Uuuuuuhhhhhhh. This one feels extremely topical for me right now as my son watches the new Toy Story That Time Forgot again. But beyond Pixar’s amazingly tight storytelling (like TV poetry), I can’t not help think about one of the most difficult match ups in fiction the imagined world and the real world. I know it may sound a bit simple at first but when you really stare deeply into the forms of these two worlds it becomes a mess and headache to even come close to wrapping your head around possible answers or truths to go by.
So let’s try it anyway. The imagined world, kind of the easy one, is created by us and follows the rules we see fit even when the rules contradict one another. And that’s the key. Everything bends and twists and re-shapes to take into account what we want in any given moment. We are God of the imagined world, but we’re not very good at it because it’s about what we want. That is the 99% dominant desire in the imagined space, a selfish one. So what is the purpose of such an inconsistent and vain vision of life? I think it’s to give us hope that changes can and will come. It also can give us perspective on our limitations when we actually take a moment to comprehend what we’re seeing isn’t really there. Ouch! I don’t know if I have the endurance to ponder and explain further on that world for now.
That means it’s time for the real world. A place that’s been here long before we were and will continue on perfectly fine without us. The rules are simple here; so simple that we forget them all the time even when they’re working so plainly in front of us or on us. We are the ones that bend and jump and hide from this world. We are the “wanton flies” hoping to stick around in God’s playground long enough to figure out one of those pesky simple rules and pass it on to our children so they can hold it in one hand and reach for another rule. Maybe they will be more than a pest in someone’s house. We have to learn those rules and keep to them or else they will break us. I can feel myself getting lost in the real world just through this paragraph.
What I want to finish on is how these two worlds dual in fiction writing. Most writing favors the imagined and most readers are drawn to this type as well which is completely fine and dandy because it is the easier of the two, the one that hurts less to get involved with. Less hurting means less friction, though. That’s why the real world pops up. Stories need a friction to create conflict and to move towards something worthwhile. Does that mean the balance of these two worlds in writing should be 50/50? I don’t know, but I do know the more I attempt (that’s all I can do now) to inject the real world the more difficult the writing becomes for me and I, fear, also for the readers. But don’t we secretly want to intellectualize those rules so that we gain a chance to use them? And wouldn’t more exposure to them lead to this? How much pain are we willing to take from the brutal, uncompromising real world when the imaginary is waiting to bend over backwards for us?
I need to stop ending with questions, but I’m really only at the stage of being able to ask them instead of answer them. No one’s left feedback or comments yet so please feel free to talk it up whomever might be out there reading this.
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.” Damn quotes again, saying it better than me.
Casey M. Peterson 