Interceding For The Reader

Fiction as prayer for strangers

Edited by R.D. Leonard.

Recently, I was talking to a friend about my work in marketing. It’s incredibly difficult work for me. I have to synthesize technical information and opaque data, then turn around and write persuasively, one person to another, and create results for our company. My friend gave me a surprising perspective. He said my work had an almost intercessory nature—that my professional writing in marketing somehow interceded between my employer and prospective customers.

This got me thinking about the larger question of all communication as intercession. That idea just about broke my brain, so I zoomed in to something a little more specific. What about fiction as intercession? Could the novelist function as an intercessor who mediates deep reality to a reader who’s unaware of it even though they live in it?

Spoiler: Yes! Absolutely. But let me explain.

What is intercession, anyway?

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines intercession as “the act of speaking to somebody in order to persuade them to be kind to somebody else or to help settle an argument.” This definition isn’t perfect, but it’s clear, and it does an okay job of encompassing the way in which “intercession” is used in spiritual traditions as a type of prayer.

Specifically, we might look at Hebrews 7:25 in the Bible, which claims that Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. In this context, intercession has a priestly function. It’s literally one speaker advocating on behalf of another to God.

While the technical meaning of “intercession” is clear in this type of context, it’s interesting to look at it analogously, using the definition we provided earlier. What does a novel do, often indirectly, if not persuade someone to be kind to someone else in their heart or attempt to settle an argument?

Thus I submit to you that as fictioneers, we work in the realm of intercession. And ours is a subtle art.

We’re interceding for the reader on behalf of deep reality.

To put this in philosophical terms, we could say every story presents an ontology—a set of tacet assumptions about the nature of being and of humanity. That ontology may hit you over the head like a two-by-four, or it may play a more subtle game, but you will absolutely find it if you dig deep enough. In fact, there’s no story in existence that doesn’t progressively set up, reference, and defend an ontology.

So what does this look like? Here are some examples.

The Lord of the Rings presents an ontology in which any person, even one possessed of great abilities to achieve good, can be corrupted by the will to power. Every potential hero is morally compromised. No one is immune, from hobbits to wizards. Human nature is fragile and fallible, and only the perfect confluence of events can lead to the ring’s destruction—even as that confluence works against the motivations and actions of the characters in the scene.

The OA, that mesmerizing and baffling Netflix show, presents an ontology in which a person can have supernatural abilities but not understand their significance or how to wield them. (This is a really common trope, basically the Harry Potter arc.) In the ontology of The OA, power comes partly from within the supernatural person, but it also requires a community acting out a ritual in harmony for things to really work. It’s basically sorcery. And while human nature has massive potential to liberate captives when it taps into some kind of elemental power, it’s also hamstrung by tragic logistical separations and the effective actions of an antagonist. Every potential hero is morally pure, with no possibility of turning into an antagonist, but every potential hero experiences fatalistic failure enforced by circumstances beyond their control. The world is fundamentally a cruel place.

Neuromancer, the cyberpunk classic, presents an ontology in which there is no meaning other than the execution of the will to power. Indeed, human nature is nothing but that which can execute against the will to power—meaning even an AI can have motivations, and the actions of the AI and human characters require no moral comment, whether implicit or explicit on the part of the author. Nothing is right or wrong. The only question is what’s possible.

Continuing to assume that we’re correct—that every story by nature presents, references, and defends an ontology—what’s the state of the reader as they come under this onslaught of implicit and explicit belief statements?

Readers are hungry to experience another reality.

By nature, we’re all stuck in our own heads and experiences. It’s one of the great pains of living, the fact that we can’t be something more than what we are. Whatever the literary critics may say, I firmly believe that when we come to a story authentically, we come looking for escape. We want to be someone else for a while and live in a different reality. We want to be larger or smaller, or we want to be placed over there, not here—anything but who we are and where we are.

This is incredibly fertile ground for those who want to resurrect the real. The reader is coming to us warmed up and ready, desperate for a virtual reality experience in a life that’s not their own. By definition, that experience will come with an ontology. It’ll tell the reader what’s real and what isn’t, whether implicitly or explicitly. The reader may accept or reject the sweet nothings whispered in their ear, but there’s no way around the ontological encounter that a novel pushes on them.

Which leads me to say…

Every writer intercedes.

In essence, the writer functions as a priest, interceding for the reader on behalf of a set of claims about what is deeply real. The writer presents an ontology and says, “Here’s what’s real. Are you aligned with it? Or are you off in la-la land?”  

The only question is what reality the writer works for in the intercessory relationship. The choice is between presenting deep reality or presenting lies. There is no middle ground.

But how do we do this intercession as writers? How can we become more aware of it—and thus bring it under conscious control?

We have to synthesize many types of information in the intercessory act.

Let me talk about my work in marketing for a moment so I can speak analogously about it.

As I said above, I have to take vastly different types of information from different sources, throw them in the melting pot of my brain, and produce something that both Google and real people will love while also selecting for the right audience by choosing the right topic and steering the user toward the decision to contact our company and talk to sales.

No biggie!

I have to work with and understand complex data from Google Analytics that explains how people interact with our website.

I have to work with and understand complex data on search patterns to intuit what’s valuable to the company, which searches are too hard to capture, and where the perfect opportunities lie as defined by those variables.

I have to capture those searching users with content that offers real value for free. And while I give the user that real value for free, I have to constantly intercede in the relationship between the user and our company, showing the user how much better life would be if they would do business with us—all while not ticking them off. Because nobody likes a sales pitch.

As you can see, it’s a lot. But I share all this to draw an analogy for writers of fiction.

We also have to draw from wildly different information sources as we intercede. Whether we know it or not, we start with our own ontology, what we believe to be true about reality. We pull from characters we’ve developed and try to create scenes that maintain a perfect sheen of verisimilitude. We have to work hard at the level of character motivation, which is where most aspiring writers fail. We also have to work at the level of the craft of writing, studying best practices, getting feedback, exercising humility, and working on all layers of narrative execution, from character actions down to the minutiae of commas and dialogue tags.

We pull all this stuff together, then use it to intercede between the reader and deep reality itself. Through the powerful virtual reality experience of fiction, we plead with the reader to recognize what’s actually true, whether or not they understand it rationally or even agree in their hearts. Our stories won’t work for everyone, but here and there, maybe we’ll strike gold. Maybe we’ll write that scene that brings someone to tears and makes them question their flawed picture of reality. Maybe that scene will stick with them their whole life—whether they ever accept the nature of deep reality or not. I believe this is one of our greatest callings as writers of fiction. And I hope you’ll join me in that journey.