I rather like riffing off my fellow authors’ blog posts. So I’m gonna do it again.

Last week, Richard wrote that rules can be stifling, and I admit, I may have gotten up on my soapbox when I was talking about realism in SF/F. Richard is absolutely right in that writers should indeed be encouraged to bend, break, mutilate and spindle the rules in search of a good story.

My only addendum to that would be…so long as they can pull it off.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a pretty hide-bound writer when it comes to craft. Part of this is because I’m a rank newbie. I don’t have a desk-drawer full of practice novels; The Daedalus Incident is pretty much it, and I’m obviously excited and gratified that I managed to get this first effort published.

That said, I spent 15 years as a journalist and another five-plus in corporate communications, and I wrote a few non-fiction books as well. I think my craft is very much informed by that experience, which isn’t that conducive to rule-breaking. I remember writing a piece for the 75th anniversary of the 1929 stock crash; my big idea was to intersperse my article with wire reports dating from the actual crash. The approval chain to get that done was rather onerous, and certainly didn’t encourage further innovation.

I was very comfortable with using those reports, however, and I think the piece turned out well. I was confident enough in my writing to try it, fail if need be, learn from mistakes and try again. Obviously, my comfort level with journalism-style writing remains very high. Fiction less so, hence rules.

I’ve tried a few exercises in breaking and bending my own rules, and since you haven’t read such exercises, you can easily imagine how they went. As I do more fiction and get more experience under my belt, I may stumble upon some unique expression that totally blows convention out of the water. And chances are, when I’m comfortable enough with my own skills, you might see it in print somewhere.

I’m very much supportive of writers trying new things and breaking the rules. I think the key to doing it is to be exceptionally comfortable with it and to not be self-conscious about it. (I know, right? Here I am, making rules on breaking rules. Paradox take me!) I’m pretty forgiving of writers who really try something new but may not get all the way there with it, no matter where there is. It’s usually worth the effort. And if it’s a neat concept with a good effort behind it, I’m on board. Good effort, can’t wait to see the next.

If the rule-breaking doesn’t serve the story, though, or even actively overshadows it, well, then I’m not sure it’s a wise undertaking.

Then again, that’s me. When it comes to any and all rules, I’ll be happily proven wrong.

Michael J. Martinez breaks a few rules here and there, most notably the speed limit on the New Jersey Turnpike and the “no refills” sign at various soda fountains. He does, however, recycle assiduously and pay his taxes on time. He’s also the author of The Daedalus Incident, coming out May 7. He blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net and is on Twitter at @mikemartinez72, where he very occasionally flaunts the terms of service.

Earlier this week, Michael J. Martinez posted “Realism in SF/F” here in The Night Bazaar. His essay asserts that “stories need to make sense, to be told with authority, and to be relatable.”

I sort of agree with all of that. It’s the way I try to write most of my own stories. Still, that said…

When we writers discuss our craft, we tend to proclaim The Rules. If we didn’t, it would be difficult to address the subject clearly and succinctly.

Yet almost inevitably, what the giver of such advice is really providing is tips for writing the type of story he turns out himself, and a good thing, too. That’s what he has to share that’s apt to prove helpful to others.

But there are different types of fiction. Stories strive for differing effects and employ differing methods to achieve them. In the genre of the fantastic, we have tales, some of them masterpieces, that deliberately embrace the inexplicable and preposterous and eschew that which is relatable in any conventional sense.

We even see some of this in high fantasy. In The Lord of the Rings, Middle-Earth impresses the reader as credible because the setting mostly operates like the real world. Supernatural phenomena like magic spells and spectral Ringwraiths don’t stir our disbelief because Tolkien keeps them within bounds.

But in The Silmarillion, things are different. The author chronicles a time when the sun and moon did not yet exist, but the Earth did. It even supported a thriving population of Elves thanks to the two magical trees that lit things up.

Even postulating the reality of magic, that’s crazy on a whole other level from anything in Lord of the Rings. There’s really no way to sell it with internal logic and realistic detail. Yet we buy into it because it feels right that a primordial age is defined in mythic terms.

It’s horror, though, that exploits unresolved mystery, blatant absurdity, and the unfathomably strange to greatest effect, most famously, perhaps, in the tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft proposes that human reason and perception are incapable of comprehending the terrifying entities and forces lurking behind the façade of mundane existence. We can catch glimpses, perhaps in our hubris imagine we understand, but if we really get hip to even a little bit of What’s Out There, we’ll go as bananas as the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.

It’s a premise that largely frees authors from the constraints of plausibility because an assault on our common-sense notions of what’s possible is the point, and those who follow in Lovecraft’s footsteps continue to exploit it to eerie effect. In W. H. Pugmire’s stories of the Sequa Valley, certain mystical phenomena make the stars flit around in the sky like fireflies. Like Tolkien’s Two Trees doing the work of the sun and moon, this really ought to be make us cry, “Bullshit!” But served up in the proper style and context, it doesn’t.

The context doesn’t always have to be cosmic terror in the Lovecraft tradition. Some horror stories that dispense with realism work on a psychological or existential level. In “The Town Manager,” Thomas Ligotti doesn’t spend a word trying to convince us the events he describes are plausible. The resulting surrealism creates the feeling of nightmare.

Ligotti’s work also demonstrates the extent to which a fine writer can sometimes get away with a piece that isn’t relatable as the term is commonly understood. “The Red Tower” literally has no characters. It would be tough to get less relatable that that. But the story’s chilling.

You’ll notice I said “fine” and “sometimes.”  That’s because it’s unquestionably easier for the average writer to create an effective story if he shoots for a realistic effect. Still, it’s worth knowing that the various components of realism are only some of the colors in our crayon boxes. From time to time, it may prove worthwhile to break out the others.

Richard’s headline in his post last week got me thinking about keeping SF/F “real.” I’ve read some genre fiction that, at times, had me scratching my head because it required not just a suspension of disbelief, but a complete abrogation of it.

No matter whether you’re writing about wizards or aliens or eldritch horrors, stories have to have at least some degree realism — truthiness, if you will. The stories need to make sense, to be told with authority, and to be relatable. That can be hard, especially when you start getting into a very involved, very detailed setting and plot. But it has to happen.

First off, the reader is going to know when you’re cutting corners or getting lost in your own work. A genre setting needs to make sense in order to further the suspension of disbelief. Do you have flying cats? Well, you have to show the reader not only why that’s important, but also how the little furballs took flight. If you have a magic system, it has to work according to well thought-out rules — Peter V. Brett’s rune magic comes to mind. Faster than light travel? How do you do that, exactly?

This comes from logic and research. If you’re writing fantasy, you have to really come up with a reason for why things are the way they are, and you have to think through the chain of events and history to ensure there are good reasons. For example, The Daedalus Incident has sailing ships in space. OK, fine. How’d they get there? Alchemy, because in this setting, alchemy is a Mystic Science, not mere puffery. How was this discovered? One of Columbus’ ships literally took a wrong turn en route to the New World…and ended up on the Moon. What has that done to history? The colonization of the New World was replaced with the colonization of the Solar System.

And so on. You have to follow that chain of thought to get the big questions answered. Same goes for science-fiction. At least we have futurists and research to help us envision what things might be like, but we have to do that homework, and we have to think it through.

That’s where authority comes in. If you leave something open-ended, have a good reason, likely one that can inform future plots. Don’t hedge. Own your setting and show you’ve thought it through. You don’t have to bog the story down with exposition, but you can work on building that setting gradually as the story develops. When I plan out a novel, I make sure to note possible setting elements to introduce throughout the work. Even if they’re throw-aways that don’t really come back later, they illustrate the amount of thought and research that went into the book, and that adds to my authority as a storyteller. Plus, they might make nifty hooks later.

Finally, you have to be relatable. Why do you think SF/F is populated with (mostly) humanoids? Because writing about quad-sexual amorphous sentient algae with telepathy and a quantum-based thought process is pretty much the most confusing thing you could tackle. (Not that I’ve tried.) Stories are, in the end, about ourselves, no matter how we dress them up. I believe SF/F allows us to explore some of the most extreme aspects of the human experience, because no humans have really faced the plots and settings we devise. But the reader still needs to empathize with the characters and believe that they, too, could be part of these worlds.

So while SF/F is about as unreal and surreal as you can get, there has to be some “real” in there to make it memorable.

Michael J. Martinez is the author of The Daedalus Incident, coming May 7 from Night Shade Books, and he did his best to keep it real while writing about mad alchemists, sailing ships, Martian mining colonies and ancient aliens…all in the same book. Want to read more? Enter the Goodreads giveaway for your chance to win a copy of the book before it comes out. Mike blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net and Tweets at @mikemartinez72.