I believe that stories can set the mind free.
The largest portion of each of our minds is tightly constrained by the realities that it has experienced, and the beliefs of the cultures and societies that have surrounded it. This necessarily limits our ability to understand, and therefore accept, the experiences and beliefs of those with vastly different experiences, or from starkly contrasting societies or cultures.
I have heard this neatly summed up as “tribalism,” “preference” or “comfort,” but it’s so much more than even all three of those combined. It’s biology. Our brains are not designed to be accepting of all our fellow humans. Our brains are designed to survive, and we respond more strongly to fear, sadness and anger than we do to joy, comfort or happiness.
Even in love, often portrayed as the most positive of all emotions, many of us have internalized negative emotions as loving or romantic, because this is how our brains are hardwired to feel strong emotions; and because our culture, society and media have a tendency to propagate this. Pick up an average popular romance novel, and generally speaking, the driving emotions will feature jealous anger, fear of loss, sorrow of unfulfilled wanting, and/or sexual frustration. Sometimes, a character reveling in one of these emotions is even portrayed as noble.
This is not to say that this is bad, or wrong. But it is a pattern—a reality too often accepted without question. All too often I have heard people (women especially) complain about the abusive dynamics that would result if they were to take popular romance fiction tropes as reality. Even more often I have watched these tendencies unfold harmfully in reality before my eyes.
It doesn’t matter if our stories are that way because our brains are hardwired that way, or vice versa. (I’d guess it’s a bit of both.) The resulting effect is the same, though what those effects are will vary from person to person, and culture to culture.
Most of us don’t possess the natural capacity to shrug away these cultural norms and simply accept what we are taught is socially unacceptable. For example, this could be someone coming walking down the street naked, or a family member announces out of the blue that they are in a polyamorous partnership.
In fact, even if we do possess that natural capacity, as we get older, our brains grow less plastic. It becomes increasingly difficult to accept starkly different viewpoints that we’re encountering for the first time.
Young or old, this is especially difficult in reality. Certainly, there are any number of non-fiction books out there that would help us see how the minds works. But how many of us seek those out? In my experience, we tend to seek to read the views we agree with; when we read the views we disagree with, it usually seems to be for the purpose of figuring out how to counter those views.
I have no doubt that there are people out there who seek out the exotic and the new and the things they find instinctively repugnant with the intention of learning to accept and empathize with these views. I commend and admire these people.
I am not one of them.
Let me be clear: I do not advocate for cultural acceptance over legal action. If someone comes to from a culture where it is acceptable to murder someone over an insult, and that person commits murder, I believe that that person should suffer the consequences and go to jail. (Ideally, I would advocate for rehabilitating them to be able to live in a society without committing murder on the regular, but that’s another story.)
This is not because I believe murder is an inherently evil act. I believe our society and the people in it are much healthier and happier in a world where murders are not condoned.
As a person, I aim to be able to accept any act that does not do anyone harm of any kind.
As a writer, I aim to write compelling stories without bringing any of my own judgements to weight the scales. Should you read my stories and choose to judge my characters as good or evil, that is your choice—and, perhaps, the influence of the perspective of the character through whose eyes you are experiencing the story.
But I aim to make it difficult to easily call any one character purely “good” or “evil.” Instead, I showcase their humanity and tragedy, adversity and perseverance. Everyone is human. Everyone is flawed. There is only understanding and empathy, or the lack thereof. There are protagonists and antagonists, and I have no doubt that some of readers would overlook the protagonists’ flaws and the antagonists’ virtues.
That’s fine. I don’t hold my opinions and intent over anyone’s interpretations. I only aim to make it a little harder to simplify it into an “us and them” scenario.
I write my books first and foremost to be enjoyable to read. My debut novel is indie-published, but believe me when I say I put every effort into making sure it looked as good and read as easily as I could manage. Reading a novel shouldn’t be a chore, or homework. But as you enjoy the story and the plot and the characters, I will try to subvert your expectations—not to shock you, but to make you think and try to empathize with a character whose choices and beliefs have stopped following the expected narrative.
Sometimes these are based on things I wished I saw in stories more often, or indeed at all. More often than not, it’s what feels right for that character in that story when I break through some small part of my own mind’s barrier of what I think should be.
This is one of the reasons why, so far, I’ve written principally for a young adult and middle-grade demographic. Writing for these age groups means my characters are of similar age, and have minds that, while already holding some strong beliefs, can more easily accept that these strong beliefs are not consistent with new facts that come to light.
The effect that this style of writing has had on my psyche has been remarkable. I feel like I can see far more clearly than I ever could: not just my made-up worlds, but reality.
Come and join me in my world. Read my book, and tell me what you see.
Kai Raine is the author of the high fantasy series What Words Have Torn Apart, beginning with These Lies That Live Between Us.
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