The gist of this tale: Writers can be a little different animal, a horse of a different color, as the cliche goes. Sure, some of us function in normal society just fine, but deep down, there's something just plain weird in us that has us contemplating everything from murders to political coup d'etats to vampiric orgies to art gallery thefts to the seduction of a crowned prince or princess.
There's a weird, weird world happening beneath our outward expressions. The trick is to own up to it and embrace it.
It's a point this creepy, cute flick presents admirably. Based on J.A. White's book, Nightbooks centers around Alex, who at the beginning of the movie, storms into his room and threatens to destroy his notebooks of horror stories he has written. Something has happened to make him second guess writing them, but it's not revealed until later.
Cue the creepy score.
On his way to the boiler in the basement to hurl his notebooks into the flames, he is tricked into an open apartment, which slams shut and locks him in before the door disappears entirely.
There he meets Yasmine (a fellow captive), Natacha (the witch), and Lenore (Natacha's sometimes invisible spy-cat). When threatened with... well, a "you'll wish you were dead" kind of fate... Alex blurts out that he can help the witch by writing scary stories. She's sold and immediately agrees to spare him -- as long as he keeps her entertained with creepy tales.
But fate has other plans. Alex confesses later both to Yasmine and to Natacha that "I'll never write another story."
He longs to be more or less normal, and he's sick of being seen as weird by his friends.
Oddly enough, both his fellow captive and his captor have some helpful advice for him and his predicament.
Says Yasmine: "Well, you are weird. But the thing that makes you weird makes them ordinary. And no one likes to be ordinary. Ordinary sucks. So they're going to try to take that away from you."
Says Natacha: "I'm mystified by you, storyteller. This beautiful darkness dances inside your brain and you should celebrate it, but you run from it. Why?"
They're both right.
As writers, we really should embrace that weirdness that lives inside us. Don't be ashamed of it. It reminds me of a story my wife told me of a story she wrote when she was a child. I don't remember much about the plot, but at one point a head went flying by the protagonist. The reaction from her parents was basically, "Why can't you write nice stories without loose heads flying around?"
I remember my writing partner on The Ruby Files, Bobby Nash, and me sitting in a restaurant discussing murder and mayhem for the book. And I also remember the odd looks we got from many of the tables around us.
Celebrating that inner darkness or oddness puts a wall between you and the world of "norms," but it also can be fulfilling in so many ways.
Alex's time held captive by Natacha begs the question, "Is he a captive or is she helping him become a better storyteller? Or both?"
Is she both his muse and his jailer somehow?
I tend to believe that's absolutely the case. She drives him to write better, always criticizing his work with what he feels are nit-picks, but as he takes them to heart, his stories do become better. Even if her goal is to belittle rather than instruct, the result is the same for Alex.
We may have those kinds of "dark muses" in our lives as well. They're not the most supportive nor the most kind, but their constant badgering or ridiculing can somehow help us in the long run. Or course it's a fine line to balance between enduring toxic folks and learning from them without accepting their toxicity. That's a line all writers in that situation must discover for themselves.
Still, Natacha is helpful in the end. A few of her "lessons" stand out to me in particular.
When Alex reads a story that isn't one he feels connected to, a purely 'made-up' story, the witch tells him it is weak and that, "Every good story hints at truth. The more truth, the more powerful the story."
Truth powers fiction. Without the reality of societal politics, War and Peace would mean little to readers. Without the racism of the Southern past, They're Eyes Were Watching God wouldn't ring so true and make the characters so heroic. Without a history of worldwide cultural dominion over women, The Handmaid's Tale would just be another empty sci-fi story that flew under the radar. Truth powers ficion. And to make it more personal... YOUR truth powers YOUR fiction.
At one point, Alex defaults to a heroic ending where the protagonist helps to save a ghost from a haunted graveyard, only to have the apartment shake and moan (yes, moan). Natacha quickly exclaims, "A happy ending?" Alex is floored, wondering what's wrong with that, before quickly changing the ending to have the boy captured by another spirit from among the graves. The witch tells him quickly, "Happy endings are a dangerous thing. Never forget that."
In her case, happy endings are a physically dangerous reality, but even in our cases, we still need to be careful of overdoing them. You know what happy endings are -- they're actually endings. They're the period at the end of your fictional sentence. A hard stop. The reader no longer has to worry or wonder or review. Every emotional question is answered and it's finality staked in the ground forever and ever, amen.
A romance writer friend of mine once shared the idea of the 'almost' happy ending. Sure, things end up on an uptick in the story curve, but it's not fully resolved yet. It's just the beginning of the real resolution, which is presented in such a way to linger in the reader's imagination.
I prefer the bittersweet ending, the ones where the protaganists survive to get hurt again, but they do learn something from the awful things they've had to face. They're a little broken, but they're still around, still pushing forward, still willing to give it 'the ol' college try' as the cliche.
Later on, after facing Natacha's criticism so frequently, Alex asks after "The End" of another story if she liked it. Was it better? The witch, rather than setting his question to rest and giving his fragile young ego the boost it so clearly needs, responds, "Writers. So insecure."
I totally felt called out in that moment.
How many times have I asked, "Well, what did you think?" of a beta reader, not because I wanted a critique, but because I wanted them to feel absolutely floored by the indomitable power of my prose. I wanted to be liked and praised, not to become better.
Sure, at other times, and maybe even just moments later, I'd want to better the work, but the first inkling to cross my brain was whether they liked it. In a way, I was asking if my continued journey on this writing path was worth it. Did I have what it took? Was I (and here's the rubber meeting the road with a loud slap) GOOD ENOUGH?
We all wonder about that, never really outgrow it, regardless of whether we're at the beginning of our journey or further along, just like we never really outgrow fairy tales, especially those this compelling.
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