Playing with Shadows

shadowDarkness and light, good and evil. The struggle between the two appears in all speculative fiction, though it’s most obvious in fantasy. And just as every source of light casts a shadow, every force for good has its evil opposition.

This is, I believe, a large part of why science fiction and fantasy aficionados love the genres– because they speak, through the struggles of their characters, of the larger struggles of humanity. In both scope and content, speculative fiction has an almost-indefinable something that is lacking in much historical, romance, or other more mundane genres. That something is the sense of a grand struggle, a drama performed by incomprehensible players on a staggeringly large scale.

Those incomprehensible players are, in fantasy, usually gods or demi-gods or something of the like, but in science fiction they’re almost always humans. Humanity as whole becomes both sides of the equation, both players in the performance.

But why is this conflict here? Why does it pervade so much of our great literature (for even if not of speculative nature, most great literature exemplifies this conflict in some manner)?

It is, truthfully, a conflict as old as the day-night cycle. The battle of darkness and light has been the essence of many tribal stories and oral legends. And deny it if you will, but the Christian Bible has played such an immense role in the structuring of Western literature and society that the essential conflict of the Bible (God above, Satan below, and mankind capable of choosing which side to stand on), has become ingrained in our consciousness as the ‘proper’ mode of storytelling.

In the same way, the ending where good triumphs and evil is vanquished has become the default and ‘proper’ ending for a work of fiction. And it is satisfying to the reader– because again, there is something in all of us that says “This is right. This is how the world should be.”

But at some point, the simple black-and-white conflict ceases to be entirely engrossing. Even though it may represent the true nature of things, in this life there are more shades of grey than there are stark contrasts, and the daily choice is all too often between “Decent” and “Less than Optimal”. And that is the decision you, as a writer, must make– do you continue to carry on the ideal of perfection versus annihilation, or will you layer your work with the striations of varying degrees of good and evil which are reflected in our everyday lives?

If you do, approach that layering in a manner which will draw your readers in and make them appreciate the difficulties in the different choices. Frank Herbert, in his novel Dune, showed a masterful grasp of not only the gradations of morality and the choices between them, but of how to draw the reader into the character’s place and present them with the choice. (What, did you want me to tell you what the choice was? Go read the book, silly!)

The result, if you approach the layering in a careful manner, will be an enhancement of both the depth of your work and the reader’s experience when they interact with the work. It’s perfectly acceptable for you, as the author, to not have or give all the answers. There are some questions which are too complex to address in anything but a didactic manner, and I’m assuming you want to avoid that. That’s where this layering comes in. It allows you to raise questions you and your characters can’t possibly answer, but which you want your readers to consider.

Sometimes, all that is needed is to provide a question, and let the reader ponder it themselves. And sometimes, all that is needed to motivate your reader is to show a hint of something greater than the daily swirl of confusing and conflicting choices.

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