What if we could be heroes? With the magic of thrillers, we can be, says author T.J. Newman
“What if” is the most important question in a writer’s mind.
Our entire creative lives are built around those two words.
My debut novel "Falling" began with a grab-you-by-the-throat premise, a terrifying "what if": What if a pilot were told, midflight, that his family had been kidnapped and that if he didn’t deliberately crash the plane, they would be killed? What would he do?
My second novel, "Drowning," proposed an even bigger ‘what-if’: What if a plane crashed into the ocean minutes after takeoff, then sank with crew members and passengers still alive, trapped inside? How would they work together and survive?
What’s the common theme between these two books?
"What if" regular people are suddenly thrown into impossible situations?
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That’s why we read thrillers and suspense novels. We want that escape. We want to put ourselves in the character’s shoes and feel the panic when all hope seems lost, the exhilaration of escape and survival. We want to feel those big emotions.
Emotions that, in real life, we may try to avoid.
Reading and watching larger-than-life adventures make us feel alive – without any of the emotional or physical risks that the actual situations would entail. We live them vicariously.
These are the “beach reads.” The books we grab when we want to get away. They’re the kind of books I write. I cannot get enough of that feeling when the pages keep turning and you are gone. You’re in outer space. You’re an international spy. You’re being hunted by a dinosaur. You’re chasing a tornado. All while the “real” you is poolside with a margarita.
It’s counterintuitive. We want to relax, so we seek out a story where we’re anxious and on the edge of our seats. We’re reading for pleasure, yet we can’t sleep at night because we’re so spooked by that last chapter. We’re looking for a fun getaway, but we’re sobbing our eyes out. Either we all just have a masochistic streak, or there’s something else going on here.
The magic of reading fiction is that it lets us live many lives. So when we ask about a character, "What will he do?" we’re also asking, "What would I do?"
What if I were in that situation? And when the hero of the story does end up saving the day after all, and he or she is nothing more than a garden-variety, everyday person, something in us starts to believe something amazing and powerful: If they can be a hero, so can I.
I said I write stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. My first two books happen to be set on airplanes and they feature characters who could be you, or me, or your mother, or your best friend. These are characters we know, characters whose lives reflect our own. I do this because, for me, the closer I feel to a story, the more I enjoy it.
Look, I know that dinosaurs aren’t coming back. Green space aliens aren’t on their way to destroy Earth. I’m never going to be a storm chaser. I’m not going to be bitten by a radioactive spider.
But I do fly in airplanes all the time. So do you. And every day, we too put on a brave face as we go up against seemingly insurmountable odds – a pile of bills we don’t know how we’re going to pay, a 10-month-old who won’t go down for a nap, an unexpected cancer diagnosis.
When we can overlay the pain and problems of our own lives onto the characters’, the distance between fiction and reality shrinks. Our experience of the story becomes more real. We feel a kinship with the characters and what they’re going through. Their demons may not be exactly the same as ours, but we have faced demons and we know what it takes to keep fighting.
When our "everyday" characters win, it confirms what we’ve always hoped:
What if we can win too?
That’s a hell of a "what-if."
That's the best "what-if’ ever.
That’s why I write.
T.J. Newman is the Paste BN and New York Times bestselling author of "Falling." Her second novel, "Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421," is now available.