What is Visionary Fiction?
When I published my book on Amazon, I chose the Visionary and Metaphysical category mainly because I felt my book had something special, something thoughtful, and some kind of message beyond the drama, action, and sci-fi weapons it was packed full of. I had never even heard of the genre before. I picked it intuitively, but as it turns out, I was spot on in my decision. Or was I? And which one is my story, Visionary or Metaphysical?
I still don't fully understand what VF or Metaphysical Fiction are, or if my book belongs in either category. So let's explore what these categories of fiction mean and see if I have written a book that can be categorized as such. I applied to be in the Visionary Fiction Alliance, so I'm partial towards VF, but they haven't put me on their website. So I don't really know.
"All of the usual elements of suspense, conflict, even romance and mystery, are interwoven in the plot. The other layer, deeper and more archetypal, is that mystical inner journey of spiritual awakening. In Visionary Fiction, esoteric wisdom is embedded in story so that the reader can actually experience it, instead of merely learning about it." - Jodine Turner, award-winning and best-selling author and founder of the Visionary Fiction Alliance who still hasn't accepted me.
In other words, visionary fiction and metaphysical fiction are spiritual and thoughtful, but still fiction. It is not a bunch of people walking around a castle talking philosophical BS. It's NOT this:
That mindsore is a movie called Mindwalk, where characters go to a castle and literally walk around for almost the entire movie TALKING about philosophical garbage.
VF and Metaphysical fiction are most closely associated with both religious and philosophical fiction, so if Mindwalk is what you think of when you hear Visionary or Metaphysical Fiction, you'd be forgiven, wrong, but forgiven, because like Jodine Turner said, you still have to have all of the usual elements that make up fiction. As the old adage goes, in fiction you must SHOW not TELL. And the same goes for visionary and metaphysical aspects.
In my book, "The Portal" the title alone suggests some metaphysical elements, but the subtitle, "Science Fiction Meets Fantasy Head On in This Action Adventure Novel" suggests that it's anything but deep and reflective thought. That's because I tried my best to hide the metaphysical and visionary aspects that are the point of the story. I embedded it in drama, action, and character. My initial aim was just to not be preachy. My goal at first was to tell a good story and if you've studied story, you'd know that you must show as much as you can and not tell it to your reader. So intuitely, I burried my spiritual message.
So my story is looking good so far. I've buried my lead. Let's see what else it takes to write a novel in these genres.
If you were paying attention to what Jodine Turner said above, you might have caught the part where she said Visionary Fiction and Metaphysical Fiction are different from regular fiction in that there is something else, some kind of hard-to-get-to truth that is embedded in an otherwise regular story.
That tells me that if you have a message, some kind of impenetrable wisdom that you want to get across to the world, the best way to do that is to bury it in a story. Story is natural to us, while big ideas and spiritual understanding might not be. It might be harder to communicate if we just preached it. This is why I got into fiction in the first place, particularly science fiction. I wanted a way to tell the truth as I saw it and I know that fiction is the best way to cut through the logical part of the brain and speak straight to the heart.
If I could plug my book just a little bit more, in the first installment of the trilogy,the main character's father, right before he is killed, talks about his own theory of time, saying that upon one's death one travels the road of his life in any direction he wants. His father, as the main character explains, was probably only trying to comfort his son in the face of death, but the theme continues throughout. Deelo meets a religious group that has the same theory, a religious group,as it turns out, also believes that humans have no souls because "humanity has lost its soul," and one day, the souls from beyond the Portal will return to us. But it's not until the third book that the reader experiences several seemingly unrelated chapters that will only make sense once the central visionary theme is revealed.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the spiritual messages. But I don't preach. Like Jodine Turner said, "When written well, visionary Fiction does not proselytize, evangelize, coerce, or feel dogmatic."
Two ticks in my column. My story is looking good.
Wikipedia says that metaphysical fiction was originally identified as philosophical fiction, "in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of art in human lives, and the role of experience or reason in the development of knowledge."
My kind of fiction!
But I get the feeling "philosophy" in reference to fiction might turn some people off. Need I remind you of Mindwalk? Likewise, some less skilled writers might take the idea that there is a category of fiction labelled "philosophy" as license to wax on about Niche and forget to tell you a story that has characters you sympathize with and motivations you understand.
Two of my meta tags for my Amazon listing are "Science fiction for Adults," and "Fantasy for Adults". I chose these because I assumed that adults like to talk about philosophy. I wanted to bring forth a message. And here is where my third tick in my column comes in. And this time, it's away from metaphysical and towards Visionary.
Margaret Duarte says, "Besides telling a good story, VF enlightens and encourages readers to expand their awareness of greater possibilities."
When people ask me what my story is about, I tell them it's about a medieval fantasy world of swords, shields, and constant war that gets invaded by a futuristic sci-fi dystopian Earth, but really, that's not the whole story. The real story is about what it means to be human, what it means to remember, or not remember, and what it means to have a soul, if such a thing actually exists.
What would happen if you had someone else's consciousness in your brain? Sci-fi, fantasy in the visionary fiction tradition explores these questions. And in the Portal, that's exactly what Deelo Con experiences, and he is left hurling through the consequences of it.
For whatever you want to talk about, you can make it happen in this genre. So yes, on the face of it, you can have laser weapons, implants in the brain, and helicopters launching attack drones, but embedded in it, there is a message.
Or twenty minutes later. She's still talking!
Please, make it stop!
Gripping drama at it's finest. The Ancient Greeks would be proud.
Margaret Duarte also states that, "What separates Visionary Fiction from other speculative fiction is intention." Here is where it starts to get fuzzy for me. I don't understand how someone could write a book in the Metaphysical Fiction genre WITHOUT intending a message behind it. I guess if you don't know what you're doing as a writer and you haven't put a handle on what theme you are conveying through the events in your story, then sure, you will have unintended thematic consequences. But I'm guessing that Metaphysical fiction talks about the spiritual world, things "meta" to our physics, while Visionary is the brainchild of an author with a particular "vision" in mind.
This can serve as an easy way to remember it. Metaphysical fiction is supernatural in nature, spirits, paranormal events, "more than" or "outside of" the physical world we see around us. Visionary (also meaning 'see') is more than physical, too, but its author has a message he or she is trying to get across, a spiritual message, a 'vision' so to speak.
I very much intended the message in my story. So I'm going to say that is a third box I can tick in my bid to become a "Visionary" author.
It's getting harder to put a finger on what sci-fi is now that it's mainstream. Just compare star trek original series and it's social commentary, the geekiness of the later spin offs, and the JJ Abrams complete distortion of it. But I still think that Science Fiction is one of the best genre's for talking about the deeper esoteric truths. What other genre lets you explore how our sense of self is informed by our memories by literally you put two sets of memories inside one human's brain than science fiction? It just lends itself to visionary themes and explorations.
And I'm not the only one who seems to think science is a good fit with visionary.
"As the world evolves away from the Newtonian model of the five senses to the more evolved quantum model that includes the sense of spirit so resurgent today, Visionary Fiction is rapidly becoming the genre of choice to express that evolution and predict the breath-taking future that might follow the anticipated leaps."
That's our good friend Jodine Turner again, seeming to argue in favor of a strong link between science and spirituality.
I'll take that as another win for my book.
Victor Smith posted an article on the VFA's website titled, "What is NOT Visionary Fiction." In it he eliminated almost everything. He said all mainstream fiction is not visionary, nor is Fantasy, Religious, or spiritual. Metaphysical, better thought of as philosophical, got cut because of it's concentration on the thoughts of a story, rather than the thinker and his thinking process, which would make it visionary.
Again, I don't understand this. If your story concentrates on thoughts, then you have a Mindwalk on your hands and much deeper problems as a writer than deciding which genre you belong to. You have a story problem. All fiction would, at some level, concentrate on a thinker his though processes. We usually call him or her the protagonist.
Another factor that I've read about and that seems to keep popping up in my research on trying to pin down what exactly visionary means is something about "leaving things up to interpretation."
A lot of bloggers on visionary fiction seem to be saying that visionary fiction lets the reader experience and grow instead of telling the reader what to think and how to feel. They say this because that's what Carl Jung said, as well as other who interpretted him. The reader moves along the journey with the protagonist.
In The Portal, I explore the nature of time by having the main character, Deelo Con, lose his memory, but recall them in a disorganized order, the same order that the reader reads about it. He also has dreams of another main character in the book, which are actually chapters of a future dystopian sci-fi Earth that the reader follows as a subplot. I would like to think that this, along with just any ordinary fiction, is taking the reader along with the protagonist, but I could be wrong.
So is my book visionary? I don't know. I thought it was, but either I've failed to wrap my head around what Carl Jung was talking about, but maybe other smarty-pants writers do. Like Victor Smith said in his blog post on the VFA, "Novels that remain in the realm of the known may entertain, distract, and even educate, but they do not grab hold of the reader and get him to think about and respond to possibilities that were previously foreign to him. This is the role of Visionary Fiction."
Does my book grab hold of you and make you think? I guess that will have to be left up to the reader. My book is free on Amazon. Go check it out and let me know. So far, the VFA has not put me on their list of visionary authors even though they said I was accepted. I have their emblem on my website and I've linked to them.
I've also disappeared from the "Visionary" category on Amazon. But I'm number 10 in the Metaphysical category of Amazon (the free section).
In other words, my head hurts. From what I've read, and from how I've interpreted it, beside this X-factor of making the reader think and not telling him what to think (in a novel which is a one way conversation mind you), I think I belong. But who's to say?
I am to say. Or maybe it's you. Maybe, it's my protagonist. Like Deelo Con says at the end of book one when writing to his spiritual guide and mentor,
I’m sorry I did not live long enough to give you the Portal as promised. I know what it meant to you. But it’s not what you think it is. It’s not even mine to give, no more than it is ours to have. I hope you understand. I wish you peace and happiness. And you needn’t keep searching for your missing soul. Just by wanting one, you’ve already found it.
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