Choke, or Fuck Reality

Choke, or fuck reality.

This year I’m reading a book a week. (I know it sounds lame, I’m reading other university books, don’t @ me)

Last week’s book was Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

Now, you may not know the name. Or the style. Let me give you one hint: Fight Club. Now you know.

Palahniuk is irreverent, straight-forward, apocalyptic, and a million of other things. What he is not, though, is fake. Or, in a measure, he is fake in a way that’s so perfect you will be driven to believe him.

The main character, at some point, says this. “Nothing is as good as you can imagine it.”

Now, being a new adult that has never had a love story, I have imagined it many times, so this quote smacked me.

This is the power of fiction, the reason why we write books and why we make movies, then read the former and watch the latter. We want something that, even as dirty, wrong, and evil like Choke, they are soaked in a formaldehyde-smelling perfection.

That’s why you watch horror movies but you’re scared of the dark. That’s why you like books about wars but would never send your kids to the frontline.

Reality is something else.

Choke’s teaching?

“Don’t be real.”

Your book does not need to be too realistic. Come on, what girl wouldn’t have run in front a blond guy with a glittering sword in a disco in the real world? But Clary’s not real.

And what boy wouldn’t have been scared of the wood he found in the wardrobe? Well, not Peter Pevensie.

Don’t be real. Be realistic, but give us the high only fiction can provide.

So, happy WIP, and may your publication dreams come true.