Never Apologise, Never Explain

It took me years to learn how to apologise, but I've always been over-quick to explain. The child of a man who felt apologising ran counter to the ten commandments, I never had a good role model, subsequently I could never get it quite right. Eventually, however, I got so good at apologising I ended up apologising for who I was and then it had to stop.

It looks like I'm going to have to learn to do something similar with explaining.

In the 80's I wrote a short story called Dr Foster. I used to like to take existing nursery tales, fables, fairy tales and turn them on their head. Thus was Dr Foster.

Now Dr Foster was a science fiction story, of sorts. It was the true story of Dr Foster who, as you recall, disappeared into a puddle of rain. Not only was my Dr Foster a sci-fi retelling of a nursery rhyme, but it was also a sci-fi parody (I can never resist layering, having stories within stories) so it had a lot of piss-taking, with weird names and references to multiple dimensions.

It was sent out to two prestigious sci-fi magazines, one American, one British. The British magazine wrote back saying that no doubt it was very clever, but they didn't get it at all. The American magazine wrote back and said it was over-expository - a fancy word for over-explained. The only thing they shared in common was neither one had seen the parody in it at all, thus proving categorically, if it were in any doubt, that sci-fi enthusiasts have no sense of humour.

So, did I over or under explain?

When the first draft of DANNY was written it was more expository (we've learned it, we might as well use it) than it is now in its published form. Much more of the plot was revealed and the characters fell into more rational and predictable behaviour. When I came to edit it - way too many times for fun or sanity - I realised for the succeeding volumes to work I had to keep more hidden, both in terms of plot and motivation. (The characters were also speaking up for themselves, but that's way too weird to share. I'll have to wait till I know you better before I tell you that one.)

Unfortunately, some people think I've overdone the mystery. There are too many unanswered questions, too many conflicting motivations. I don't believe a word of it. I think they just hate being frustrated and it's simply overwhelming impatience. But then, I would say that - I know the story.

However, I do find the weird and wonderful conclusions some readers reach about the book fascinating. Not knowing what I know they leap to some very tortuous conclusions. But what's really interesting is that all their conclusions are derived from the 'rules' of fiction, no leaps of individual imagination at all. Despite the fact that DANNY is nothing if not unique, they keep trying to make it conform to standard plot conceptions, what a book should be.

In DANNY a policeman is murdered. His death is a dead end, with nothing to connect it to the perpetrator. This is clearly explained in the book, although not in the conventional way, but through dialogue. Nevertheless, the reader is told.

I don't know whether it's the fact that DANNY races through at a cracking pace (no mean feat at 990 pages, and it was fucking hard work, I can tell you), or simply that readers get too caught up in it, but the amount of people who have missed this entirely, or have simply decided to get huffy because the police don't follow up the way they 'should', is depressing. After all, they say, we all know that cops hate a cop-killer.

Do we? And even if I was to accept that, what could the police do if they have no clues, or even the faintest inkling of who dunnit?

The fact is, it is in fiction, in films, that cops doggedly hunt down cop killers. When someone kills a cop in fiction we, the audience, have been red-flagged to expect a certain reaction. Cop death = hellish pursuit.

And this is why these readers are angry at me. It matters not one jot that in real life murder goes unpunished time without number, that even murders with good leads go unpunished, that cops get killed and the perps are never caught. I have broken an unspoken rule. You kill a cop - we, the audience, expect a fixed trajectory and we didn't get it. Bad writer.

Apparently doing the unexpected, mirroring the erratic, arbitrary nature of real life is not a comfortable experience for some readers. But guess what?

You got it, I'm not sorry.

But fuck me if I haven't just gone and explained again.