Ready, Set, and Action by Gabriel Valjan

 

Plot, character, setting - how do they fit together in your work? Which do you find is most tricky (if any) and which do you have the most fun with?

 

My mind flashes back to school days (read daze) when I was subjected to Aristotle.

 

For those who think Aristotle isn’t relevant to crime fiction, think again. He was rumored (though unlikely) to have had a hand in poisoning his star pupil, Alexander the Great.

 

Aristotle defined Character as a virtue guided by Reason. Hume would say the opposite: Feelings. Plot, Aristotle said, needed a Beginning, Middle, and an End, and all three relied on Action. There were actions and reactions, start to finish, with a hiccup or two, for a reversal and an epiphany. If you dislike Aristotle’s definition of Plot, then try Evelyn Waugh’s: “The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then the queen died of grief is a plot.”

 

Aristotle didn’t concern himself with the common man either. The audience witnessed the Rise and Fall of someone great. Emphasis on great, meaning nobility. In the ‘real world,’ our Betters don’t provide us with moral examples. Not politicians and not the wealthy. Richard Sackler of Dopesick or Painkillers is, unfortunately, a real person. Time spent with his ‘story’ is educational to learn the magnitude of his crimes, but it is devoid of Justice. He kept his billions and will never serve a day in jail.

 

This last point about an absence of Justice would have been unconscionable to Aristotle. Jump forward in time, repackage his vocabulary as Three Act Structure, replace rising and falling action with ‘stakes,’ and call reversals ‘red herrings,’ and we have contemporary fiction. I would add that herrings are not a new invention. See Edgar as Tom o’ Bedlam in King Lear.

 

As a writer and as a person, I have a greater tolerance for Ambiguity and a lack of Justice. I read for character and for authenticity. I expect that both be true to time and place. A check for compliance with Aristotle’s concept of Unity. Now, this next point is where I earn my cup of hemlock.

 

I accept the World as a fallen and corrupt place. I see governments as no different from corporations, at best; the mafia, at worse. My characters inhabit such a world, and Reason does not guide them. Ambition, greed, and revenge motivate some of them. I write about common, ordinary people. There are no Betters in my fictional world; in fact, some of my criminals occasionally demonstrate virtue.

 

In my life experience, Justice has been about how much you can afford to spend on legal representation and who you knew. We are not all equal before the Law. I accept Ambiguity and lack of Justice. Readers of the Shane Cleary mysteries see ‘bad guys’ do good things and ‘good people’ do bad things. That is realistic for human nature, as is power is Power; and whoever has it—regardless of their ethnicity or gender or whatever—will do whatever it takes to maintain it.

 

You may not like my characters, but the way I write them doesn’t make you detest them. I am neither a nihilist, nor are my stories so dark that you want to contemplate the razor’s edge when you reach that last page. You may disapprove of my Tony Two-Times in my Shane Cleary series because he is a killer, a mafioso, but he is a man with feelings and an odd code of ethics.

 

Every Plot has been written; every story, told. All the possible outcomes are not unlike Monica from Friends detailing the sequence of numbers to reach an orgasm. Readers arrive at the same Destination, but their journey to Climax may vary.

 

I write historical, about the 70s. When I recreate the Boston of that era, I try to weave in real History with a capital H. I am often shocked at how Americans don’t know their own history, such as that Boston was the last city in the country to desegregate schools and housing (starting in 1974). I hope readers learn something.

 

Unlike Graham Greene, who distinguished his works as either “Literature’ or ‘Entertainment,’ I don’t. I am an entertainer who happens to write crime that is, by turns, literary. My dialogue is realistic, and I keep violence off-screen (most of the time). I try to create multidimensional characters so readers will stay the course over 200-plus pages. I want readers to spend time with my characters, enjoy them, and return for the next book. The setting of Boston in a bygone era is extra. My Setting isn’t Home, but it’s familiar, and my Characters aren’t the favorite relatives, they are Family. Plot is something that happens, like Life.

 

Enjoy the ride, and come again (um, not in Monica’s meaning of the word).