This discussion about story and literature was born out of a discussion about "the Derrida joke" from The Official Abel G. Peņa Thread (Halagad Approved). I thought people interested in the philosophy of storytelling might find it intriguing.

I think literature should resonate on multiple levels. Whatever genre you're writing in, all the best literature borrows from the mystery genre: there's a game here, a puzzle, and the reader has to figure it out.

Some games are better than others, of course, even when from the same company. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle. You put it together, and it's aesthetically pleasing. But as you admire it, something suddenly strikes you as off. The anomaly attracts your attention, and suddenly you realize it's not so much an anomaly as--can it be? Upon closer inspection, the anomaly reveals characteristics of what might be a message, which you hadn't even suspected was there.

The reason I'm a great antagonist of conspiracy theories is because, as a writer, I know how supremely difficult it is to create a text that emulates the attractive, albeit imagined, mechanics of conspiracies, complete with a sense of secrecy, codes, and revelations. I think every great piece of literature is like Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code in a way, except that Brown's book uses a shifty shortcut, creating a character (the academic) that spells everything out for the reader. That's fine, of course, and his book is tremendous fun. But a skilled writer has other less blunt methods of getting his or her point across. Writing a Da Vinci Code-style book via a fusillade of mere correlating suggestions is more difficult, but also leads to a much harder wallop when the reader reaches the proper conclusions on his or her own. It's the difference between getting hit with a bullet and a buckshot. I think David Lynch is one of the finer storytellers competent at this method.

A writer should always try to be aware of the obvious story (plot, physical world), the underlying story or subtext (psychology, theme), and the metatext (fiction as fiction, not as a duplication of or analogy for the real world). For instance, in my Star Wars work, say Evil Never Dies, there is the obvious story of the history of the Sith (plot). Within that story there is the story of the evolution of the Sith (psychology), embodied in the journey of King Adas' holocron (an artifact of the oldest Sith incarnation) and the journey of the Dark Lady Lumiya (the most modern Sith manifestation). What does it signify when Lumiya obtains Adas' holocron? Does evil really never die? Does this question apply only to the Star Wars universe?

And then there is the metatext, which has to do with the flurry of continuity that gets shot through my work and how artfully I accomplish its integration. In regards to this story, there is generally a willful and self-induced break in the suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader because he or she who is capable of recognizing the sustained effort of the writer toward the creation of this particular story is naturally of a potential like mind, i.e. "You'ra speakin mya language." The reader has bonded with the writer in the same way two people who love the Beatles do.

But when you have a group that's so fluent in Star Wars lore, as many fans of the EU are, a writer may feel inclined to up the ante. That's why I don't only integrate an abundance of continuity in my work, but why I also reference Star Wars sources across the vast (and I mean vast) multimedia board and across the last three decades. From movies to television, radio to trading cards, books to comics, roleplaying games to video games, boardgames to toys, I've covered it in my literary corner of the Star Wars universe.

But every now and then, a medium of expression can do something more, as Derrida's philosophies suggest and the incidence of Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem seemingly proves. There are instances in which a medium such as literature transcends itself via analogy and self-reference, in which the author him or herself now takes the initiative, actively coercing the reader to break the suspension of disbelief by aggressively reminding him or her that "this is fiction" either directly or via a collusion of coincidences that is too extraordinary to ignore. This is the moment where the author drops his guard and "shows his hand" with the intention of yielding an existential observation with frightening force. Though in order to maximize the potency of this revelation, the brutishness of the author's effort must remain as undetectable as possible--we human beings like to take credit for our own insights. We're talking about a magic trick, essentially (and I do mean trick). A proper analogy is to think of this as the author's "wardrobe malfunction" (and I do mean "malfunction").

This is then a fourth and perhaps final type of story within the obvious one, the transcendental fable (philosophy, metaphysical truth), and the moment of truth, so to speak. This is the most difficult kind of story to pull off, perhaps because it's the most meaningful, and when done properly the illusion of stumbling upon it should feel largely to be a consequence of the reader's effort, so as to produce the proper epiphanic effect (of course, this isn't to undermine the reader's own efforts and considerable intelligence, without which we couldn't even get started). This complexity is the reason why, A) this fourth story only occasionally appears in an overt way in my work, B) why, when it does, it's usually in the form of a "joke," and C) why I don't generally talk about it. Or in the words of Obi-Wan, "That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous...." (Luke: "Sister? Wha--" Ziiing!)

The Derrida joke in the Dark Forces Saga is one example, the Jeng Droga exercise is another, and the "History of the Mandalorians" has several (including the Nevoota Bee homage). With Evil Never Dies, the transcendental fable is among the more subtle, and has to do with my involvement in the introduction of Lumiya into the modern fan consciousness via my first published work, the character's unexpected resurgence in popularity thereafter culminating in her inclusion in a major new storyline, and finally the opportunity I had to "conspiratorially" tie elements from these two phenomena together in a new work... Evil Never Dies. Because of the personal nature of this fourth kind of story in Evil Never Dies, it's more subtly integrated than say the Derrida joke, but doesn't carry as much punch for its lack of universality: not everyone can identify with how lucky it feels to be a Star Wars fan-turned-author.

Of course, maybe it makes sense now why the undiscovered "transfab" I mentioned earlier as being my favorite is my favorite. Its very sustained hiddenness, despite the fairly reasonable clues I left implicating it, suggest it's possibly the best-executed metaphysical joke in my work thus far. I do believe it's living on borrowed time at this point, though I've already watered down its intended effect with all this blabbing. Such is the double-edged sword of literary theory.

These philosophical games of course are only meant for those interested in playing them. They can, and are, just as easily ignored. ~ Abel G. Peņa

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