Concerning: Entering a Story

Between our real lives and the world of a story lies a barrier, something like a shimmering wall. To enter a story we have to pass through that barrier, leave a part of ourselves behind, and re-orient ourselves in new and strange surroundings.

Sometimes—even for habitual readers—the barrier feels thick and hard to penetrate. We’re stressed or distracted; perhaps our eyes are tired; we can’t summons the energy to push through. 

Various factors make the wall appear more solid. A physical copy of a book that is battered or small print. Being an outsider to the genre. A literary style that is unfamiliar. 

Publishing professionals know that the magic talisman that eases transportation into a storyworld is familiarity. “In the tradition of X” vouchsafes that reorientation will not be difficult and the journey worthwhile. We follow authors and genres that we’ve liked before because we built up a level of competence and comfort with their characteristic voice and tropes.

Series build familiarity into the structure of their narratives. Once we have made the investment in a story, learned the rules, oriented in new surroundings and met new people, we want to stay there as long as possible. 

A few years ago I was shocked by a student who said she liked television more than movies because I’d grown up with movies having higher production value, more complicated characters, more artistic prestige, and more adult material than network television. With the advent of streaming series, and the move of great writers and performers onto television screens, I realized that television series have an advantage that films lack: they offer more time inside the storyworld. Once you commit to a show, you get to stay there for hours and hours—or at least for however many seasons and episodes have been produced, as opposed to a movie (which provides a one-and-done pleasure . . . unless, as so many movies are nowadays, the film is part of a series or “universe”.)

Knowing that I have an episode of a television series that I’m invested in to watch after dinner makes my day. My interest in the plot and characters only grows more intense over time. Even though the quality of a series may degrade over seasons, once I’ve committed, I’ll never leave episodes on the table.

I don’t know about you, but once I’ve done the work of getting inside, I want to stay there. So, I avoid short stories, because to me the work of pushing through the barrier doesn’t pay off for a bite-sized experience. 

I wrote four volumes of The Nine Realms and am publishing them all in row, January-April 2020, for readers, like me, who want to binge-read.

When a series ends, and we are thrown back out though that shimmering barrier, back into real life, we again feel an emotional passage, but this time it is a keen sense of exile and loss. This is why so many people re-watch their favored tv series or reread their favorite books. (Netflix, so sneaky and canny, even provides a row, “Watch it again.”)

Narrative is universal and timeless not only because it explains confusing phenomena, not only because it provides us with views of other lives and choices, not only because it offers us wisdom about life choices, but because, as Wordsworth once said, “The world is too much with us; late and soon.” Yelling, “Stop the world—I want to get off,” has been tried—unfortunately it doesn’t work. But getting “lost” in a story is a way of leaving this world behind . . . at least for awhile. 

 “Escaping” to another world is neither cowardice nor hedonism, but a way to refresh our psyches from the bruising realities around us.