Mad Fiction Experiment: How Much Is That Mystery Box In the Window? (Patreon)

How Much Is That Mystery Box In the Window: Genre Fiction, Endings, and YOU

Greetings, everyone! IT IS AUTUMN, MY DUDES. It’s all happening! Leaves and woodfires and pumpkin pie and costumes and marshmallows and crisp sunshine and A GODDAMNED BABY WHAT EVEN IS THAT IS IT A NEW KIND OF CANDY JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN?

I am excited. I am WORKED UP. I may be high on a hormonal cocktail straight from the inferno itself. P.S. THE LEAVES ARE STILL TOTALLY GREEN, JUST SO YOU KNOW. NO SIGN OF AUTUMN AT ALL. EIGHTY DEGREES OUTSIDE. 

MY CAPSLOCK KEY WILL COMMUNICATE THE VOLUME OF MY FEELINGS EFFECTIVELY.

And I will need that capslock key. 

Because, my friends, I am angry. Oh, I am so angry. I am the kind of angry that usually requires a half empty pub and some profoundly garbage floorboard-level cocktails to fully fuel the stream of Bowser-flame that I am about to spit out of my turtley mouth. I am the kind of angry that can never be fully assuaged. Years form now, if someone brings it up at a convention party, I will still have a full oxygen-tank of pure, unadulterated righteously indignant affrontery to share.

You see, Castle Rock just “ended.”

That is a television program. That’s not terribly important, this isn’t a review of Castle Rock. But if you haven’t heard of the thing, it is a mystery-fueled horror television program based extremely loosely on the worlds of Stephen King, with many speculative elements, that is produced, though in total fairness, not written or directed by, J.J. Abrams, who Lucy with the fucking football, and we all keep falling for it, and keep getting a face full of astroturf for our trouble.

The fact is, I don’t even have to tell you what I’m mad about now, do I? I said “mystery-fueled,” “speculative elements,” and “J.J. Abrams” and YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. YOU KNOW IT IN YOUR COLD AUTUMNAL HEART.

Now, I was holding onto the idea of an experiment about endings in the event of a time when it would seem profound and heartfelt and emotionally resonant to write about them. I don’t know what that would be, but I figured something would come up. We started out this whole crazy gig talking about beginnings, after all. But sometimes it’s not about bloody emotional resonance IT’S ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG, OH MY FREAKING GOD. HOLD MY EARRINGS. I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT ENDINGS, SHALL WE?

Not about every possible kind of ending. We’ll get to that sort of thing eventually. The specifics of endings. The grace of them. This is a macro view of endings. It’s about the gestalt of endings. This is about fairness in endings and WHY THAT MATTERS.

I know I have a certain reputation for being all elegant and mystical and all that fairy-girl shit, but listen: I am VERY PRACTICAL about writing and my relationship with my readers. Downright transactional. Perhaps it’s because, despite what stone-cold eleganza I may possess, I have always been a person who gets bored easily, for whom attention has always been a limited resource and a precious one. So I am extremely fucking careful with what I do with attention when other people give me theirs.

JOIN ME ON THE BOUNTIFUL SEAS OF AN EXTENDED METAPHOR, WON’T YOU?

Let’s think of a book (or film, or TV series, or comic, or any narrative unit of entertainment) as a shop. A nice little curiosity shop, in a nice little neighborhood, fairly niche, but wedged in a cozy location with lots of foot traffic and nearby brunch venues. You, the author, the creator, the shopkeeper, have gone to great effort to display your most enticing items up front, in fetching window displays or on attrative mannequins or, at the very least, just inside the door, where people are likeliest to see your wares quickly and be drawn in from the din of the crowded streets by their mystery, allure, antiquity or newness, their bright lights and interesting noises, their uniqueness and their promise of another world, another life, in which desires are more readily satisfied than in this one. 

People begin to enter your shop, accompanied by a ringing brass bell or whathaveyou, curious, a little nervous, ready to be amazed, but hesitant, hesitant, having been burned so many times before by other shops, other shopkeepers, other bright lights and noises that whispered that same promise in their jaded ears. But here they are, ready to try again, hopeful, eager.

So far, so good. 

Here’s where it gets tricky. Because you think you’re the top dog in this transaction, and you’re not. You think they’re here to get something from you, and they are, but you need something from them, too, and you need what they have a lot more than they need what you have. You are the beggar here, not the chooser. You need their attention. And their attention is a line of credit you took out the minute that brass bell rang. It’s only ever a loan, and if you don’t pay it back, those sweet, hopeful, eager treasure-hunters are likely to start smashing up the place in frustration. 

Now, you got them in with those fascinating little bits and bobs in the windows. The intricate machines and beautiful objects whose purpose seemed almost clear, but not quite graspable by mortal minds. Those strange happenings out in the woods, those odd characters with murky parentage. Those dusty tomes full of lore, those villains just brimming with backstories, those inexplicable places and events that prickle the imagination like a limb long gone to sleep suddenly, slowly waking up.

People walked into your shop because they saw the glitter of all those things and said: “Yes, yes, please, I would like to buy them! Those specific things I saw in the window! I like them! I want them! I need them! I care, and because I care, let me open a huge stonking bag full of my attention all over your counter, take it, take it all, take my sleepless nights and fan theories and mad speculation and obsession, just give me the stuff in the window!”

Now. Listen. It’s just goddamned stupidly unkind to cross your arms and go NAW MATE, THEY’RE NOT FOR SALE.

But they’re in your window.

NOPE.

But this is a curiosity shop. I want a curiosity.

ACTUALLY WE SELL WASHING MACHINES. JUST WASHING MACHINES. THEY’RE THE MOST IMPORTANT APPLIANCE IN THE HOME, YOU KNOW.

But I don’t need a washing machine. I can get one of those anywhere. I’ve had loads of washing machines over the years. I need the stuff in the window. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That’s what I came for.

I SAW YOU LOOKING AT THE WASHING MACHINES IN THE BACK.

Well, sure, but only because I was waiting you to get me the stuff in the window.

YOU’RE SO OBSESSED WITH THE STUFF IN THE WINDOW. WHO CARES? WHAT YOU NEED IS A WASHING MACHINE. YOU’RE SO SILLY, YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU WANT.

I do know what I want. It’s right there. In the window. Just sell it to me. I have all this attention to spend.

YOU REALLY CAME FOR A WASHING MACHINE. HERE’S ONE. IT’S FINE. MOST IMPORTANT APPLIANCE IN THE HOME.

Yeah, I get that, but like I said, I can buy a washing machine anywhere, and probably a higher quality one than that creaky old thing, which has obviously sat at the back of your shop for ages without anyone so much as glancing sideways at it, and also a badger is living in it in constant fear of the spin cycle.

IT’S A VERY ARTISTIC WASHING MACHINE. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, MUCH MORE ARTISTIC THAN THE STUFF IN THE WINDOW. WOULDN’T YOU RATHER WONDER FOREVER IF A BADGER SHAT IN YOUR CLOTHES THAN KNOW FOR CERTAIN? REAL LIFE DOESN’T HAVE DEFINITE ANSWERS!

What? No, I want to know!

AH, SO YOU DO WANT THE WASHING MACHINE! TRANSACTION COMPLETED. ANOTHER SATISFIED FAN.

Transaction not completed! You got me in here with all that lovely stuff in the window! Come on, just let me look at it up close, all right?

I THINK I KNOW WHAT YOU WANT BETTER THAN YOU DO. YOU’RE JUST AN ENTITLED MILENNIAL DRAWN IN BY FLASHING LIGHTS AND GLITZ BUT WHAT YOU REALLY NEED IS A WASHING MACHINE, AND THAT’S WHAT I SELL HERE, IT’S ALL I’VE EVER SOLD, I HAD IT ALL PLANNED OUT FROM THE BEGINNING AND I WAS ALWAYS GOING TO SELL YOU A WASHING MACHINE, SEE? IT’S MAYTAG! CLASSIC BRANDING! AND IT CLEARLY SAYS ‘WASHING MACHINES AND NOTHING ELSE’ ON THE DOOR—

It doesn’t! It says Ye Olde Curious Shoppe of Mystery and Wonder!

—SO YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE THIS WASHING MACHINE AND LIKE IT AND TELL EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET HOW DEEP AND MEANINGFUL AND AMBIGUOUS AND ARTISTIC IT IS OR THEY’LL ALL THINK YOU’RE STUPID AND SHALLOW AND WASTED ALL YOUR TIME AND MONEY ON NOTHING AND ALSO YOU SMELL LIKE BADGER HA HA.

And so on.

And so forth.

And some people will tell the internet what a beautiful, resonant washing machine it was, that no one else really understood that washing machine and how it was the most important appliance in the home like they did, and really the problem with shopkeeping today is they’re afraid of good old-fashioned washing machines like this, and over-reliant on stuff in the window when they should be focused on the fundamentals like wash, soak, rinse, and spin. 

But a lot of other people will just kick over your hat-stand and never come back to your shop, because you lured them in and made them care about gorgeous, intricate, mysterious curiosities and then stuck them with some old wet laundry and no goddamned dryer. 

IT’S BULLSHIT.

Speculative fiction has a particular problem with this, because we trade in mysteries and answers—i.e, the stuff in the window. We draw people in, not (necessarily) with the basics of literature, but with the icing on top, the robots and dragons and waggling eyebrows of wizards and bloody assassinations and girls in towers and all the rest of that archetypal jazz (and it is jazz, really) that prickles the flesh of anyone who ever grew up imagining things that couldn’t quite be real, which is everyone. And when you do that, when you get a loan of attention by promising the key to the tower, the secret robot code, the eyebrow-trimmer of doom, it is not only a total violation of the social contract to point at the washing machine in the corner and shrug, it’s downright cruel. And creators who come at SFF from outside the genre tend to adore the ease with which you can bring people in from the world with those shiny, shiny objects. But they don’t respect them, and they don’t respect the loan of attention. It’s just advertising to them. Just gift-wrapping. 

Because in this situation, the washing machine is the basics. Character and setting and visuals and a couple of good lines and a moment or two of emotional resonance—stuff that should always already be in there to begin with, just like a decent shopkeeper should always turn up in clean clothes anyway, like, at a fucking minimum. Stuff that, quite frankly, science fiction and fantasy and horror haven’t always been the best at delivering on a sophisticated level, and, for mainstream audiences, can be had in realism for like half the price and a dryer will probably be included. The dryer is emotional resolution? A fucking third act? I don’t know. I’ve gotten lost in the stock room.

THIS IS A LOT OF METAPHORS.

The point is, it’s easy to set things up to look interesting. It’s a piece of cake to make something look mysterious enough to get them in the door. What’s hard is satisfying that mystery, WHICH IS WHAT WE HAVE CALLED PLOT UP UNTIL LIKE TEN YEARS AGO I DON’T EVEN KNOW. The worst of it all is to look down on your readers because they dared to get invested in the glittering, fascinating objects you showed them in order to snag that attention, the stuff in the window you so artfully AND DELIBERATELY arranged to lure them in, and lecture them on the enduring quality and reliability of the Maytag brand. 

It’s not subverting expectations. It’s not creating artistic ambiguity that imitates the uncertainty of life. It’s just being a huge dick.

Now, am I saying that you should never write an ambiguous ending or design a book so that the reader must draw their own conclusions or strive for anything more avant-garde than plot-driven idea fiction? Come on, you know me better than that. Strive on, my dudes. But play fair.

I would imagine most of you know of the axiomatic Chekhov’s Gun rule of literature—phrased variously, that if there is a gun on the mantle in the first act, it must go off by the third. I’M NOT EVEN SAYING YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THAT RULE, YO. Sometimes a gun on the mantle is just a gun on a mantle and maybe I’m too American to make a big fuss about that. Whatever, you have a gun, good for you, who doesn’t?

But I would suggest the following. Call it Chekhov’s Ray Gun theory. Call it Valente’s Shop Window. I don’t care.

If there is a question or questions on the table in the first act, (Is that a ray gun I see before me? Whose fucking ray gun is that?) and you set up the entire motherfucking play around the answer to that question (no, seriously, it’s 19th century Russia, where the shit did that ray gun come from, Vladimir?), and everyone in the drawing room constantly discusses that question or questions (that ray gun was definitely not here before the fish course, I swear to god, Natasha, your parties always go tits up after the fish course, did I mention the ray gun is covered in blood? Who’s leaking?), and there is really no content or narrative drive to this absurdly contrived situation other than the asking of that question or questions and the answers to them, (how does anyone on this country estate during the age of the tsars even know the phrase ‘ray gun’?), then IT HAD BETTER FUCKING GO OFF IN THE THIRD ACT.

ALSO YOU ARE ACTUALLY REQUIRED TO WRITE A THIRD ACT. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. IT WILL BE ON THE TEST. 

The problem with not writing a resolution and “leaving it ambiguous” is that once you do that, the rest doesn’t really matter that much. This is what Castle Rock did. It’s what Lost did and Twin Peaks: The Return did and to some extent even what The Last Jedi did. It asked a central, absorbing question (“Who is the Kid?” in the case of Castle Rock) and declined to answer, and every answer it deigned to give, it immediately undercut under the guise of the “unreliable narrator” (y’all know I love unreliable narrators but it’s not actually just a license to be crap at writing a story) so that, no matter how many tantalizing things and beautiful moments had occurred in the story, none of them led anywhere, and you couldn’t really be sure that even one of them actually happened, so none of them mattered, so the whole story was a waste of everyone’s time and we all ended up with a garbage washing machine with a very irate badger inside AND THE BADGER IS OUR SOULS.

It’s not playing fair with our time or attention. Endings are not just where you stop writing. It’s where you settle up your tab. Yes, your tab. Not the reader’s. You were always shopping in their exclusive attention-boutique, not they in yours. WHAT A TWIST.

And this nonsense turns people off of speculative fiction entirely, by the fucking way. Because if you just want to experience life through someone else’s eyes, a bit of nice character interaction and loving moments and fights and making up and learning a lesson about life, you can watch Gilmore Girls and call it a night. They’re about as unrealistic as protagonists as anyone in Star Wars, and they never just didn’t fucking tell you where Rory went to college because isn’t it more like real life if you don’t know and it’s left ambiguous and blah blah parallel universes whatever?

See? With the questions set up by realist fiction, just not answering them is completely nonsensical. You don’t (or very rarely) get to just peace out on whether D’Arcy and Lizzie Bennet got married or who took over the Barksdale empire or who won the big championship game or who won the election. It doesn’t work. The narrative engine has to ACTUALLY GET YOU SOMEWHERE. Real life does have definitive answers. Like, a lot of them. A lot of the time. Even if it takes a long time to figure them out sometimes. If there aren’t definitive answers, people get angry. They go looking for them. They literally devote their entire lives to finding out what happened to total strangers sometimes. Like Michelle MacNamara and the Golden State Killer. For her, there was no answer. It was a mystery box that never opened, because of a freak admixture of chemicals. BUT LIKE A SECOND AFTER HER STORY ENDED THE REST OF US FOUND OUT THE ANSWER. That happened in real life! Real life loves answers! (Crime fiction has actually tried this a fair amount recently and people do not like it if murderers and techniques are not revealed, because in that genre, the reveal is everything YES I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU SHERLOCK YOU BUILDING-JUMPING BASTARD SEE ME AFTER CLASS.)

Yet it’s somehow acceptable, and acceptable to smirk about in interviews, in speculative fiction, because ART ART ART.

All that says to me is that somebody thought speculative fiction wasn’t inherently art in the first place, and needed some postmodern fun times, and/or the deft touch of certain genius auteurs, to elevate it. AND I LIKE POSTMODERN FUN TIMES. AND GENIUS AUTEURS. GODDAMMIT.

So in the end the point is this—don’t be a huge dick. If you put a bunch of cool shit in your window, let your customers have what they came for. If you make a promise, keep it. OR JUST DON’T MAKE THE PROMISE. You can write a story without a mystery box. You can write an SF or F or H story without a ray gun on the table. IT’S FINE. But if you set it up, you’d better knock it down. People don’t owe you their attention, and if you don’t take care of it, they will take it back and you will probably never get it again. You can write twenty okay books and your audience will ebb and flow and not hold any particular high or low point against you for the most part, but if you write one that pisses everyone off and makes them feel cheated, you will lose a lot of people, and every time they see your name they’ll be reminded of that time they wanted a jeweled jack-in-the-box with kung fu grip and real human hair and got a wadded-up wet sock still somehow half-full of unmoistened detergent.

Attention, as I said before, and have said in other essays, and will say again, is a line of credit. If you can get someone to pick up your book, you’ve earned a first line. If they keep reading past the first line, you’ve earned the first paragraph. If they read the first paragraph and keep going, you’ve got them for a page. If you can hold their attention through a page, they’ll probably make it through the first chapter. If you can hold on for a chapter, you can most likely keep them for the first act. If they stay through the first act, they’ll probably finish the book. But if you cheat them out of an ending, they’ll look at you for life like the deadbeat uncle who never paid them back after they helped him out that one time BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOU’LL BE. 

Now, can I interest you in this lovely little bauble? I’ll just fetch it down out of the window display…