Writing the ‘Why:’ Context, Theme and Questioning Everything

One of the most important things I learned as a historian was the significance and value of context. Context really is everything. When you pull quotes or pieces of information out of the context in which they are created and presented, you’re telling a different story to the one that was originally told. This is why referencing is so important in academic work; you’re not just demonstrating that you’re not stealing someone else’s work or ideas, you’re showing you’re aware of the wider landscape for your subject and how your work compares to the work of others too. For books, there are many layers of context at play. 

 It would be foolish to suggest that any book ever written is not a product of the time and society that its author was writing in. The author can either comply or rebel against that context. They can do so knowingly or unknowingly. Yet, that context remains and is something that often gets picked apart and speculated on with great delight during literary analysis of novels. For example, when reading anything by Charles Dickens, most readers know Dickens was commenting on a very real landscape of poverty and social division in Victorian Britain. Oliver Twist would not exist without that context and Dickens’ response to it. In more recent years, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins would not exist without the grim deviousness of modern warfare and the detached voyeurism of reality television shows. 

My plea to you, dear reader, is that no matter what you are reading, be at least a little aware of its context. The story you’re reading may be epic, but try to think about what the author is trying to tell you. Every book has a theme, a question, or a point that it wants to convey. Some are more difficult or uncomfortable than others. To save you the work (just this once) – the context of this post is me, the author, a middle-aged, white, British woman, trying to address how scary and overwhelming the world around me currently feels, how much I worry about the lies and half-truths we’re sold from multiple media outlets on all sides, how terrifyingly easy it is to be lulled into accepting those things and regurgitating them, how I struggle to cope with that fear in my writing and day-to-day life. I’m also asking you to question how you cope with such things, out of a wish to inspire a critical reflection on the world around us that I feel is more desperately needed than ever.

In this modern age of misleading comments, disinformation and ‘alternative facts,’ it’s even more important to pay attention to what you’re reading, who wrote it, and above all, why it was written. What is the story trying to do? What is it trying to make you question or think? My rather brilliant A-level History teacher, Mr Jones, drummed this interrogation of Nature, Origin and Purpose (NOP for short) into us on an almost daily basis. It has stayed with me and has offered a life-raft of clarity amid the turbulent and murky waters of social media, journalism, politics and beyond. 

Thank you, Mr Jones.

Yesterday, as part of my undergraduate diploma with Cambridge University, I had the chance to attend a lecture by Courttia Newland. Newland wrote A River Called Time, and it’s one of the most thought-provoking novels I have read, challenging me to confront my ignorance about the context in which others live. That’s part of the beauty of reading, having the chance to discover new perspectives on the world around you and to learn how to try to be a better human as a result. Yet, this novel is set in a sci-fi dystopian future – so how on earth could it teach me anything about the here and now? 

Theme and Context. 

Newland’s A River Called Time takes on the monumental and vital task of imagining a world where slavery, colonialism and the overwhelmingly exploitative interactions of past European communities are replaced with mutually beneficial opportunities and relationships for learning, religious expression and societal growth. There are reviews out there that say this world building doesn’t ‘entirely work’ (Roberts, 2021). However, that the novel takes on such an enormous task and gets readers to even consider the idea is a tremendous victory in my eyes.

 No single novel can wipe away years of exploitation, nor should it, but to make us even try to envisage a world in which it didn’t happen is to ask us to imagine what the present world could be like if we actually tried to address the festering remnants of that exploitation that persist in society today. As a theme, I would say that’s a ruddy powerful and important one to take on. Couched within the context of Newland’s own experiences of growing up ‘in a Jamaican-Barbadian family on a housing estate in West London’ (Judah, 1999), the resonance of this story unfurls a thousandfold. Who better to point out the lingering malevolence of the colonial past and its continuing effect than someone who has sadly grown up experiencing it? Newland’s own experiences, his context, make this novel possible, powerful and vital. If you haven’t read it yet, please read it.

So why is this relevant to writing? 

For exactly the same reason. Know what you’re writing about, know who you are and who you’re writing for, and above all, know why you are writing your novel, poem, or whatever form you are choosing to write in.

I’ve often seen writerly advice that tells me to think about the core message of my novel and to focus on an ‘elevator pitch’ that sums up the ‘core’ of your novel. The first thing someone asks when you say you’re writing a novel is ‘What’s it about?’ This normally results in paroxysms of terror as you struggle to summarise plot, character arcs, and magic systems into a palatable and enticing nugget that will justify your socially-dubious life choices. This ‘elevator pitch’ is not just vital for selling your novel to agents and publishers when you finish it; it can help keep you on track while writing it. But what the heck IS the core of your novel? At first, I stumbled through the formula of Character + Obstacle = Shocking revelation, or tried to identify the Romantasy tropes I was tapping into (enemies to lovers, anyone?). However, while these attempts helped in some ways, I never felt they really got to the heart of what I’m writing about.

Courttia Newland had answers for me, as well as really incisive questions. Best of all, these questions were presented within the context of how he had used them in his own work. The most important questions to answer — the ones that really led me to the heart of my current novel — were these:

Where does your story come from? 

We’re thinking about context here – but it forced me to look at my context as a writer. I had to think about what the inspiration was for my novel. I had to question why, out of all the random ideas that were whirling in my brain, this was the novel that I was writing? 

Perhaps the most interesting question was this one: 

‘What am I afraid of when I think of writing this story?’ 

When I run a D&D campaign, I ask my players to tell me two key things about their characters at the start of a campaign:

1) What is their character’s greatest wish?

2) What is their character’s deepest fear?

Ultimately, these two factors become the carrot and the stick, the things by which I lure them, or beat them, through the story and force their characters to face up to these core beliefs about who they are. The movement of a character towards new understanding is the basis of every story arc in every story ever told. They don’t need to change; the characters just need to realise something about themselves that’s vital and decide what to do with that information. The way they respond can make the overall story a heroic tale, a comedy, or a tragedy. 

The same thing applies to us as writers. This is what I meant above when I said you need to know yourself. If you can identify why you are afraid of writing the piece you’re working on, then you can usually extrapolate the reason it is so important to you. That importance, the reason which beats at the heart of why you need to write this story, is the heart of the story that you want to tell. Encountering this firsthand during Newland’s class was like a mini supernova going off in my brain. Jumbled fragments of plot and character arc for my work in progress all suddenly lined up around the core message I was trying to send. I am a significant part of the context of my novel. Understanding myself – and my inspirations, hopes, and fears for my story - finally helped me nail down exactly what my story is about.

If you’re a writer, do yourself a favour. When someone asks you what you’re writing, ask yourself why you’re terrified to tell that particular story. The answers to everything else likely lie in there somewhere. 

References

Roberts, A., 2021, ‘A River Called Time by Courttia Newland review – a vivid alternate reality,’ in The Guardian: Book of the Day, Fiction, Friday 21st January, 2021. Accessed here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/01/a-river-called-time-by-courttia-newland-review-a-vivid-alternate-reality

Judah, H., 1999, ‘Word on the Street,’ in The Guardian, Thursday 1st July 1999. Accessed here: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/jul/01/features11.g2

A River Called Time by Courttia Newland is available here:

https://amzn.eu/d/fOJK9YQ