‘The One True Thing’ by Steven R. Boyett

     For me, when it comes to writing fantasy, it’s that one true detail that sells the whole thing.  But I don’t know what that detail is when I set out looking for it.  I won’t even know what it is after I collect a bunch of them.  And even then I don’t know which one of them is true, because the detail that is true for one person may not be true for another.

     The one thing I do know is that the One True Thing is out there somewhere in the world of things that I can do as a kind of practice run for the impossible things I intend to write about.  And I need that one true detail to sell the impossible ones.

     For my first novel, Ariel, I went to Manhattan and crawled all over the Empire State Building, writing notes and drawing maps of elevators and floorplans and observation deck details (and wouldn’t that go over great nowadays).  There I found the slanting blue T-shaped iron guards under the round windows around the top observation deck (at least, that’s how they looked then).  If you’d ever been there, when my character ends up hanging off one of them, you’d say, Hey — I remember those.

     I went hang gliding in North Carolina and found the warning label on the Dacron sail, the way your center of gravity moves up to your chest when you pick up the kite, the way everyone runs a few more steps after their feet leave the ground.

     For my latest novel, Elegy Beach, I took three road trips up Interstate 5 and PCH from Los Angeles to San Simeon.  I found enough true details there to fill a book (and promptly did).  But the One True Thing.  For me it’s the angry elephant corbels glaring down at you from the Casa Grande at Hearst castle.  The triangular yellow Caution signs depicting running illegal immigrants near the San Onofre Inspection Facility close to the nuclear plant.

I drove and took the Amtrak Surfliner down the Southern California coastline from L.A.  to Del Mar.  That got me the ingenious way the sleeper car beds fold up.  The powerline hub at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station.  I visited the Del Mar racetrack in the offseason with virtually nobody there and ran around the grandstand and infield like a kid.  That netted me the concrete pavilion, the railway bridge right between the racetrack and the ocean.

     At Goodyear Airship Operations in Carson, an incredibly nice and patient flight engineer (hello, Carlos!) let me crawl all over the Spirit of America blimp for half a day.  I came back with layout maps, the feel of the rubber envelope, the mechanics of inflation and launch.  But the One True Detail.  Mentioning that you fly in the Goodyear blimp totally gets the chicks.  Crew members call it dropping the G-bomb..

     The G-bomb.  One true thing.  I’m sold.

     These things and many more went into a book that takes place thirty years after the total halt of civilization so that I could help you believe it really happened and you’re walking through it.

     But why go to these lengths.  I mean, I’m writing fantasy.  You know: talking animals, magic spells, friggin swordfights, fer cryin in the sink.  And I’m losing sleep over what’s on a roadsign by a weigh station?

     But here’s the thing.  I think you want to believe those animals are talking.  To believe the magic spells work.  To feel you’re in that world.  I think you welcome any help with your disbelief that I can give you.  You don’t want to pay for a movie ticket and find yourself sitting in the dark thinking, This isn’t Superman.  This is some actor in tights on a bluescreen.  Filmmakers owe you more than that.  So do I.  And a good filmmaker knows that the best special effects are the ones you’re never aware of.

     So if I have a group of guys murdering a unicorn on State Road 46 and I-5 outside of Bakersfield, I want you to be able to drive by it someday and say, Holy crap — this is where those guys murdered that unicorn! And if I can find the One True Thing that lets you know I’ve been there, the whole thing becomes that much more real.  The impossibility of it gets a little farther away.  The events are lent credence by the authority of having some basis in the world.  That One True Thing is a solid prop on a stage where fantastic events are being enacted.  At the same time it’s the hand pass of the magician who diverts your attention as he makes a well-practiced move that looks like magic.  The trick part of magic trick.  You notice the billboard for the winery and forget for a moment that the unicorn can’t really be there.

     So I am obsessive about what Salvador Dali called “the Concrete Irrational” — the realistic depiction of the impossible.  I’m certain it’s why my fantasy almost always takes place in the here & now.  In a way I have a limited imagination: I don’t believe in Middle-Earth.  I don’t believe in unicorns.  I believe in 7-Elevens.

     What I know is that you believe in 7-Elevens, too — it’s hardly a stretch — but maybe you also want to believe in unicorns but don’t want to be cheaply bought or feel a like the guy selling you all this thinks you’re a sucker (Hey, that isn’t Superman…).  For me that means having a unicorn pace impatiently in the hosed-off, wrapper-strewn parking lot of a 7-Eleven, muttering that Bob has exactly thirty more seconds to get his damn Crystal Lite slurpee before I’m outta this shithole.  (You can see it, can’t you.  It’s the wrappers.  The 7-Eleven itself.  The impatience.  A unicorn saying shithole.  One True Thing.)

     A friend of mine recently realized that my obsession with such details meant that readers could use Google Earth to follow the routes taken by the characters in Ariel and Elegy Beach (and also in my upcoming novel, except for the scenes in Hell — and with Google, I think it’s only a matter of time before you can follow that, too).  So we made Google Earth route maps and put them up at arielbook.com and elegybeach.com.  And suddenly my OCD approach to writing fantasy gained a whole new dimension of coolness.  Fantasy novels you can follow in realtime with satellite imagery.  That is so made of solid awesome.

     Then someone suggested that I no longer need to go places for my research.  I could Google them, I could visit them with Google Earth.  And I do use these and other tools when it’s appropriate — but not to find that One True Thing.  Because these resources are mostly about finding the specific thing you’re searching for.  In other words they’re about destinations.

Many have said that journeys aren’t about the destination but about the things seen along the way.  I think that’s also true for the journeys we undertake when we tell stories.  You don’t find the One True Thing on a satellite map.  You find it by going there.  You find it by making a nuisance of yourself with maps and notepads and questions and cameras.  You find it because you don’t know what it is you’re looking for exactly.  You’re panning for gold.  You aren’t sure which nuggets are real gold until later when you’re sorting them out.  And then you don’t know which of those will be gold for the people you offer them to.  Which is the One True Thing.

     All of them.  All of them are the One True Thing.  All of them are gold.

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Steven R. Boyett sold his first novel at 21 and went on to publish novels, short stories, feature screenplays, and comic books. In 1999 he took time off from writing, and during this period he learned to play the didgeridoo, a unique Australian wind instrument. This led him to learn about digital recording, which led to composing electronica, which led to DJing. He produces three of the world’s most popular music podcasts: the groundbreaking Podrunner and Podrunner: Intervals (workout music mixes), and Groovelectric (dance music mixes of what he calls New Old Funk). Steve has played clubs in Hollywood, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Reno, as well as Burning Man. He has been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, legal proofreader, writing teacher, website editor, chapbook publisher, and composer. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two frighteningly intelligent parrots. Steve’s writing website is www.steveboy.com; his DJ site is www.djsteveboy.com.

     
Book Synopsis -

Elegy Beach takes place thirty years after the phenomenon known as “The Change.” Set in a small community on the California coast, the novel follows the adventures of Fred and Yan, two young men born after “The Change,” who begin to develop innovative ways to cast spells. In a land where magic rules, only the elder survivors yearn for the vanished time when technology prevailed and magic was a mere myth. But when Fred and Yan discover the potential to reverse “The Change” and restore the laws of their parents’ world, things spiral out of control. Yan’s reckless wielding of their newfound abilities forces Fred to take a stand against his friend, and launches him into an extraordinary journey in which past and future are inextricably bound.