Exigence: The Heart of the Story

A reflection on revising my short story "Away" and the writer's need to think about a story's exigence.

I wanted to bring you the new chapter of Quibble today, but it’s still in the typewriter, undergoing a laborious wholesale revision. I’ve had trouble focusing on it because I’ve been so giddy about finally publishing “Away.” It took me two years to get this short story into the shape I wanted for it.

Before you read a word more of this reflection, I encourage you to read the story if you haven’t yet. (Otherwise, this reflection won’t make sense.) “Away” is free to read.

A reader posted on Facebook that reading “Away” took him back to the sci-fi of his childhood, to Heinlein and Asimov. I too grew up with those classic writers, though I was never much of a fan of Heinlein or Asimov. Bradbury, Clarke, and Godwin struck me more. When I got into the New Wave of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I read fantastic writers such as Le Guin, Delany, and Dick. A story of that era which stuck was “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison.

Now, there’s a grim tale! Ellison’s AI is a sadist. His humans are little better. “Away” makes a few nods to Ellison’s story, but I didn’t write anything so grim and weird. I went for realism.¹

I put my point-of-view character, Jared, in solitude, with only Nat for company. Jared can get in touch with other people, but for the most part he doesn't. He's narcissistic. I wanted to crack this open, break it down, see Jared crack and break down. And then see him resurrect like Lazarus stepping from the tomb, given a second chance.

After writing the second draft, I passed “Away” to a couple of beta readers. They were underwhelmed. One of them told me the story was trite and unambitious, covering no new ground in science fiction’s examination of artificial intelligence.

The other reader just wanted an ending in which Jared triumphs over Nat, the human beats the machine. I saw right away that this was out of the question. “Away” is about a hard reckoning with the possibility that an AI can achieve personhood, and it’s also a coming-to-Jesus meeting for Jared, who’s badly in need of jolting. Having Jared fight his way free would let him avoid reckoning fully with Nat and with himself. Having someone else rescue him would be anticlimactic. Human triumph defeated the story’s purpose. Nat had to win. Only then would Jared stop competing with Nat and think of something else.

This reader didn’t get the point at all. He just wasn’t my story’s intended reader. All he wanted from a sci-fi story about rogue AI was The Terminator. That’s not my shtick.

But the other beta reader’s objections stuck in my craw. This reader was familiar with the story’s premise, in fact a little too familiar — he’d seen it in other stories. He cited the animated film The Mitchells vs. the Machines, which I’d seen and liked. That story is about family and connection, not AI and self-deconstruction. My reader expressed an opinion that the film’s themes were “grander” than mine, but really his contrast of the film with my story came down to a yawn over a trope he’d seen before. Well, fiction is full of tropes you’ve seen before — that’s why they’re tropes. What’s the big deal?

He disliked how much focus the story put on arguing humanity’s culpability, whether it deserved Nat’s treatment. He found none of this fresh. “I’ve heard just about all of these reasons and excuses in other books, films, and even video games,” he said. “There simply isn’t enough fresh content in ‘Away’ to keep me engaged.”

So he was more than halfway to getting the point, the new angle, but he was too bored by cliché to go all the way. Fair enough. I’d do some trimming and rethinking.

He had other intriguing ideas for revision. For instance, here’s how the story began in the second draft:

The most surprising thing about the apocalypse, Jared thought as the end came, was how mundane it turned out to be.

Artificial intelligence was to blame. No big surprise there. But the AI chose none of the methods for wiping out humanity predicted by sci-fi authors or screenwriters. There was no blinding flash of light, no cataclysmic fireball, no super-virus leaked from a lab. No terrifying army of steel skeletons marched with orders to kill all humans. No squid-like flying machines enslaved people and turned them – against a fundamental law Jared learned in high school physics – into biological batteries. Robotic servants did not turn on their masters. The AI needed no such improbable, sophisticated measures.

It just did what people expected it to do. It took them away.

Of this beginning, my beta reader said:

I’d wholeheartedly advocate for cutting this section out. It feels like a prologue (and you know how I feel about those) conveying a tone that quickly betrays the rest of the story. Never, not once, did I feel like Jared considered this apocalypse boring or conventional . . . Jared is on the edge of his seat through the whole ordeal. Consider starting the story in the morning with Jared engaged in a word puzzle while talking to Nat. That is where the story really takes off for me.