An Interview With Ian Benke
First thing you need to be a compelling writer of any genre is empathy. Everyone is the main character of their own story. Of course that means that your antagonist or villain needs to be relatable, at least as far as their own internal logic goes. That’s why the MCU’s Thanos was a good villain, but it’s also why all the ancillary characters in K.J. Parker’s, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City are so rich and come together to make that city a real place. That’s what I strive to do in Workingman, from our hero, Alex, to the old woman pushing her grocery basket, who watches him walk by.
Science Fiction and Fantasy are hugely popular genres. What does it take for a writer today, to write compelling and successful Science Fiction and Fantasy stories? Authority Magazine started a new series called “How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories”. In this series we are talking to anyone who is a Science Fiction or Fantasy author, or an authority or expert on how to write compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Justin DiPego.
Justin DiPego is passionate about storytelling, whether through art, filmmaking, or writing. Currently he has turned his talents to telling science fiction and fantasy stories with his most recent work being his new epic fantasy novel entitled, “Wrong Side Of A Working Man.”
DiPego’s ground-breaking modern-day adult illustrated fantasy novel set in the contemporary world in which Alex Cides (main character) wakes to find his wife has disappeared, his daughters fear him, and a mysterious curse has thrown him out of balance with the universe. Set in the underbelly of Los Angeles, Alex discovers that ten challenging tasks stand between him and a new start, or total destruction.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what first drew you to writing over other forms of storytelling?
Thank you for having me! Very happy to be here. So, what drew me to writing? I come from a family of writers. My father is a screenwriter in his 80’s who’s still only partially retired. My mother was a poet, an avant-garde novelist and journalist. My brother is a writer and so am I. I remember visiting a set of one of my dad’s Movies of the Week when I was 4 or 5 years old. I was trying to get my head around what his actual job was (especially since he didn’t seem to be doing anything on the day). “I wrote it.” He told me. “You wrote everything they say in the whole movie?” “That’s right.” That seemed impossible to me. Impossible, unless you can do magic. That pretty much cemented it for me.
You are a successful author. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I’m going to go with: Fanciful, Systematic, and Tenacious. Since at least the time of that story with my dad, I’ve been making up stories, mostly by observing what’s going on around me and extrapolating with flights of fancy and varying degrees of “what if…” from “what if we got a flat tire on this stretch of road?” to “What if the actual Olympian God, Hermes appeared on this stretch of road?”
Having that kind of fanciful mind is great for a storyteller and is something I inherited from my mom. When I got out of college, ready to make my fortune as a writer, I tried to exist using only that innate access to imagination, but I quickly found that relying on the muse didn’t produce the kind of regular productivity I needed to be a professional. I needed to be systematic, and I learned that from my father. He got up every day, wrote until lunch and then edited what he wrote in the morning. For some writers, it may work to wait for inspiration, light a candle and write only when moved, but for me to finish my work and hit my deadlines, I had to create a system and structure. Sometimes that structure had to fit around a day-job, but having it in place was and is critical to the practical side of being a writer.
Having mentioned day-jobs, writing isn’t easy to do or easy to make a living at. It takes tenacity to weather rejections and slow times. The only sure way to fail at this is to quit, so with my fanciful mind and my systems in place, I’ve also learned that writing is not a desk job, I have to get out and experience the world, be persistent, and no matter what else I’m facing, be it setbacks or time constraints, to always be writing.
Can you tell us a bit about the interesting or exciting projects you are working on or wish to create? What are your goals for these projects?
Speaking of tenacity, I began my latest novel over ten years ago. It spent some of that time on the back burner, but I never stopped thinking about it. Wrong Side of a Workingman is the story of a man named Alex, an electrician, plying his trade across Los Angeles when his life suddenly goes to hell. He develops a chronic pain and flights of anger. His wife leaves him, he loses his job and he discovers a curse has been put upon him. To lift the curse, he has to perform ten mythic tasks across the Southland, to reset his balance and the balance of the city itself. Inspired by the Twelve Labors of Hercules, it’s also an exploration of the hidden corners of the city, the secret mysticism that binds us all and the role of pain in toxic, male violence.
This is the first book of a series that will expand on Alex’s trials and adventures, and those of the people around him.
Wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define sci-fi or fantasy? How is it different from speculative fiction?
First of all, I’m going to give all these definitions without looking anything up, so these are the truths according to me. As far as I know, “speculative fiction” is a relatively new term that encompasses both sci-fi and fantasy, without having to conform to the rigors of either, especially now that both are being more and more divided into rigid sub-genres like Hard Sci-Fi and Soft Sci-Fi, and High and Low Fantasy, Modern-Illustrated-Adult-Urban-Fantasy, etc. To me, both sci-fi and fantasy are speculative and perhaps are sub-genres of a speculative fiction umbrella.
Science Fiction I would define as storytelling based on our current world, extrapolating advances in technology and society, and how those advances might inform or change our humanity, and then how that reflects back on us now.
Fantasy looks backward from our current world to a time when technology was not advanced and extrapolates on how the introduction of magical, folkloric and/or mythological elements might inform or change our humanity and may or may not reflect back on our current situation.
Of course, these definitions are very squishy, and they overlap and meld with each other, but I think those are the basics.
It seems that despite countless changes in media and communication technologies, novels and written fiction always survive, and as the rate of change increases with technology, written sci-fi becomes more popular. Why do you think that is?
Well, I alluded to mythology already, which I think was our human response to dealing with questions of the unknown in the natural world. As we become more and more detached from that natural world, it is our own technology that sparks our questions about our place in the universe. Despite advances in special effects, and although I love film and television as storytelling media, it is the written word that gives us a limitless palette to draw on to explore those questions in an infinite array of settings.
In your opinion, what are the benefits to reading sci-fi, and how do they compare to watching sci-fi on film and television?
Not only does the written word allow for imagery and settings that might be difficult to reproduce with special effects, it invites us as readers to participate in the creation of those images and settings, visualizing between the words and giving each of us a unique experience with the narrative.
More than that, written sci-fi and fantasy can delve into the mind in ways that are just too limited or awkward in the visual media. Asking and answering those questions about our place in the greater scheme of things, or even just exploring a character’s motivations and hidden thoughts can take a reader deep into places that are entirely non-visual.
That’s not to say that the written word is necessarily better. Visual storytelling can be as fantastic and effective in places that a written story might struggle.
What authors and artists, dead or alive, inspired you to write?
I’ve already mentioned my parents, so I’m going to go with two authors from my formative years. The first is J.R.R. Tolkien, but not for his world building (not that that wasn’t a big impact on me). When Bilbo wakes up in the dark, in Gollum’s cave, the narrator says something about him being in a tight spot, “but not as tight a spot as for me or you.” Seventh-grade-me had my mind blown by the implications. This meant that the narrator was a character in the story and was telling the story to me. That means that the story isn’t being conveyed via some omnipotent truth, but by a storyteller with a point of view and an agenda. The implications shifted both how I read and how I write to this day.
The other author is Raymond Chandler. I do love old school, hardboiled, noir, but Chandler took that genre and used it to observe the tiny details of human behavior and how they inform character, and on a larger scale, to explore the human condition in a broken, unfair system. Again, this taught me that stories aren’t always about what they say they’re about, and that as a reader and writer you can pick and choose the levels at which you wish to read or tell your story.
If you could ask your favourite Science Fiction and Fantasy author a question, what would it be?
I’m very bad at picking a favorite author, book, movie, song, band, etc. But since we’ve been talking about early influences, I’d love to have a conversation with Ray Bradbury about metaphor and social commentary in Sci-Fi. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned my least favorite of his works, “The Martian Chronicles,” was specifically written to explore the implications of his living on land stolen from the Tongva People. Rereading it with that knowledge elevated it in ways I’m still processing. I’d love to talk about the nuances of delivering a message more blatantly or obscurely.
We’d like to learn more about your writing. How would you describe yourself as an author? Can you please share a specific passage that you think exemplifies your style?
I think my foundation as a writer is as an observer. It’s my goal as a storyteller to take in the world around me and then give it back to my reader in ways they hadn’t thought of, or don’t have direct access to. For instance, hopefully most of my readers, or your readers for that matter, have never been punched in the ribs, but they have seen fight scenes in movies or read them in books. I don’t want to simply deliver the choreography of a fist fight, I want my audience to come out of that scene feeling like they know what it would have been like to be there.
“Every one of Gate’s punches was designed to be a knockout, and every one was aimed at Alex’s head. A blow to the head can scramble your brain, blur your eyes, knock you out, or even kill you. But unless you get it in the nose or mouth, a punch in the head doesn’t hurt.
Alex twisted his hips like a torsion spring unspooling. The force surged from his hips through his spine, spinning his shoulders and unleashing a right hook that crashed into the soft tissue under Gate’s extended ribcage.
Pain shot out from the nerve cluster so hard Gate felt like his nipples were bleeding. He buckled in on himself. Air exploded from his lungs, forcing him to nonsensically and involuntarily exclaim, ‘FUN!’
The torque of Alex’s spring was now spun the other way like a knotted rubber band straining to fire off a propeller. He unleashed the energy with a left hook that made a sick and meaty sound as it impacted Gate’s liver. Gate’s knee hit the floor. Instinctively he instantly sprang back to his feet and came back on guard. Gate was a warrior. Pain forced him to keep his elbows to his ribs. He rose to only half his height. But still, he blocked the door.”
Based on your own experience and success, what are the “Five Things You Need To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories?” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
The first thing you need to be a compelling writer of any genre is empathy. Everyone is the main character of their own story. Of course that means that your antagonist or villain needs to be relatable, at least as far as their own internal logic goes. That’s why the MCU’s Thanos was a good villain, but it’s also why all the ancillary characters in K.J. Parker’s, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City are so rich and come together to make that city a real place. That’s what I strive to do in Workingman, from our hero, Alex, to the old woman pushing her grocery basket, who watches him walk by.
The second thing is observation. Sci-Fi and Fantasy both need to be grounded enough in our real world that a reader can relate to the setting. Workingman takes place in Los Angeles. It’s on me to create a window into the city that Angelinos will recognize and appreciate, and readers who’ve never been here will feel like they’ve gained an insider’s insight into a town they might only have seen through a glossy veneer. If the urban part of an Urban Fantasy isn’t believable, the fantasy part never will be.
Next is extrapolation. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer’s job is to take in the real world and then ask and answer the right “what if…?” questions for the story and setting at hand. That’s where the science comes in. It’s not just about technology, it’s about sociology and anthropology. Tolkien’s world building is so complete and relatable that the fantastical elements never feel like a leap in logic. On the other end of the spectrum, the same is true for Arthur C. Clarke and the world of 2001: a Space Odyssey.
Of course, every genre needs imagination, but Sci-Fi and Fantasy more than most. An author needs to have a vision of the world they’re building, but that vision needs to also be unique. If your answers to the “what if…?” are the same as other authors before you, you may produce a good story, but chances are not a memorable or impactful one. There’s something to be said for formula, and there’s nothing wrong with a purely escapist yarn, but the question is for Compelling Science Fiction, and for that you need to stand apart. This leads directly to the final element.
Purpose. You’ve created interesting characters, with depth and perspective, in a unique, relatable setting with sound internal logic and world building. But why does your story start on this particular day in this particular world? What do you have to say? Every story need not have an important political or social message, but it should be about something. My first goal as an author is always to spin an entertaining journey for my reader, but just as Alex, the Workingman, discovers the mythological world hidden just under the crust of our reality, a story about working class struggle, chronic pain and positive masculinity hides just beneath the adventure.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Entertainment, Business, VC funding, and Sports read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂
Well, I would be more than happy to sit down for lunch with Robert Rodriguez and shoot the breeze about our mutual love for Frank Frazetta (who heavily influenced the illustrations in Wrong Side of a Workingman), and the filmic possibilities of Urban Fantasy on the streets of LA.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow along with my novels and my filmmaking at DiPegoNow.com, and find me on Twitter and Instagram as well.
Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success.
Author Justin DiPego On How To Create Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.