How Real-Life Connotations Limit the Potential of Fiction Writing

If I say to you “courtroom drama on TV,” what image would that invoke? You’d probably imagine something along the lines of a moderately-sized hall with closed doors, rows of wooden pews with adult men and women seated, dressed in dark-toned formal clothes and the person on trial, a muscular man with a goatee and still eyes, wearing the orange prison uniform while the conservatively-dressed attorney standing next to him addresses the judge, who’s a bespectacled old man with thinning white hair and a scowl engraved on his face. There is no sound but the attorney’s and judge’s voices, and the whole atmosphere is dark and serious.
Why do you imagine that? No, it’s not because that’s what an actual courtroom looks like. It’s because television writers have created an exact replica of a real-life courtroom, and then kept reusing that same precise image time after time, show after show until it was instilled in your eyes and your mind had grown accustomed to the thought that this is what all courtrooms look like and that’s how they will always be. If the first courtroom drama series had decided that their show’s court setting will mimic everything about a real-life courtroom except, for whatever reason, the entire furniture will be green, then that green courtroom image was picked up and copied by every subsequent show, that’s the image your mind would jump to when you hear the words “courtroom” and “TV.” This is how most people picture things. Their default sequence is to link the idea to its most recent or most common image association and then settle for that first image that pops into their mind. But I imagine it differently. When I hear “courtroom drama on TV,” I imagine a cozy room with sunlight filling the place through two giant windows with curtains pinned to their sides and a couple of plants on each sill. The pews are white and the people—of all ages—are wearing whatever they felt like wearing on that day. Some are wearing shorts and crocs, some are wearing skirts and heels, most are wearing bright colors, and some felt comfortable dressing up in dark-toned formal wear. They’re not sitting in silence but instead quietly engaging in discussion with each other and smiling, their whispers can be heard but are never found intrusive enough to be shushed by the judge, who is an old man with thinning grey hair and an endearing smile of grandfather warmth. The standing attorney is dressed in a flamboyant silver suit that sparkles in places under the light, his sleeves rolled up and his big head of hair is stylishly formed into a pointy bundle. The whole atmosphere is light and laid-back.
Why do I imagine that? Simply put, because when it comes to fictional settings, I give preference to the fiction. In the second courtroom example, the scene is a bigger work of fiction than the first because it places greater emphasis on creative imagination rather than accurately transcribing realistic aspects. You might have noticed that, so far, the differences between the two descriptions are merely aesthetic. If we take it one step further, our imagination can progress to include meanings and definitions. To most people, a courtroom proceeding denotes a process where a person accused of committing a crime, possibly a callous murder, is confronted by a group of dignified law-abiders who must decide on a fitting form of punishment for this outcast—not in my imagination. In my imagination, the world in which this trial takes place is one where all murder has been abolished (say, by scientific means,) the person facing trial is not an accused and no crime was already committed. The central figure of this trial is a teenage boy who told his parents that he has been having violent urges lately towards his best friend because he won the heart of a girl he liked, for example, or because his test scores aren’t as good as his friend’s. The trial is not to determine punishment or guilt, it’s to determine how best to handle the situation so that the young boy would embrace the positive feeling he’d get from supporting his friend instead of the negative one he’s getting from jealousy. The judge and the attorney talk with no reservations or animosity and neither of them use formal speech. The attorney defends the boy by making the argument that he has never acted on his impulses before and this doesn’t make him a real threat. The judge’s verdict isn’t compounded by the frightening sound of a gavel but instead by him explaining the nature of his decision to the boy in a down-to-earth manner. The judge, the attorney, and the people in attendance all want to see the boy get the help he needs because they recognize him as a precious part of their peaceful community and don’t want to lose him. The trial is for the boy.
When once a courtroom was a symbol of mankind’s fatal transgressions and infliction of punishment, it now represents the setting for hope, peace, and understanding. A brand new idea has been created and one more inch of the realm of fiction has been explored. This is the true power of progressive imagination. An increasingly unrealistic portrayal packs an even stronger punch about the reality of our world today (and no, there’s no need for this to be in the future, silly. In Imagination Land, this type of trial can be your present.) There are many more aspects that you can change in this scenario—sounds, titles, mannerisms, etc.—but it’s basically a game of numbers. To produce a genuine work of fiction, more elements should be imagined than replicated from reality. Major concepts would most likely remain the same (hope, sacrifice, love, betrayal, retribution, etc.) but they wouldn’t represent connotations because they’re not associated with particular images (what do you imagine when I say “hope on TV?”)
The same is true for literature. The first and biggest compromise that novelists and authors make when they decide on writing a piece of fiction is that they never forget who and where they are. If the story is about, say, a schoolboy in New York who embarks on a unique space adventure, the writer’s mind instinctively goes through an automatic process where it imports the exact same universe we live in, then it imports the exact same Planet Earth, then it imports the exact same United States, then it imports the exact same New York, and then it imports the predominant image associated with New York schoolboys (perhaps a child with an oversized backpack hanging from his shoulder.) Throughout every one of these steps, a staggering amount of content is shrugged off with the assumption that nothing could be changed or improved. As a result, many layers that could add value and heighten the quality of the storytelling are ignored. The only part where any imagination is actually applied is in the details of the adventure, and that’s because there is no preset image association that we have with schoolboys going through a space adventure in real-life. This is how most literary works are written today. Almost everything is replicated directly from life in its known form, with no alterations whatsoever, and then a minor mutation is added to the end and the whole project is labeled as fiction!
When you realize the enormous wealth of ideas that remains untapped in our minds, you have to be unimpressed with the results that we currently have on offer in our scriptwriting and literature. It’s been a painfully slow process, obstructed by lazy writing and harmful false assumptions such as “people want what they’re used to” and “people can only relate to what they know.” If such arguments were true, then we would only have one genre, one story, one actor, one actress, one literary device, and not a single show, book, or film about parallel universes—because, you know, who could relate to that? People, in fact, love variety and want more options. It’s one of the best perks of living in our modern age. The consumer is king—although, it would be nice if we had more styles of fiction to choose from than flavors of ice cream.
Writers of fiction should revel in the fantasy instead of trying needlessly to imitate reality. Suspending disbelief should be ubiquitous and not served cautiously in tiny portions. Viewers and readers today are robbed of experiencing the mesmerizing extent of human imagination and as a result, we are left with a majority of the same rehashed works instead of the vast array that we are capable of producing. The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe today. Surely, our imagination can do better than a carbon copy of reality?

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