hope and dreams in these timeless novels: Around the World in Eighty Days, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Rich Man Poor Man, The God of Small Things, Daisy Jones and the Six, A Wrinkle in Time, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Lake House, An Extraordinary Union, A Man Called Ove, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Fault in Our Stars, The Great Gatsby?
Timeless fiction in some way concerns our great human fears and eternal desires. Those may change with time and in their details—Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, Jane Eyre to Bridget Jones—but not in their underlying emotional foundations. Timeless fiction endures because it concerns who we are and how we must become. Fear and hope. Terror and desire. Put it how you like, buy if you are writing a story, any kind of story at all, then you are touching on something common to all of us across the globe, across cultures, beyond time.
But what, exactly, is that universal which you are touching on? Let’s find out, and in the process discover how to enhance the timeless effect of your novel.
Practical Fear and Hope
Would you say that your novel is mostly about: preventing something bad, facing something terrifying, getting away, escape, rescue, persecution, calamity, looming disaster, a killer, a malign world, unseen enemies, injustice, disease, or moral peril? Which one, primarily? What is the biggest way in which your protagonist could possibly be subjected to that fear? What would make it extreme?
Would you say that your novel is mostly about: yearning for the unattainable, searching for what cannot be found or doesn’t exist, recovering what has been lost, a journey, a dream, a need for human bonding and connection, love, forgiveness of self, understanding of others, fixing what is broken or venturing into the unknown? Which one, primarily? What is the greatest length to which your hero or heroine could have go to get what he or she desires? Make it extreme.
If your novel is scary or suspenseful, add: A creepy-crawly, a sick-inside baddie, an implement of pain, a lurid temptation, a cliff or dizzying height, a trap, a loved one captured, time expired, a horrible cost, a legendary place of fear, a weapon that doesn’t work, injury, left to die, a terrible choice, a worst fear come true. Make it excruciating.
If your novel is yearning, warm or funny, add: a promise, a token, a safe place, a lost garden, a faraway land, a shared memory, a sweet sacrifice, a come hither, a heart-piercing hurt, a kind mentor, a magical food, gems or jewelry, a race to get there, a desperate gamble, a dare or wager, daring do, a prize, a kiss, a puzzle or riddle, sand, scenery, waves, a storm, an old book, a new baby, a broken heart, a precious symbol, forgiveness, changed ways, a sexy dress, a wild ride, white sheets, a sunrise. Make everything mean something.
If nothing else as you write every day, ask: What scares me? What do I wish could happen? Whatever frightens, bring it about. Whatever tugs at your heart make it more distant, harder to get, impossible to have. Gut fear is something we don’t forget. Deep yearning is something we will feel forever. Make those strong in your story and you won’t have to sell them to your readers, your readers will feel that this story is already theirs.
What is the great fear or hope underlying your WIP? How might you escalate that?
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Wha? How did you know I suffered from Hippotomonstrosequippedaliophobia? Amazing! You noticed I never used words longer than eight letters. Okay. I didn’t think anyone was paying attention. You wouldn’t be believe how long it took getting passed the name Dehvirahaman Ko Bruhmaeziwazaari. That might explain my feelings of trepidation toward reading fantasy novels.
What is the great fear underlying my WIP? How might I escalate that? Sounds like you and Mama Tee were having conversations in the wee hours of the mornings.
Hmm, Fear of Intimacy. Escalation in process…
Okay. Okay. Yearning for the unattainable!
The fear of intimacy is Aphenphosmphobia; that is, if you actually have such a phobia. Most women, I understand, call it being a jerk or a Peter Pan. Escalating it could be fun, though…in a story, I mean.
LOL
I love learning the names of phobias. I can’t remember them all, but their construction is interesting. They’re fun to say (even if not fun to have. “Triskaidekaphobia” is a favorite.
As far storytelling, I like the process of putting characters together with conflicting fears or hopes. You know, one person is afraid of butterflies so toss in a butterfly collector who will save the world with Monarchs but only with our phobic friend’s help. Something like that.
Oh! And I like to give a character an unexpected fear that isn’t usually an issue until things depend on them.
Ah, Triskaidekaphobia…the fear of the number 13. I’ve always been a little wary of the number 47, but that just doesn’t have the same magic. Actually, pick any number that describes my current age in years and I don’t like it.
Seriously, I love your idea of butterfly phobia paired with a butterfly collection. Awesome.
I found something yesterday from a few years back with a heading called Hidden Scripts. The idea was to identify hidden fears that hold you back. Mine was technology. I do not love it. Even now, I go kicking and screaming. But what’s the real fear? That by not embracing the new, I’ll be left behind. I see that fear echoed in my MC’s fears of being marginalized, not accepted, laughed at. Your post today reminded me how powerfully we invoke the universal by being specific. Thank you, Don.
There was a book back in the Seventies, I think, about the scripts we follow. Do you happen to recall the title? It’s a powerful effect and very real, both in life and in stories.
Sounds familiar. I’ll look into it!
Possibly you’re thinking of “Games People Play” by Eric Berne? (1964) Or maybe “Scripts People Live” by Claude Steiner? (“Scripts” was based on “Games” — or at least that’s according to Berne’s website: https://www.ericberne.com/claude-steiner-biography/)
A similar volume (perhaps) to that 70s title (whatever it is) might be the more recent (2019) volume “Cognitive Dissonance: A Brain Surgeon’s Quest to Out-Think Fear” by Dr. Mark McLaughlin, which I recently saw recommended on another website for writers — apparently it looks closely at a variety of scripted fears we typically face. Sounds like it might it delves fairly deeply into this WU post’s topic.
You know, chickens are actually pretty scary, second only to Canadian Geese…
So, in the interest of science, I googled if there was a phobia of Canadian Geese and this is what came up on betterhelp.com “Such is the case with anatidaephobia. Anatidaephobia is the fear that at any point, somewhere in the world, a duck or goose may be watching the person who is suffering from the phobia.”
Isn’t there a Far Side that illustrates this Paragraph? :D
Thanks for the incredibly fun post today, as well as the reminder to keep the tension up and relatable! I’m plotting the end of the story and it is feeling like it might be plodding along, so increasing the protag’s fear level is just what’s needed!
Best post ever, which is saying a lot. Thank you.
I have a positive ‘phobia’.
I am a ‘pluviophile’ – a person who loves rain. This means rainy days delight me. I’m a kid splashing through puddles. Oddly enough. I collect amazing umbrellas and never using them other than every now and then I indulge in the mesmerizing sound of walking under a silk canopy. My novels… there are twelve now, abound with rain scenes such as the coziness of being in a fabulous library during a thunderstorm where torrents of rain sluice down stained glass windows.
I guess I don’t live on Vancouver Island for no reason. It’s raining right now and has been for weeks. Wonderful!
Me too! I love gloomy, rainy days. November is my favorite month. For me it started when I lived in London. I get it nowadays, like you, in B.C.
That said, today is sunny in the PNW and it’s a nice break.
A lot of great fodder for story inspiration and development here, Don, as always. And hey, 8 years after debuting, The Art of Falling is still hitting lists, haha! It was fun to see it here, embedded in a paragraph among such esteemed novels, but it made a point: you don’t have to be a legendary novelist to benefit from capitalizing on your protagonist’s basic (or eccentric!) human fears.
Ooo, “Great fodder”!
Timeless and classic novels are packed with techniques that anyone can use, it’s true, and I say why not? Also timeless fears and hopes, as you captured so well in The Art of Falling.
Hi Don, you’ve read portions of my novel and thus you know that it was born of fear, a fear that one of my daughters would be abducted, as happened not too far from my Chicago home. That fear has evolved, so has my writing–and my children are safe. But phobias and desires link to emotion and that’s what readers crave. And movie vierers. And though I tried to keep my teenage son from seeing THE SAW, he and his friends refused my advice and went anyway. He remembers that film to this day. Fear: so alluring.
Parental phobias are many, and I like what you say about the indelible effect of scary movies on kids. My teenaged daughter has a thing for shark movies, but luckily most of them are pretty bad. They invoke more howls of laughter than screaming.
Grateful for the reminder of forces so deeply elemental and universal, and so life-and-death essential to storytelling. Thanks, Donald!
Thanks, Thomas. We use the word “universal” like it is a quality that is magical and rare, but it’s not. It only takes a little insight and thought to see how any story can become that.
I have some of those up there but I’ll keep them to myself -ha! But I do have Scriptophobia! … fear of writing! Oh dear!
Another good post to save.
Writer’s block is a real thing, but really it is a variety of fear–slightly different for each person, but basically fear. The nice thing is that fear exists only in our minds, and that means we can do something about it.
Thank you, Don, for a post that challenges writers to take a fresh look at themselves, and how what they see applies to what they write. Like Susan S, I have a hard time with technology, and change in general. My story is about a character with this problem. He has disappointed and angered so many people with what he’s written that virtually everyone in his family and community have shunned him. To get his life back, he must change, but his prideful nature convinces him that no one ever really changes, and that he is the victim of humorless, small-minded people. What is to be done? There’s the rub.
Change is hard. Technology is harder. Printers are impossible. I wouldn’t say I have a fear of them, more like an existential rage at them.
Seriously, that’s a cool story premise.
You made me laugh out loud when you mentioned fear of butterflies. We’ve taken both of our kids to our local butterfly gardens, and in each case have had to leave a few minutes after arriving because they’re screaming with terror. Who knew butterflies were the stuff of nightmares?
Always great to read your analysis, Don. Plenty to think about as I push forward with my second novel.
I know, it’s weird right? Butterflies? My daughter has that same terror. (This is the same daughter who loves shark movies, BTW, see above.) Go figure.