Writer Unboxed

As I watched President Obama talk to a French town hall about public service, it hit me once again (as it does every time I hear him talk about it) that I should be doing more.

But then it struck me—and I believe this isn’t just rationalization—that I, and writers like you, are doing a public service with our writing. When, that is, it gets published, but that’s just a part of the process, and doesn’t diminish the true merit of what we’re striving to do.

Yes, we’re working to tell a story, and we’re driven by our own demons. But, as I say in my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells, in the Storytelling chapter on “An engine named desire,”

Why is it a good idea to trouble our characters, knock them down, and then keep knocking them down as they struggle? Why does that make them more compelling, more watchable?

Because, as human beings, we struggle too. In our ordinary lives, we may struggle with things small or large, but struggle we must. We understand how a character feels who has been knocked down. And here’s the thing that a novel can do that lifts it from being mere entertainment: show us something about how to be a human being.

Learning to be a human being has a lifelong learning curve, and we can use all the help we can get because there aren’t many good instruction books. Although novels are fiction, they can instruct us on the truths of being human.

Fiction models behavior for us, teaches us what (in the writer’s imagination) works, and what doesn’t work. We like to see characters desire and yearn and attempt because it helps us understand, maybe, what we can do in our own lives.

That’s the service good fiction does; it adds a page to the how-to-be-a-person instruction manual.

That’s the basic, foundational service we perform, and yet we also entertain, which is another gift. In my book that’s now up on Authonomy, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, there are chuckles, maybe even laughter. It’s a service to provide a lift to someone’s day with a laugh. And yet, because this book is also a satire that examines human behavior, it fulfills that basic, how-to-be-human public service as well.

Another novel of mine, one that I’ve spent hundreds of hours rewriting and now thousands of dollars seeking the best editorial input I could find, We the Enemy, is a speculative thriller. But it’s also a novel of ideas, with the specific aim of addressing the divisiveness of our society, and it explores a way to get together, to be allies for the greater good of us all. In short, how to be human beings, individually and together. I’m determined that this book will get its chance to be read, even if I have to publish it myself. That’s my public service—I’m not looking for profit with this book, but only to stimulate thinking, dialogue, and action.

When I look at other novels that I’ve written and am still working to market, they have the same foundational service element. Finding Magic, which bookseller extraordinaire Robert Gray called a “literary fantasy,” deals with community, and with the damage that isolation can do.

Even my coming-of-age mystery, The Summer Boy, deals with teenage struggles with growing up, with how to become good people. Note: these novels have not yet sold. The fact that there are “covers” is due to my exploratory need to design covers for them.

I’ll bet that, if you think about it, you’ll find the same basic element in your novel. So keep up the good work, stay with it, and add another page, your page, to our collective instruction manual. We need it.

For what it’s worth.

Ray Rhamey is the author of five novels and one craft book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. He's also an editor who has recently expanded his creative services to include book cover and interior design. His website, crrreative.com, offers an a la carte menu of creative services for self-publishers and Indie authors. Learn more about Ray's fiction at rayrhamey.com.

Ray Rhamey

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