SCREWING WITH THE INEVITABLE

By Linda Lovely

This month’s blog topic is Death and Taxes—the Inevitable. Since spring has arrived in my neck of the woods and it’s too pretty to spend time expounding on death or taxes, I decided to focus on some of our notions of inevitability and how they can help writers brainstorm.

As authors, we have the power to cancel and/or screw with the inevitable to delight and surprise our readers. Here are just a few “givens” that writers can alter to create new worlds and reader experiences:

• The sun always rises. For the sake of argument, let’s say we wake up one morning and there is no sun. The earth has stopped revolving. Our half of the planet is plunged into perpetual darkness, while the other half bakes under a ferocious sun that refuses to set. Not a bad premise for a science fiction novel that lets us explore how people react when natural disasters change their world forever.
• We age. Or maybe we don’t. Lots of literary takes on ways to reverse this truism—from a pact with the devil to pharmaceutical intervention. Perhaps our hero/heroine finds the fabled fountain of youth, or discovers a way to switch off a gene that allows select individuals (but not all) to stay young forever. What if our hero can elect to stay young, but he’ll have to watch the love of his life become an old woman and die? What if women can bear children in their seventies (State of Wonder by Ann Patchett)?
• Spring follows winter. This one’s almost too easy for a writer to exploit. A new ice age descends. How do we cope? Do scientists try to intervene, and, if so, will their meddling cause an even greater catastrophe for life on earth?
• Eggs and sperms unite to create new life. What if nature quits functioning in this manner? What if women don’t need men to conceive? What if women can be cloned successfully, but male clones don’t survive? How would the world work as women assume power and men become an endangered species?  
• Death is inevitable and ends an individual’s earthly journey. This is perhaps the most popular “inevitable” for authors to upend. Options include ghosts (angry and/or friendly), vampires (who I guess can live forever with an adequate fresh blood supply), and reanimated zombies.
• Romances have happy ever after (HEA) endings. Okay, if you’re a romance writer, this is one inevitable you don’t dare screw with. BUT, when the “black moment” arrives in your book, you can almost convince your readers that an HEA is impossible.

Fiction allows our imaginations to explore wonderful, improbable, and sometimes terrifying worlds. What “inevitable” laws do you enjoy seeing authors commute? Can you think of other “inevitable” premises that can be reversed in books to entertain readers?