What If . . .
I emailed a friend recently to ask if she thought there was a difference between an assassin and a serial killer. And, if so, what was it? I got back a long email that started with: “This is why I’m a writer. I LOVE these kinds of questions. Writers are the only ones who ask them expecting to get a serious answer.”
I don’t know if she’s right about only writers asking the questions, but it’s true that we do tend, putting it politely, to think outside the box. “What if”, starts most of our sentences. We suddenly stop in the middle of a conversation—looking as if we’d been hit on the head with a pipe-wrench—and say things like: “of course, that’s why the demons want control of the internet.” The world (and all ones running parallel to it) holds endless possibilities, bound only by the breadth and depth of our imagination.
Over breakfast one morning, I asked some of my non-writer friends the same question. I found out that everyone around the table could be friends with an assassin, but not with a serial killer. Why? Because they all agreed that assassins have an ethical code, no matter how twisted it may be; serial killers don’t. Ethics=trustworthiness—at least to a degree. Since I am writing a book where the hero happens to be an assassin, this was valuable information. It told me I have a character that, while he’s outside the bounds of “normal,” a reader could still understand him. If he sticks to his moral code, maybe they would even feel sympathetic to his plight. The really fun part was how engrossed my friends became by the directions I pushed their imaginations.
Writers or non-writers, our imaginations are the key to understanding the world. We all make up stories in our heads; most of them involve the mundane. But what if they didn’t? What if the guy sitting next to you on the train is really an alien? Or a spy? Or an assassin? That would make an interesting story, don’t you think? The questions and possibilities can turn a prosaic ride on a train into an imaginative adventure.
So, what if . . .
If you would like to comment on this post, click on the title.