When Your (Story) World Falls Apart
By John J Kelley | July 26, 2024 |
Maybe, just maybe, the inspirations for my WU posts are at times a little too on the nose. I mean, who would have thought that four years after a global pandemic, three years after an assault on the US Capitol, and mere weeks following the felony conviction of a former President, a subsequent assassination attempt on his life and the unprecedented departure of the sitting President from his reelection bid would prompt me to consider the unraveling of social order and how it is depicted in fiction? Really, what are the chances? Yet here I am contemplating all of that, synthesizing it in my writerly brain, and offering it up for consideration by the WU community. As obvious as the topic may be, I chose to stick with it for one simple reason. I can’t imagine a better time, given that understanding human nature and its tribal rhythms is such a driving force behind fiction, to explore how best to convey the collapse of a story world, be it on a global or an intimate scale. So, let’s dive in, shall we?
My first thought on the topic is merely an observation – Make note of how you feel about recent events. As writers, we possess an innate ability to draw upon personal experience to breathe life into our tales. Emotions from real experiences inform fictional scenes all the time. This bewildering moment in time is no exception. Whatever you may be feeling – rage, frustration, melancholy, paralysis – are precisely the emotions with which your characters will grapple while navigating the rapid demise of their world. Own it, absorb it, and remember it – the feelings will be useful someday on a future project, if not your current work in progress.
Beyond that, I offer the following ideas on capturing the disintegration of social order in fiction:
Stand the Dominoes Carefully
If you’ve set out to craft an apocalyptic tale, this may seem obvious. But it’s worth noting for stories operating on a smaller scale as well. A reader needs touchstones in your story world to which they can relate – authorities, cultural entities, buildings, symbols. As your story opens, introduce them and underscore, subtly, their importance to the normal order. Perhaps a young protagonist is preparing for a coming-of-age ritual, religious or social. Perhaps a secondary character works for the government, holds financial power, or maintains civic infrastructure. A church, courthouse or town square may occupy a prominent place in the community. Introduce these elements early and weave them into your opening act, laying the foundation of what normality looks like for your cast of characters.
In the novel All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr introduces the reader to the Muséum national d’Historie naturelle in Paris in the opening pages. The father of the young blind protagonist, Marie, is a locksmith employed at the institution, which houses a rare gem that plays an essential role throughout the tale. The grandeur of the museum is evident in her reverent descriptions. Later, as German forces approach the city, Marie senses but fails to appreciate furtive preparations underway to remove and conceal its priceless natural objects. When the city is eventually overrun, she sits alone inside the locksmith office, awaiting her father. She feels the concussion of shells draw near. The rattle of keys and a faint scent of settling dust after each strike announce the fall of the city to the reader even before the duo join the throng of evacuating refugees in its narrow streets. The end of normalcy and order is shown and felt, not told.
In Bel Canto, Ann Patchett turns the sequence of events on its head, yet accomplishes the same effect. She begins her novel with the boldest of inciting incidents, the opening moments of a hostage taking at a remote estate. But with consummate skill, she at first offers only hints of what is transpiring, all taking place in the dark. And over the first dozen pages, she weaves ornate description and compelling backstory to impress upon the reader the tremendous prestige and influence present at the gathering, a world of refinement whose demise has already begun.
Take stock of the elements in your story and from page one start plotting how they’ll unravel when the world you’ve constructed comes crashing down.
The Power of Detail
The examples above both touch upon another method to convey the overwhelming emotions that arise when destruction arrives.
As Marie and her father join the desperate exodus from Paris in All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr paints a collage of sensations from the perspective of the blind child. Little Marie smells mud, urine and wet garments as they make their way along the surging streets. She hears rumbling, automobile horns, people shouting and crying, and snippets of panicked conversation.
Conversely, in her apocalyptic pandemic novel Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel displays a mastery of quiet moments to be found even amidst unrelenting action. When an early victim of a devastating new plague succumbs on stage during a Toronto performance of King Lear, fake snow continues to fall, dreamlike, while frantic efforts ensue and confusion consumes the audience. Later, when a character leaves his barricaded apartment, weeks after millions have died, she paints a haunting, silent narration of his escape from the city along the deserted lakefront in the dark of night.
While there may be value in pulling back to provide context for tragic events that befall your story world, don’t overlook the emotional rush that comes from placing your reader in the shoes of characters blindsided when the moment arrives. The details matter, and the effect can be powerful.
Consider a Shift in Perspective
When I was a young boy, I read one of the first post-nuclear apocalyptic novels ever written – Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, published in 1959. To be honest, I found it rather dry at first. Frank’s prose was stilted, and he filled the opening chapters with scientific data and military jargon. But a key moment so captivated me that I remember it all these years later. It offered enough of a thread to tether me to the story, compelling me to discover what happened to the residents of the fictional Florida community in which the story was set.
The setup was simple, but effective. A local resident, Florence Wechek, is a clerk at the local Western Union telegraph office. As residents of sleepy Fort Repose begin to hear vague word in the morning of an attack on the US, and finding their phones dead, some arrive, wanting to send telegraphs. Florence has just learned, with no detail, that only official defense emergency messages are authorized. The bank president appears in person with an urgent telegram seeking direction from the Federal Reserve. After a brief squabble over whether the telegram qualifies, Florence agrees to send it, but only to Jacksonville since Atlanta, strangely, appears to be offline.
She types the message into the teleprinter and awaits a response. As she reads the reply, just a few words in, she blinks, blinded momentarily by a flash of light. The teleprinter stops, only to start again a moment later, this time a message from Palatka, nearer to Jacksonville, indicating a huge explosion and the appearance of a mushroom cloud. She then informs the bank president that she can’t send the telegram, explaining that “Jacksonville doesn’t seem to be there anymore.” The next paragraph is a single line, indicating Fort Repose’s financial structure crumbled in a day.
Decades later, the account seems almost a trope. But at the time it felt genuine and jarring. I had never read anything that caught me so off guard. This single moment, outside the main storyline, revealed to me as a reader, not to mention these poor characters, the magnitude of what was now underway.
Years later, a writing instructor described in class a scene in which a community must be evacuated. She described how the narration, which until that point had been through the eyes of the protagonist, suddenly shifted to that of her young son. She said the effect was surreal, echoing the feel of a world suddenly akilter.
To me, both these examples indicate that, when the time comes to pull the net protecting the realm of your characters, a change of perspective can drive home that the rules have changed, that a new order is at hand.
These are my suggestions for approaching world-altering moments in a story. What are your thoughts? Have you written a tale in which the world of your characters comes crashing down? If so, what techniques did you employ? If you have other good examples, what are they and what made them work? Do you think these methods can work for other situations, or perhaps for a shift of axis on a smaller scale? I look forward to hearing from the community.
John J Kelley crafts tales of individuals at a crossroads, exploring themes of growth, reconciliation and community. His debut novel, The Fallen Snow, about a young soldier’s homecoming at the close of WWI, received a Publishers Weekly starred review and earned an Honorable Mention nod at the 2012 Foreword Reviews Book-of-the-Year Awards.
Born and raised in the Florida panhandle, John graduated from Virginia Tech and for a time served as a military officer. Today he lives with his partner in Washington, DC.
Hey John — It’s remarkable, isn’t it: how slowly the potential collapse of a familiar social structure takes in real time? You’re right, It’s worth noting the effect of prolonged high anxiety, although I confess I’d rather have needed to speculate than to drawn on personal experience, lol.
Your recounting of your experience with Alas, Babylon reminds me of my own, likely at a similar age, with The Frontiersman, by Allen Eckert. I was finding the setup a bit dry, and the prosaic scene of a homestead on a normal, sunny day made the attack by a Native American warband so startling I can recall sitting up on the bedside, physically rattled by the experience. I can’t specifically recall having trouble sleeping, but I’m sure I did.
The collapse of my story-world happens slowly, as it’s sort of the point of an entire trilogy. I hope I have employed an engaging and impactful number of surprises. One technique I found effective was the use of chapter epigraphs, penned by a survivor who’d been a child during the dizzying and prolonged catastrophe. Her observations in hindsight provide (I hope) that foundation of an ordinary world, to keep the reader mindful of the big picture throughout many “in their shoes” zoomed-in character experiences. Her evident survival may be a bit of a spoiler, but I think it’s worth it.
Thanks for the gift of your usual thoughtfulness. You always go the extra mile to get us thinking. Much appreciated! Hope you guys are well and enjoying the peaceful moments amidst the ongoing chaos.
Ah, those things that got us hooked on writing, so many stories in so many genres. It’s fun to think back on them or run across them again. My mother and her father before her were faithful Reader’s Digest Condensed Books subscribers so we had nearly 3 decades of them stacked sequentially on a bookshelf. I remember an (abbreviated) novel called, “The White Room” set in New England. It was a family drama of sorts centered around an unhappy housewife learning to speak up for herself, and the rural landscape and varied cast of characters (rather diverse now that I think about it) fascinated me.
I like your epigraphs technique. It reminds me of the subtle presence of the historical testament documents around which The Handmaid’s Tale is framed.
Thanks for the good wishes. We are doing well overall. I love DC, but I do think residents here feel the uncertainty and discord more when it peaks. That is understandable, I suppose.
Best to you and your loved one as well. Be well!
Awesome post, John. To attempt an answer, I have made a change in my WIP…instead of later revealing aspects of a scene that is central to choices my MC makes, I now start with memories of the event. I place her running, only to discover she is now a Chicago block away from the place, the essence of an event and thus the memory as a grown woman she still struggles with. I’m pleased with the change and your post stresses that. Thanks!
Hi, Beth, and thank you. I like your approach. I think there are any number of ways of how one might approach , “the fall,” depending a lot on genre. I found Bel Canto interesting because while there is a suspenseful element, a key component actually, the story is ultimately about relationships and how they form in even the most unlikely of situations. She hinted at both so well in the opening chapter … one of the best hooks I have ever read.
Hello John. Thanks for your post. I’m happy to have met you in Salem.
In your post, I understand you to encourage writers to draw on their reactions to recent events, to use these reactions as an energy source. You catalogue extreme circumstances in current affairs, and follow it with extreme events in fiction: a blind French girl fleeing from Nazis, hostage-taking, an apocalyptic plague, the onset of nuclear war as experienced from a distance, an emergency evacuation as experienced by a child. At the end you pose a question:
“Have you written a tale in which the world of your characters comes crashing down?” True, you earlier speak in terms of this crash being “on a global or an intimate scale,” but everything in your post relates to traumatic Big Events.
I have written such a story, but the world that comes crashing down is a commonplace one, as ordinary and small-footprint as can be imagined: a retirement golf community in Florida. Other than a couple references to the election of the first black American president, little or nothing of social or political significance figures. But if I have done my job, the lives of my characters will become important to readers. Not because they are placed in menacing or shattering circumstances, but because I have managed to make readers experience what happens to them, and care about them.
Uh oh…something is wrong…very wrong…
It all starts somewhere. Birds burst from the trees. The smell of smoke. Lights go out. The record player slows, music slurs and stops. A peripheral flash past the window. Eerie silence.
You’d think that horror filmmakers would get more original. Anticipation is a good effect but any overused device, after a while, goes from trope to silly to satire.
Small things portend big events, but what small things? That’s the art. Thanks for the great examples of creeping dread done well. The same idea could apply to happy things too: falling in love, good news about to arrive, crowds running down the street happily screaming because…because…
…OMG, look! It’s Taylor Swift! She’s here! In our town!
Seriously, appreciate the look at an important craft element too often unused. Thanks, John.
Thank you, Donald! Hope you and yours are well.
Keeping it fresh is the key, I suppose. In a world with only “x” number of base stories, it’s all the elements together that keep readers engaged generation after generation.
I do think this is part of a much broader topic of ways to engage readers when things for your characters have gone sideways, south, or even exceedingly well. There is a value in stepping back and saying, “Is there a better way to describe this, or to set it up more powerfully from the start?”
So many choices and so important to nail it, even once you’ve found an approach that fits.
Take care, and have a wonderful summer, or at least what’s left of it.
Hi, Barry! Good to hear you again, so to speak.
You bring up a good point. I should have said “smaller scale” collapse, such as a nation or in a smaller self-contained world like the remote estate depicted in Bel Canto. I wasn’t thinking of a family drama, or a personal collapse … though I imagine there could be some overlap.
Having said that, I think your retirement golf community fits the bill. The aforementioned Bel Canto is a similar community of sorts. Alas, Babylon, while dealing with a global calamity, stays very much centered on what befalls one small community very much cut off from what remains of the outside world.
Lastly, you emphasize the most important point, which is for readers to be invested and to care about the characters that inhabit an uncertain world, be it a sudden development or one slowly descending into disarray.
A wonderful, timely post. Thanks!
Thanks, Liza! Write on! :)
My historical takes place in a time of social turmoil and the lives of my story people are completely upended by it. However, because the MC is a child, her view is limited. She’s only just beginning to realize that politics do matter. I struggle with this story because the big events always threaten to overshadow the smaller difficulties so real and present and big to a child, but I try to stay firmly in her head.
From your description, I think staying in her head is essential. It is her story. I think the question is how much of the external social turmoil is a part of your story.
If you feel you should explore it more, I would recommend reading some of how Doerr handles the perspective of Marie in his story. Early on especially she is quite young, so scenes like the ones I describe are told from her perspective in terms she would use (given that she is a bright child), but it certainly delivers the thrust of what is happening in the “adult world.”
It presents challenges, but a child’s perspective is clear too. They can strip away some of the baggage we bring to discussions of events, recognizing good and bad more readily and describing it as such. Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind.
It’s a good problem to have … and I’ve no doubt you will handle it well.
Have a great day, Vijaya!
John, thank you for the encouragement and advice. I’ve been bingeing on Doerr and I agree completely about how masterfully he explores the micro in the context of the macro.
As my village is evacuated ahead of surrounding wildfires, you remind me to transcribe the conversations I hear among my friends and loved ones. The courage, humour, and optimism amidst the approaching threat are really worth recording. What struck me about Bel Canto is that it’s a love story in many moving parts, even with the overlay of terror and confusion. If my small corner of world falls apart I’ll remember the love.
Oh, Deborah, I’m so sorry to hear about the stress and fear that accompanies the wildfires. I pray all is well for you and your community. Sometimes our real worlds are genuinely imperiled as well. I think you have the right approach, both creatively and personally. The love is what matters … always.
Like others, I have many, many favorite novels over the years for various reasons. But Bel Canto is one that comes to mind often. I think it was an amazing idea for a story, and so beautifully executed.
Be well, and take care.
Useful and practical post, John–I’m sharing in my newsletter for authors. Thanks!
Thanks, Tiffany! I’m so glad you found it useful.
Write On! :)