Don't Break The Fictive Dream!
One of my top pieces of craft advice
One of the concepts I’ve picked up in my years in the literary trenches is that of the fictive dream. I credit this to John Gardner, who shares it in his craft book of golden nuggets, The Art of Fiction. This concept is in my writer’s knapsack along with another of my craft standbys, profluence, which I wrote about a while back (another Gardnernerism).
If you’ve been a student or editorial client of mine, then you’ve heard me yammer on about both of these, and I probably had much to say in the margins of your manuscripts or editorial letters about both. Profluence! I might have written. Or: Do you see how you might have broken the fictive dream here?
If you buy one craft book, you could do worse than The Art of Fiction (though George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is indispensable!). There is a trinity of concepts I have taken from this book that are the gift that keep on giving in my own work and that of the writers I work with—the third concept I’ll be sharing about later this summer (hint: the objective correlative, where voice meets show-don’t tell). They are the cornerstone of what I teach my students and clients. Side note: even the writers I work with who are serious pros and very fancy books deals have their minds blown by The Trinity and it never fails to take their writing to the next level, giving it that polish and depth that they always say they long for and see in the writers they love most.
This is craft. Not save the f-ing cat. I’m sorry, I just can’t with these formulas that somehow convince writers that as long as they follow the formula, they’ve done the work: dear ones, the formula is only a part of the work. No offense. I know they work for a lot of people.
Here, I’m talking about really rich, old-school, write-the-hell-out-of-something craft. Wordsmithing. Chef’s kiss kind of writing.
This is what Gardner is about.
Here’s Gardner on the fictive dream:
The most important single notion in the theory of fiction I have outlined—essentially the traditional theory of our civilization’s literature—is that of the vivid and continuous fictional dream. According to this notion, the writer sets up a dramatized action in which we are given the signals that make us “see” the setting, characters, and events; that is, he does not tell us about them in abstract terms, like an essayist, but gives us images that appeal to our senses—preferably all of them, not just the visual sense—so that we seem to move among the characters, lean with them against the fictional walls, taste the fictional gazpacho, smell the fictional hyacinths. In bad or unsatisfying fiction, this fictional dream is interrupted from time to time by some mistake or conscious ploy on the part of the artist. We are abruptly snapped out of the dream, forced to think of the writer or the writing.
In my work, I combine Gardner with my own love of bingeable reading that is character-driven and emotionally resonant so that I get the whole package. You can write pretty and nothing happens, which means you have no story. You need to work on every level. You can have a great premise / plot, but it’s nothing if you don’t have great characters. You can have both of those, but you won’t have a great book without wonderful writing. And you could have all three, but if you don’t have heart, that special sauce, then you don’t have the thing that makes a book really sing. That’s not a formula—that’s art.
That being said, I love every single Mission Impossible movie no matter how many nuclear bombs are in them. I contain multitudes: sue me.
Okay, so back to the fictive dream.
The fictive dream is the trance readers fall into when they’re reading a book, where they lose their sense of self and begin to feel like they’re in the story, perhaps they have even become the protagonist themselves.
They’re actually in the Shire. They are Lauren Olamina, starting Earthseed. They are Anne, having Gilbert call her carrots.
When you “break” the fictive dream, this means you’ve done something that takes the reader out of the story.
It could be a craft issue or plot that doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you’ve drawn attention to yourself as the author by being too clever, being so experimental that the reader is now intellectualizing the experience. It often occurs when you’ve confused the reader. Woe to you, oh writer, if the reader has to go back and re-read.
So, when you’re revising, you’re always thinking about how to keep from breaking the fictive dream. All my notes on manuscripts are really toward helping a writer maintain that dream at all costs.
The writer themself builds the fictive dream based on the world of their book. This means that the rules of their world is what keeps this dream state operating. Your book, your rules.
It’s All About Trust
Actually, my little aside on Mission Impossible works well here because the fictive dream is all about trust. Your reader needs to trust you. You’re the captain of this ship. Every misstep you make loses trust. Every time you get it right, you gain or maintain trust. They keep reading because they trust you will bring it home.
If they can’t trust you, they have better things to do. They only have so many years to live. Or minutes. Why should they waste any of their time on a book that might not deliver?
In the world of MI, we trust Ethan Hunt. Implicitly. He gets the job done. Always. And we know that he will risk everything for the job, and, even more so, for his people. He is loyalty incarnate. He will always put his people before himself and before any mission. The only time the mission comes before his people is if literally the whole world will die instead and, even then, Ethan will only put the whole world before his people if there is no way he can’t ALSO save his people. This is the fictive dream of Mission Impossible. If Ethan suddenly betrays his crew, goes rogue, got selfish and took the money…we’d lose all trust as fans. Likewise, if Ethan didn’t pull off a stunt, we’d be like, what? If he dies at the end, we’d want our money back. In the world of Mission Impossible, Ethan gets the job done. This is the fictive dream.
This is why we can go to these movies and no matter how freaking tense they get, we can enjoy the hell out of them. Sometimes people we love in them might die, but Ethan will not. And he will save the day. The bad guys, in the end, will not win. Earth will not blow up, even though sometimes it gets super close. I write these words, by the way, as we’re about to see another nuclear freaking possible war situation happen.
Your fictive dream has the potential to be deeply healing. It’s a safe space for your readers, those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free who opened your book looking to get away from a terribly frightening world. They need you to wrap a cocoon of words around them so they can recharge and get back out there.
High stakes.
So don’t break it.
A Note on Genre
How or if the dream is broken does depend on genre. My recent post that features Charlotte Wood’s literary Stone Yard Devotional would break all the rules for a fantasy or romance. It lacks any sort of drive. The character doesn’t actively want anything beyond her desire to heal in silence and collective hermitage and, eventually, receive forgiveness. And yet Wood’s ability to create such a wonderful tone throughout the book weaves a meditative space for the reader, creates such a consistency of mood that there is a fictive dream. The deep emotional resonance is like sitting in a stone church in quiet contemplation so that each time one opens the book, you sink back in.
Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing would absolutely break the fictive dream if, suddenly, her characters began to dive into deep internal reflections around the ethics of just war and indulge in existential musing—her fictive dream is built on action, on romance, on suspense and constant conflict and obstacles.
Mexican Gothic’s fictive dream stays strong because of its creepy tone, its claustrophobic, fecund, yet sensual and dangerous undertones alongside its surreal situation. The dream would be broken if that tone strayed or if we left the house for too long, shattering the spell.
Breaking What’s Broken
I want to take a moment here to shout-out all the writers who are working hard to push against the norms of teaching Western writing styles as the way, because I suspect some of you have been burned by writing teachers who have said you’ve broken the fictive dream—maybe not in those words, but essentially they said that—not because you did something wrong but because you were being experimental or offered something unexpected on the page. Maybe you’re a BIPOC writer and you’re working in a form of African storytelling or a Palestinian writer playing with the way stories are told in your community. Your white teacher said, no, you’re doing this the wrong way. What they’re really saying is: white or western readers, or readers trained to read in the western way, will be surprised by this or not sure what to do with this. We are wired for story, as the teacher Lisa Cron (of Story Genius fame) says, but, sadly, so many of us have only been exposed to Western mythology. Our brains are expecting a three-act structure. Or boy-meets-girl. Or black = bad and white = good.
Good art breaks norms, it challenges people. So don’t be afraid to challenge your readers, to confront their expectations, to bend and twist. To shatter illusions. To make them uncomfortable.
There are some dreams that meant to be broken because they are harmful or outdated or just plan wrong. Or boring.
Your wild words, as Mary Oliver calls them, might break the fictive dream, but only because they are new and exciting and necessary. That’s okay.
I still remember when I say the Powerpoint section in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and it blew my mind. I was like, YOU CAN DO THAT? I loved it so much! I mean, yeah, it broke the fictive dream, but in the best kind of way. As an artist, I got so excited. It woke me up! For writers that are intellectual readers, they love when the fictive dream is broken. But for writers who are heart readers, who want to be all in and immersed in the world, it’s the most criminal thing you can do to them. Usually I’m in that camp. But that day, I wasn’t.
If you are an experimental writer who is doing something new—perhaps working with interpolations or using a lot of white space or having parts of the book crossed out, as M.T. Anderson does in Octavian Nothing—you will likely encounter notes about breaking the fictive dream. Rest assured, I am not talking to you here. Although, if we were working together, we would discuss how you might manage this. How would you bring the reader back in, is it worth breaking the dream, are you just trying to be clever, or are you doing this for an emotional, purposeful reason? Some ideas are really fun, but you need to make sure they’re earning their keep.
I don’t want to be one of those people that turns into an old white man (ahem, Gardner) and says this is how you write fiction and if you do it any other way it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. My dear friend, the writer Camille DeAngelis, has recently sent me her pal Henry Lien’s excellent craft book, Spring, Summer, Astroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling, in which he playfully shares the East Asian four-act structure, circular and nested structures, and how Eastern value systems such as collectivism can dictate form—which is where you get the freaking amazing ending in Everything, Everywhere All At Once. Also, any craft book that breaks down My Neighbor Totoro has me at kon’nichiwa. Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World is another great book to check out the ways in which writing teachers are questioning how to re-vision writing workshops and how to approach teaching writing.
A lot of harm has been done to writers—not just writers of color and women writers, but all writers. We’ve been told to be in this tiny little box created by white men and I’m all for breaking free.
Just like with all my teaching, I always say to try something to see if it works for you. Ask yourself, Does it taste like freedom? If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. Find a new way. The tough end of that is you’ll find that nearly all your readers are western-trained. This includes not just agents and editors but the readers you’re trying to reach. So you’ll have to find a way to balance how you want to tell your stories and what will reach readers.
Gut Check
Watch your ego. If you get notes from a good editor and from several sources that say something isn’t working and you find yourself engaged in a knee-jerk reaction refusing to revise, insisting that they just don’t get it, that rules are made to be broken…Really look into your intention here. It may be that you’re trying something truly experimental or outside of what the cultural norm is. It also may be that you are resistant to revising, to killing your darlings. It could be that you’re attached to that passage, that approach, and you simply can’t let go. I’ve encountered not a few writers—and, I’ll be honest, they’ve always been male—who refuse to hear what I have to say when I tell them what they’re doing isn’t working, that it’s breaking the fictive dream. They think they’re brilliant, the exception to the rule, when, in fact, they haven’t yet put in their 10,000 hours or their million words to get the craft chops they need to pull off their ambitious goals. Picasso was a brilliant classical painter before he invented cubism. You need a strong craft foundation—there is no skipping steps here, no instant gratification.
Common Ways Of Breaking The Fictive Dream
I think the concept of the fictive dream is a solid one regardless of whether you’re taking a western or eastern approach to storytelling because, either way, you don’t want to take your readers out of the story (unless you’re Bertolt Brecht and are deliberately breaking the fourth wall re: the Alienation Effect). Besides, your readers will let you know either because they stopped reading your books, buying your books, or started giving you two star reviews on Goodreads.
Here are the common dream breakers I notice in the manuscripts I work on:
Confusion: This is most often the case with genre fiction (fantasy / sci-fi, speculative). Either an action scene isn’t clear, or world-building is murky, or there is backstory that is all over the place. We don’t know what’s going on, or too much is happening at once and you’ve asked the reader to juggle way too many balls. Be kind to your reader! If they have to re-read or go back, you’re doomed. Only give them what they need when they need it. Brevity is the soul of wit.
Rushing through a scene: Slow it down—do you have somewhere to be? I’ve sat down to read your book, so please, take a knee and let’s do this. We need the full arc, with a character who wants something, has obstacles, where there are stakes the character (and by extension, the reader) care about. The scene is active - things are happening. Ideally we are grounded in the setting, immersed. Dots are connecting. It’s not all internal or, if it is, the characters are at least doing something while they are thinking about things. What breaks the fictive dream here is that the reader can tell you have one foot out the door the whole scene, so they do, too. Their mind begins to wander—they’re not fully invested. They sense you’re not fully in it. The reader begins to think about whether it’s not time to put in a load of laundry and you’ve lost them.
Bad Dialogue: Oh, man. Nothing breaks the fictive dream like some bad dialogue. A good fix here is to read your work out loud. This will help in general to avoid all kinds of mistakes, but really helps with dialogue. Dialogue needs to work on lots of levels. If you aren’t good at dialogue, this is something you need to work on pronto. Read move scripts and plays. Start getting a feel for the cadence of dialogue. Work on your dialogue tags, too, and ALWAYS make sure we know who is speaking. Have dialogue occur during action and have people talking while they are doing things.
Nothing’s Happening: I see so many scenes likes this—whole chapters, even. People are talking, it’s a lot of info dumping, but the chapter hasn’t earned its place. Nothing’s happening—the story hasn’t moved forward at all. When I ask the writer, they’ll say that a certain amount of information has been shared: this doesn’t justify a chapter or scene. Chapters and scenes need to move plot and story forward. Now, you might have a dreamy, very tone-heavy book like Stone Yard Devotional where it may seem like another chapter where they have to deal with the continual plague of mice isn’t moving things forward, but this is literary fiction, where there are subtle maneuverings happening internally in the character, moving her toward emotional reconciliations. It’s also literary fiction, which does tend to operate, at times, on its own set of rules. It gets away with a lot because it often does have that intellectual component we mentioned earlier, and the level of craft combined with that can often turn a novel into a meditation as much as a story. (Going down that rabbit hole requires a whole other post—if you write literary fiction, we can talk more about that).
Characters doing or saying things that are out of character: Be careful not to put words in their mouth or have them do things just because you need them to. Readers will absolutely say, He would never do that! They are not your puppets! Usually this happens when you’re rushing. When you yourself are not mindfully in scene and on the page.
Anachronistic Language: The language you use needs to be particular to your world and characters. If you’re writing a middle grade character, they need to use kid speak. If you’re writing a Victorian character, they can’t use American slang. Unless you’re genre bending, which is cool. Every word counts.
Abrupt Chapter Endings: This happens most often with emerging writers who are still figuring out how to do this thing or in messy first drafts. Usually a writer is just trying to plod through to the next chapter. Again, make sure you have profluence, that the character has a clear objective at the end of the chapter, that there is a reason the reader wants to keep reading. Basically, has this chapter earned its place? Is there a point to it?
Unexpected Shift In POV: Early on in your book, you establish who your POV characters are. In Game of Thrones, we understand that we have many POVs, so we aren’t taken out of the story when we turn the page and see a new POV. However, EVERY TIME you shift POV, you don’t break the fictive dream, but you do send a little earthquake through your fictive world. The reader will remember for a moment that they’re reading a book. They are no longer fully immersed. It’s like they need to come back up for air, and, once they’ve read a few sentences and readjusted to the new voice and reoriented themselves on where they are at in the story, they go back underwater. If you have alternating POV (two characters), you hardly break the dream at all. If you have many POVs, then you risk it more because people might be scattered over lots of geographic locations. Here’s where it gets tricky: if you set up in your book that you have one or two POVs and then suddenly, halfway through, you introduce a new POV, your reader will be like what the hell. Who is this person? It’s almost like they’ve invaded your reader’s headspace. It feels wrong, too intimate. It really is a risk. So you have to be VERY certain this is the right choice. Those of you I’ve worked with are probably laughing if I’ve given you this note—you know I have strong feelings about this! Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint and Ursula LeGuin’s Steering the Craft are both good craft books that dive into this. The reason this is such a biggie is because you’ve basically broken your own rules. You set up that this is a book with two viewpoints and suddenly Santa Claus is chiming in and your reader is now questioning who is steering this ship. They lose a little trust.
Non-Linear Spacetime F-ups: If you are working in non-linear structure, fab! But you really have to be like a Marine about this: high and tight. It’s very easy to confuse readers when you are working in non-linear, or in two time periods that are far apart (going back and forth between the way past and the present). Using time stamps at the top of your chapters can help. Using things that anchor us help, too. Don’t start chapters with dialogue. Orient us in setting right away. Let us know where we are and who we are with. Don’t make your reader work too hard to figure out where and when they are. Don’t try to be clever.
Tone Consistency: If your book has major tone—a heavy voice + vibe—you need to keep that consistent. I’ll let a writer know if they went from zany to suddenly melancholy. This is also a good thing to keep in mind with multiple POVs. If you have various voices in first person, you want to find voices that are different, yet complimentary. Not so different that we get whiplash, but they need to have their own voice so that they feel like their own person. Tone isn’t something anyone can teach you, but you learn it through reading a lot, through butt-in-chair practice: writing exercises, deep creative well-filling work, reading a lot of poetry, finding what gets you in the zone (writing to a certain kind of music or meditating and then writing might produce a certain tone). You are an instrument. How do you play? What makes you play higher or lower notes?
Harmful Language or Content: This is likely not your intent, but you might have used language or written content in such a way that could harm some of your readers. From problematic to downright hateful, there are terms, depictions, portrayals, content or a lack of context that could pull your reader way out of your work. I always point these out to my writers and offer ways they might rework those sections. Henry Lien speaks to how writers can skillfully work with incorporating diverse topics and characters in their work and write outside their culture in ways that are not harmful, so his book is a good one for that. It’s a matter of really doing the work on so many levels and getting lots of eyes on your manuscripts, too. Coming from a heart-centered place, a place of curiosity and unlearning, and one that is open and humble and ready to do right by the miracle will serve you well.
Grammar: Grammar is what copyeditors are for, yes, but you are a writer and shouldn’t be a lazy git. You need to know grammar. And don’t use AI, for the love. Learn how to write. Get help where you need it. Take classes, do research. If you don’t understand how to use the past perfect tense, there are some great tutorials online. This is our craft, my friends. Not understanding grammar for a writer is kind of like a painter not understanding the color wheel. You want to have every tool at your disposal. Don’t outsource your craft. You want full authority over your work.
Lazy Writing: As far as lazy writing goes…adverbs aren’t the greatest—not just because it’s a “rule” (we can be renegades!) but because they are general when you want to be more specific (specificity = better writing). For example: She looked at him ruefully = not great. She gave him a rueful look = better. The look she sent his way shriveled his balls. = specific, funny, has voice and we learn a little something about their dynamic. I’ve actually had readers who aren’t even readers who read literary fiction say things about popular contemporary work, “Yeah, they’re not the greatest writer, but…” Give your readers credit. They notice when the writing is subpar. It takes them out of the story, but they might stay for your bingeable steamy scenes or to figure out who the killer is. You owe them more than that—and you owe yourself more than that, too.
How To Practice Noticing Breaking The Fictive Dream
You’ve got to read like a writer. Don’t worry, this won’t ruin reading for you. But when you do notice yourself being taken out of a book, put a sticky tab in there and either go back later and figure out why you were taken out of it, or, if you want, do it right then.
Have a little notebook handy. This is serious business. You need to become your own best writing coach. Why were you taken out? You can even write a mini editorial note to the writer. No joke. Get that editorial voice down.
Example: J: Wonderful work here right at the end of the series. The epilogue is sweet—the readers will get a kick out of seeing your wizards all grown up. However—and this is up to you. I * really * have such a hard time believing Harry would give his kid Snape’s name, even as a middle name. The man tortured Harry and did evil things. He was an absolutely horrid man who did a slightly redeeming thing or two at the end of his life. I think it’s a bit much and a lot for a kid to carry, besides (and this is me speaking was a Slytherin, mind you). It took me out of the story, broke the fictive dream and felt a bit like sticky toffee. I don’t think you need to wrap things up with a bow here. You did a great job of letting us have a good balance of wins and losses in this series, which kept it honest. Now it’s a bit Hallmark, no? What think you? I know you love Snape. Still…- H
If any of you are wondering what my notes are like - there you go!
Identify what books held you captive. Their fictive dream was so strong that you lost ALL track of time and reality. List them. When you have time, go back and read them. What qualities did they have? How might you amplify those qualities in your own work?
If you have a manuscript you’re working on, read through it and see if you’re breaking the fictive dream. If you are, how might you bring the dream back to life?
I’m Scared! Help!
I know it’s a lot. Writing is an art. People forget that. It seems like everyone these days thinks they can whip out a book and throw it online and be all, I’m a writer. I gently correct them in my head: You are a person that wrote something. If I successfully bandage a wound, I don’t call myself a doctor—you feel me?
Let me help you, for crying out loud!
We are not meant to do this alone. I have had so many mentors. I have paid thousands of dollars (for my MFA), wrote millions of words, given up gazillions of hours of my life in training so that I could tell you these things and be able to do these things myself. You’re not supposed to just magically know how to do it.
1. I still have some space this summer for manuscript critiques. Email me. They start at $2,500 for the first 80K words and 4cents/word after that. Plus we have a 90-minute editorial call. Loads of resources. Track changes on your manuscript. A huge editorial letter. My big thing is to really help identify what your strengths and areas of growth are as a writer AND help you with this particular book. And give you a roadmap and tools for this and future work. Let me help you.
2. I am taking on 4 apprentices this year, beginning in September, in a cohort model for deep craft work. It’s a very special program that I will be sharing about soon. It’s for 9 months. If you’re interested, just email me and I’ll tell you more. I believe in the old-school way of wisdom sharing. I’m beginning to feel like a bit of an elder these days. Things are going so fast and I’m alarmed at all the corner cutting I’m seeing. I want writers to have the deep pleasure of becoming fully realized, satisfied artists. Of seeing their potential realized, beyond just market. Of finding their voice and using it. Of discovering how to be their own best teacher. I still have writers who help me and that I learn from, don’t get me wrong. But I know this craft inside and out. And when I have questions, I know where to look. I can spot a charlatan a mile away. Writing is a wisdom tradition. AI and parts of publishing are trying to take that away from us, they’re trying to encourage us to churn out absolute rubbish and selling us the idea that publishing is the end all, be all. My friends, there is NOTHING more satisfying than writing the best work of your life. It breaks your heart in a million pieces, too, because it will never achieve what you hope for it once you’ve finished it, but knowing what you’re capable of and accomplishing it? That’s real power. And no one can take that away from you or automate it or replicate it. That’s what the apprenticeship is about. That’s what this whole post is about! This whole space. Hell, my whole life.
3. I will also be starting up The Well again for monthly Gatherings to support writers. This will be very, very accessible, so don’t fear if the above makes you think support from me is not available to you. I want to be able to reach as many writers as possible. More on that in the coming weeks. This will be a space both for craft and mental health and creative support for writers. I’m really excited.
In the meantime, I wish you many beautiful real and fictive dreams.
Your’s in doing right by the miracle,
I've learned so much from you about craft--thank you for what you've done for me, and what you do for all writers who are fortunate enough to work with you and/or read your posts.....AND, I guess I'll FINALLY have to give the MI movies a chance. 😁