#33. Alice in Wonderland Special! Dare to be Different; Writing Outside the Box

Today is all about daring to be different and going beyond readers’ expectations.

After some deep-thinking insights, have fun with some fresh rounds of Exquisite Corpse word play for some seriously weird story ideas!
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It is time to enter the Wonderland of your imagination.

Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 33 of Brainstoryum, and it’s the 6th and final show in my Alice in Wonderland mini-series.
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Last time I talked about the underlying meaning of Alice in Wonderland, and how it feeds into the philosophical ‘purpose’ of fantasy fiction, which is to seek happiness and find a balance in ourselves.

Over the mini-series I’ve explored plotting, character, inspiration and finding our way with the power of story in a strange and contradictory world. What else is there for us to learn from Wonderland?

I think the book has something to tell us about being a little bit different; how to stand out in the crowd.

In a world saturated with the mundane, the creative spark is what draws us in, what invites us into a rabbit hole worth jumping into.

So join me for another leap into the unknown and together, with the game of Exquisite Corpse, we’ll make some new stories happen.
  
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is enduringly odd, but not just in the ways that we as 21st century readers experience.

In 1865 when it was published, children’s stories were pretty much always morality tales. Children were proverbially bashed over the head with morals. Often, a character in a book would resist temptation until they didn’t, and when they didn’t, something diabolical happened to them. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland doesn’t do that, although there is a strong element of the diabolical in it – but coming from the adults. The morality tale is flipped on its head: Alice, the child character, is earnestly trying to work out the rules of the world, and is surrounded by adult characters who chide her with nonsense.

The book is so different to anything else that was published for children at the time – and yes, it’s easy to forget sometimes that it was a children’s book, because nowadays we have so much crossover fiction.

As adults, too, there are so many rules we have to live by, it’s no surprise we find pleasure in Alice’s adventure which tips the whole world upside down.

We want that. As I was saying in the last episode, maybe we need it a little bit.

As authors we also have to follow general rules about writing, to make our stories work. To engage our readers, we understand that a story must be well crafted, have relatable characters, conflict, and an ending that ties off the threads we’ve introduced and developed throughout the plot. A novel or novella has to follow a basic structure, and every scene must help move the story forwards, or we risk the reader’s interest drifting off.

But maybe there are too many rules, these days. If you listen to traditional publishing and what agents are looking for, we’re told not to do anything too different. We have to try and write something that’s ‘the same, but different’; that is, a fresh interpretation of pre-existing themes and stories, but not too unique. An ‘easy sell’. If you want to write something super-weird, you’d better wrap it up in something knowable, recognisable, like a re-telling of a fairy tale. It’s okay as long as we repackage the unexpected within the expected. And so, the bookshops are filling up with characters and settings and plotlines that we’ve all seen before. That’s fine for people who want to read the familiar, and know exactly what they’re getting.
But I want to be taken somewhere else.

Let’s go back to the beginning of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice is feeling very lazy, she’s bored by the book her sister’s reading and can’t be bothered to make a daisy chain, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes runs past her. At first, she doesn’t notice the strangeness of this, even when the rabbit talks to itself, but then (and I quote):

“...when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, and looked at it, and hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

After feeling so lazy that she can’t be bothered to move, Alice is sprinting after a rabbit with total abandon. She jumps into another world without looking back.

Isn’t that what we do when we read, when we’re that enthralled by a book that we just leave the real world behind? If you’re like me, if you’re like Alice, you need to experience something you’ve never really come across before; to burn with that level of curiosity. A touch of the unique.

That’s the experience I want my readers to have. Yes, of course, you can’t write something so weird that no-one’s going to relate to it; you have to paint a picture that feels real, is easy to imagine; but the point of a story, in my mind, is I’m offering an adventure that my readers haven’t had before.

I agree that if we want an audience for our stories, we must learn the craft of writing, through practice, through whatever advice and teaching we can get our mitts on, so we can write stories that are exciting, well-paced, and satisfying to read. But I think of these as guidelines rather than strict rules. If you practise enough, and use what you learn often enough, you will absorb these guidelines. They will become part of your intuition as you write. But the shorter the story, the more experimental you can be; the more you can play, without fear of getting caught up in a novel that you might not be able to finish. If there’s conflict and then some kind of change for the main character – either in their situation or attitude – or both! – then what you’ve written is at least the basis for a story.

So, be bold! Do something different. In the time we’re living in, there are so many books being churned out partly because indie publishing gives us this freedom. But use that freedom wisely. You can stand out by writing something special, meaningful. Take your time, because what you write will be utterly unique; because it’s by you and no-one else is you. No-one else has your unique perspective.

So be true to yourself while learning all you can, and you’ll write something that does justice to the message you want to tell the world. You may need to write it just to find out what that message is. I know I did, and I’m still learning, still discovering.

One last quotation from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (just indulge me):

“The rabbit hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”

I want to know what happens next. As an author, I’m not in complete control of everything I write, I’m always learning, and I’m certainly not in control of what will inspire me, and I’m honoured to share that journey with you. I hope you’ll continue to join me in wondering what will happen next!

So that’s the last in my Alice in Wonderland mini-series, and what a bizarre journey it’s been. We’ve explored portals and the portal of our imaginations, how to deepen a story with character; the Cheshire Cat’s advice, that we should at least know where we want to get to, that is, the ending of a story; extreme plotting with the Mad Hatter. And finally, what Wonderland means, and what we as authors can take from Alice’s weird, wild adventure.

I’d love your feedback on this mini-series, and any thoughts or preferences you have about the topics around writing and storytelling that I might cover in future shows. Get in touch!

Now, let us throw ourselves down the deep well of our imaginations and find out what happens next using only random words pulled from the Socks of Destiny. 

Listen to the story brainstorms in the link at the top of the page. (Magic is not transposable!)