Thread: You, Me, and Neil Gaiman

Everyone’s writing is unique.

You probably knew that already. Alastair Reynolds writes Alastair Reynolds. Christopher Paolini writes Christopher Paolini. Robert Jordan (and Brandon Sanderson) writes Robert Jordan. Zelazny writes Zelazny. You write you. Your life experiences, your ideas, your stories. You see, as a writer, all the things that make you unique at the same time make your writing uniquely yours, if you get my drift.

So you don’t write Neil Gaiman. You can’t- you’re not Gaiman (sorry to burst your bubble). But, you do share something in common with him: you tend to write the same story.

Neil Gaiman, if you’re not familiar with him, is one of the more successful writers of the past couple of decades, taking home Nebulas at an astounding rate. So understand as I start to dig into this topic that writing the same story, if your formula is winning, is not necessarily a bad thing. You could go win a Nebula or two yourself by the time all is said and done. So understand that I’m not really lashing you for this, I’m just trying to make you more self-aware within your writing.

So…

The first thing that Gaiman ever wrote that you should know however is Stardust, a graphic novel that you probably would recognize as a goofy 2007 action flick. Anyway, following Stardust, Gaiman got his career truly rolling on a novelization of the English television miniseries Neverwhere, a novelization that topped SF Site’s ‘Best Of’ list back in 1997. From Neverwhere Gaiman turned to children’s literature, creating stories such as Coraline before penning the grand American Gods, which won the holy trinity of the Hugo, Nebula and Stoker awards for best novel. Then came Anasasi Boys, a semi-sequel to the sweeping American Gods. Post-Anasasi, he delved back into kid’s books, churning out The Graveyard Book.

That’s the basic history that you can go and dig up on Wikipedia if you want to. Now, for the part that nobody else will tell you… those are all the same story. Bear with me.

Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a no-name twenty-something stuck in a cool relationship with a borderline sociopathic fiancée who really doesn’t care much for him. One day on his walk home from work, Richard stumbles across a strange girl just laying in the middle of the street. He gives her a hand and help to fix her up and send her on her way before heading back into the mindless jumble of his own life. Which doesn’t last very long as everyone around Richard, from landlord to girlfriend, suddenly forgets that he exists, launching him on a quest into the magical stretches of London to try and regain what little he had.

Coraline begins with a little girl moving into a new house. When exposed to a new location, her curiosity runs rampant, and soon she discovers a door to an alternate reality where her mother wants to replace Coraline’s eyes with buttons. It’s dark, and frankly weird for a kid’s book- something of a barometer for the tone that Gaiman’s gravitates to.

American Gods is the odyssey of Shadow, a late-twenties convict who is finishing out his sentence for assault when he is let out a few days early so that he can go home to attend his wife’s funeral. On the flight home he’s approached by a mystery man called ‘Mr. Wednesday’ and from there the story spins out into an exploration of mythologies the world over. Anasasi Boys keeps playing with myths, taking the show to England for the tale of twenty-something ‘Fat Charlie’ Nancy, an accountant stuck in a frustratingly sexless relationship with his girlfriend. When his father dies, Fat Charlie hits the road and soon finds himself mired in trouble courtesy of his family and a few acquaintances.

Starting to see the pattern?

The focus of these stories is upon someone diving into an unknown world, a world that lies just beneath, or oftentimes beside, our own. His protagonists are generally nice, well-meaning people who get caught in over their heads, often being manipulated by someone that they might consider a friend. As Gaiman himself wrote in American Gods, ‘That is the story; the rest is detail.’ Throw in some bad romance (we’re talking Lady Gaga here, not those cheesy Harlequin novels) with the occasional horror scene, and you’ve got… well, you’ve got Neil Gaiman’s bibliography in a box, basically.

So how does this connect to you?

At the top of this I kicked around the idea that your writing is made yours by the emotional impressions unique to you, born of your own experience and paradigm. Well, take a look at Gaiman. That story, that’s his story. That’s the story that he, on his own, knows how to write. The collaborator work is different, as are many of the comics, pieces influenced by things pouring from elsewhere than the writer’s mind. However; at the end of the day, what this means to you is simple.

The things that make your writing yours also limit it. Human creativity, whatever you might be led to believe, is not an infinite thing. As such, we writers have a nasty tendency to recycle ideas from one tale to the next. The details may change, but the story at heart will remain the same. Personally, I do sometimes struggle with throwing out fresh ideas, especially for characters. My protagonists generally follow the same line: emotionally scarred from some past problem, generally the death of a loved one; physically tough, but not very big; and intelligent, though not nuclear physicist smart.

My plots tend to revolve around people that want to change the world. Not destroy it, mind, just change it more to their own liking. I prefer morally gray plots inhabited by morally gray characters. I tend to leave magic out of things, mostly because I’m no good at creating a system by which the magic could run. I like a little romance on the side. Those are ‘my’ stories. That’s how I write.

Two examples not enough? Brandon Sanderson in his Mistborn novels features a strong female lead blessed with freaky cool magic skills- a con artist turned princess by the name of Vin who can ‘burn’ metals in order to gain superpowers, including being able to push or pull metallic objects. Sanderson’s The Way of Kings features a strong female character blessed with freaky cool magic skills- a princess turned con artist who can change gemstones into other objects.

For the most part, the resemblance there is rather superficial until you start to dig about and discover that the magic systems in both books are remarkably similar. In the opening scene of The Way of Kings, an assassin takes out a small army partially courtesy of his ability to ‘lash’ objects- a practice shockingly similar to a mistborn’s ability to push or pull metals.

So, just what is it that you write, I wonder? What are your tropes that pop in your stories as you go along? Or, maybe, are you one of the lucky few of us that have the talent to actually create instead of recycle?

I don’t know. Neither do you, maybe. But think about it. Back off from a piece of your writing sometime and make a rough ‘sketch’ of it, taking into account major plot points, themes, and primary character developments. If you have an outline already, that could work as well. It doesn’t really matter, in the end, what you do. Just make sure you have a good picture of your story, and then compare that picture of one story to a picture of another story.

Track down your own tendencies. Figure out your own formulas. Become more aware of what it is that you are writing. Just… realize what you are as a writer.

NOTE: This article first appeared on Hortorian.com. It is posted here with the permission of the article's writer (a.k.a. me).

So, any thoughts, guys?

Interesting concept, lifted from real life.

Being neither a fiction writer nor a fan of science fiction, fantasy, and such, I had to go googling to identify Neil Gaiman and to find out what a Nebula is. That initial ignorance did not hinder me from understanding your thesis. Your explanation is clear and straightforward, your meaning clear, and your question a valid one.

I say the concept is lifted from life because it's not just writers who tell the same story over and over again. It's all of humanity. I can sit here and write the outline of the Police and court news for Belize City for the next two weeks, then as time goes along just fill in the names, times, and street addresses. You can extend that to the world. As a race we do the same things over and over again. The sub-species 'writer' should not be expected to be any different.

Or maybe we should expect the writer to be different, as least the fiction writer. I've made my living writing non-fiction. People don't expect me or want me to have imagination. My job is to report events as they have happened, to research situations in the real world, to prepare reports and write articles that tell about that world. I do not have the freedom to shape the events to make them more dramatic. I've written a few articles about the mafia. They lack the dramatic sparkle of a Mario Puzo novel. The facts often get in the way of making the story more interesting.

The novelist does not have that problem. The novelist can shape events to make the story more interesting, more dramatic, and, finally, more profitable. The novelist can tell a different story, a different kind of story, with every new book. As you point out, too many times they don't. Should they be expected to? Should we ask of Grisham or King to tell us a different story with every book? Is it in fact feasible to ask a writer who has scored big with a first novel about a lawyer and an underdog client not to go on and write the same story again? And are we kidding ourselves when we tell young writers not to do such a thing, when they see the money piling up in the Lafayette County banks?

My suspicion is that as I start to learn to write fiction I will do exactly the same thing, There are all the stories from my childhood, people and events I remember, a wealth of material such as we all accumulate growing up that I can dig up and reshape, polish into works of fiction. My suspicion is that I will settle on a basic theme and plot line and use it over and over again. My suspicion is that I'll probably not even notice that I'm doing it.

Can I create, and not recycle? Probably not. Should I be sad about that? At my age, not really. However you do pose a question that young writers need seriously to consider. With all the examples there are of recyclers hitting the big time, you may have a hard time getting the answer you would like to see.

Good article. I love Neil Gaiman's work by the way. I am only just on my first story though, so I have not got much to compare with. I will keep it in mind though. As Garza says though, the tendency would be to go with my preferences, and it will probably look similar, but then people do like that. I go back to my favorite authors because I like what they create, even again and again.