One Step Around the Corner

Creators of genre fiction do not deal with regular everyday reality.  For example, noir or westerns, both of which could be entirely rooted in the real, will not remain there entirely.  There is some shift to the side.  There are considerations for mood.  There are considerations for genre conventions.  There are even considerations for author bias.  Those biases can take the form of the political, patriotically cloaked, and bigoted type discussed last week.  They can be less inappropriate biases than those too.  Then there are the personal biases formed in the direction of enjoyment and excitement where the creator enhances certain aspects for a better story in keeping with their own wants and desires in entertainment.  The bias may also be theme or message related.

Bigoted bias need not be about race or religion.  Some biases are economic--the rich versus the poor.  Some are intelligence motivated--leaning toward the literati or the cognoscenti and away from the ignorant and uneducated.  Some, perhaps too many, are directly political within the same country--Republican versus Democrat, Liberal versus Conservative, Left versus Right.  There is also the one-sidedness and accompanying struggle between capitalism and socialism.  Any of these, singularly or in tandem, form the basis of numerable character archetypes.  In turn these characters confer their views onto the narrative.  This is true whether one or more of them provide the narrative voice or there is an unrelated narrator.  That is unless that narrator provides voice, comment, or contrast otherwise.

Here is where the bias may be purposeful within the narrative.  A story's theme, or the message it looks to convey to the audience, it's very raison d'etre, can exist to illustrate, shine a bright spotlight on the injustice of such a bias, or to perpetuate it. News media isn't the only place where an agenda is pushed by focusing on certain segments of an issue, or group.  Of course angling to create tension within, distort the worldview of, and otherwise negatively influence the audience is a despicable thing to do.  Doing it within the populace of the created fictional world though is an exciting proposition.  Doing it provides the structure upon which to foster enticing plots, character-developing dilemmas, and at the higher level of the audience to forward themes, morals, and message.

Mood: valiant.

Music: Dream Of Mirrors by Iron Maiden and The Gunslinger by Demons & Wizards.

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