Genre Talk Presents: Through My Lens with Author Lloyd. A. Meeker

Through My Lens: A quarterly blog for Genre Talk
Lloyd A. Meeker

Through My Lens is just that – a glimpse of my thoughts, questions and opinions about writing craft issues, conditioned by my idiosyncratic worldview, my tastes, my perspective, my sensibilities. You’re in no way obliged to agree with me. In fact, I’m very interested to hear other perspectives. I welcome any comments that stimulate civil discourse.

Truth, Lies and Honest Fiction

In recent months I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between lies and truth in our culture in general, but especially in storytelling. It’s complex.

The stories we tell ourselves and those we tell each other, whether it’s framed as history, news, gossip, wisdom or anecdote, will never be pure, complete truth. There is good reason for that. We have myths that explain how dangerous it is to believe we can ever comprehend The Truth, let alone convey it to others.

Semele, beloved of Zeus, asks to see him in his full glory, complete with battle armor. Zeus begs her not to insist, but Semele has been tricked by Hera into demanding to see him as he really is. He reluctantly agrees, and reveals himself to her. Semele, being human, cannot bear his glory and perishes.

In Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has a similar, although not fatal, experience with Krishna. Arjuna begs to see Krishna as he truly is. Krishna tells him he can’t bear it with human eyes, so he gives Arjuna a moment of divine vision to see truly.

Arjuna is overwhelmed, even with divine vision, and begs Krishna to resume his familiar shape as his charioteer:

Be merciful, and show
The visage that I know;
Let me regard Thee, as of yore, arrayed
With disc and forehead-gem,
With mace and anadem,
Thou that sustainest all things! Undismayed

Let me once more behold
The form I loved of old,
Thou of the thousand arms and countless eyes!
This frightened heart is fain
To see restored again
My Charioteer, in Krishna’s kind disguise.

That is the truth of our uncomfortable, humbling human relationship to truth: we are just not able to see vast objective truth, no matter how badly we might want to.

Instead, we are like the five blind men feeling different parts of the elephant – the trunk, the leg, the ear, the tail, the flank. Tiny truth, partial truth we can do. But before we go on, let’s make a distinction between partial truth and the post-modern fallacy of relative truth, where one person’s “truth” somehow has diplomatic immunity from critical thought.

For example, popular in MM romance is an MC’s relative truth that “I am not worthy of true love.” Other characters might argue to logically prove his personal truth is a lie, but that’s a waste of time and breath. This MC clings desperately to his wounded unworthiness, filling many pages with his angst. The demonstrable truth, however, is that the MC is worthy of love, and the story usually unfolds to prove it. Late in the story, usually, the MC’s walls of shame finally come crashing down and he accepts the truth that he is loved. The truth of the other MC’s love conquers the false relative truth.

Partial truth is still provably true. Each of the blind men is right. None of them has the whole truth, but each partial truth is still true. Besides that, each of the blind men can hear the elephant breathing, chewing, farting. They all know the elephant is alive, and they can share information about the elephant’s movement. There is a shared path forward to discover that the elephant is all of their perceptions and much, much more. Like all true things, the elephant is greater than the sum of its parts.

The shared path forward in the paradigm of personal “truth” is limited to those who agree with it. There is no critical analysis, collaboration, or differentiation such as occurs with the blind men sharing their diverse elephant data on their way to shared understanding.

The elephant in our novels is our humanness. In every story there’s plenty of opportunity for sharing our small, partial discoveries about the vast and overwhelming truth of what it is to be a human being.

We use story tools – fictional characters, fictional conflict, even fictional worlds to clothe the partial truth we have, just so we can bear being in the presence of its fierce, sword-edged beauty. If such clothing is a lie (and at very best it’s only an appropriate costume) then storytellers must embrace both lies and truth, and do it honorably.

What is our intention, when we concoct our particular mix of lies and truth in our storytelling? I suggest the author’s intention invariably shows in the premise of the story – either to use lies which support discovery of partial truth, or lies which obscure it. Premise is the short cause-and-effect statement of partial truth that serves as the author’s compass while telling the story. It’s the core answer to the question, “What’s this novel about?”

Premise is automatically built into some genres. In romance, it’s “love conquers every obstacle” and in a typical murder mystery it’s “justice prevails.” For other kinds of story, the author must create a custom one. When a story embodies, or “proves” its premise, I think it qualifies as honest fiction.

Since our firmest grasp of truth is partial simply because we are human and cannot behold its entirety, we must care for the glimpses we do get and hold them sacrosanct in our stories. That work starts with an author’s intention and premise, then flows outward when they build a world, a character, a plot — even when they speak through an unreliable narrator.

Ron Carlson uses the unreliable narrator to great effect in his short story “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” in order to tell the reader a truth – that the narrator’s wife left him because he’s a self-absorbed loser. But in that story, Carlson lets the reader know the narrator is unreliable right away. First, in the title itself. Then the first line of the story is, “The problem is credibility.” And in case the reader doesn’t get it yet, the narrator repeats himself in the next line: “The problem, as I’m finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility.” The unreliable narrator is telling the truth in spite of himself.

Contrast that to the Chevrolet ads that begin, “Real People. Not Actors.” In that single line there are two obvious, provable lies:

1. Actors are real people.
2. The real people in these ads are told how to dress, where to stand, how to behave, what to say and when/how to say it. That makes them actors, even if their few lines do not require them to belong to SAG. I’m pretty sure they are also paid for their services, which makes them professional actors.

So what’s going on? Why would Chevrolet start their ads with such an obvious pair of provable lies? To find the truth, we can turn to fiction, specifically George Orwell’s novel 1984, when Winston Smith was required to agree to something he knew to be patently untrue — that 2 + 2 = 5.

Those ads ask you to agree that 2 + 2 = 5, so that when one of the guys in the ad says of a big black truck, “Looks like a monster coming to eat you up!” you are right there, feeling his vulnerability before this mighty truck, having agreed that he’s a real person and not an actor. The marketing impact is greatly enhanced at the expense of truth.

The damage to the human soul that occurs when we knowingly accept a lie as truth is exactly the opposite of the soul restoration that occurs when we recognize a truth nested in fiction.

Honest fiction calls for self-awareness, reflection, and critical thought through believable characters with believable motivation, who behave in character.

For example, if I believe in the Puritan work ethic, that hard work is always rewarded by success, then it’s easy for me to extrapolate with perfect logic to also believe that poor people are simply too lazy to “succeed.” While anyone who thinks twice about that ideology knows that isn’t true, this remains the underlying argument behind countless diatribes against the sinister threat of a deeply un-American welfare state.

Belief in the Puritan work ethic, and the explicit corollary that each of us somehow “earned” the life we have is both truth and lie. It is an ideology. Where is the respect for human error or illness in that equation? For empathy and humility, for a random car accident, for forgiveness, for good fortune, for the generous help of a neighbor in hard times?

I might write a novel about belief in ambition and the Puritan work ethic with its rewards and costs, and if I do a good job my characters will have experienced uncomfortable truths about that belief. Citizen Kane comes to mind. On the other hand, if I simply write a novel trumpeting my personal “truth,” my belief in the goodness of ambition and the Puritan work ethic, I end up in the company of Ayn Rand. That’s not company I want to keep. So – characters with fervent beliefs and relative truths? Certainly! Novels preaching the author’s fervent beliefs and relative truths? Not so much.

It’s so easy for an author to keep their characters in chains – just so those characters can serve the author’s ideology. It takes courage and integrity to refrain from turning one’s characters into ideological sock puppets.

I know there’s far more to this issue than what I’m including in this post. This is just what I see through my lens right now, after all. Is this just my personal, relative truth, or is what I’m saying congruent with other available data about the story elephant? I think it’s worth serious critical thought, reflection and self-awareness on the part of every author, and I invite that inquiry.

So with that caveat, here’s my little glimpse of the truth. Honest storytellers understand their values and beliefs will always inform their stories. Of course they will! Who wants to write about what doesn’t matter to them? But they work hard never to confuse beliefs with the partial truth they’ve seen precisely because they are not the same, and the difference matters. An honest storyteller is willing to push past the familiar comfort of personal belief to the hard truths of their characters, and even to change the plot to accommodate those truths, if necessary.

Every time a story is told, read or retold, it gains more life. That matters. Storytelling is serious work, with serious moral constraints and obligations. Stories feed the well of community, and are among the most sacred gifts humans can share with each other – from telling of a hunt painted on a cave wall to exploring other planets in other galaxies. Ultimately, a story worth the time to share it must tell something true of what it means to be a human being.

No matter the genre, true stories are about one thing only – the multi-faceted truth of our humanness. They can affirm the noble or depict the monstrous, but all of that is part of our humanness, every one of us. This must be the intention of the honest storyteller, whose stories reveal something true about us – our heart-stopping cruelty and selfishness, our staggering courage, beauty, and compassion, our fragility and resilience – to tell us a new truth about ourselves worth knowing, or perhaps more importantly, an old truth about us which we must never forget.

About the Author

I’m a mystic, writer, healer, lover, cancer survivor, father, friend. I write (mostly) gay fiction featuring all those paths and more.

Having led what can only be described as a checkered life, I can honestly say I’m grateful for all of it. I’ve been a minister, an office worker, a janitor, a drinker, and a software developer on my way to finishing my first novel in 2004.

But basically I’m just a weather-worn psychic empath still learning how to live in the world just the way it is. The thing is, I experience the world as so much more than is generally accepted. That’s the challenge. Writing stories is the best way I’ve found to examine and share the questions, the wonders I engage daily.

My husband and I have been together since 2002, married since 2007. Between us we have four children and five grandchildren. We’re based in south Florida, and work hard to keep up with the astonishing life we’ve created for ourselves.

Where to Find Lloyd: Website

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