Quantum Storytelling

I slacked off over the weekend. I ended up playing computer games and going to Fort Worth with the wife to spend time with her family. I didn’t get much writing done. I was stuck again at a point in the story, trying to decide what happens next.

Each time I get stuck I feel that I’m proving my plotting impetus correct. When I know what happens, I don’t get stuck. When I don’t know what happens next, I get stuck. It’s that simple.

So I was 5,000 words behind. Now I’m only 4,000 words behind. I have to admit though there’s a nice underdog feel to it. I feel challenged a little more now that I’m behind. Because honestly just doing the daily quota was getting easy. Once you get into the routine of it, it’s easy–too easy.

Just like everything else in life, once it becomes mundane you’ve got to switch it out for something else, mix it up or you get bored. So I decided to take a break this weekend and allow myself to get behind.

It worked some wonders for me because during my time off I thought of a great way to connect an element between two of my stories set in the same universe.

Sometimes creative synthesis requires a few days off. And sometimes that underdog notion of coming from a disadvantage is exactly what you need to get motivated and rocket ahead.

On the heels of yesterday’s pedantic rant about logic, I’ve been thinking about how it relates to a story’s identity. In some ways fiction is like religion. You create a place of worship and set the principles by which that worshipping is done. You create a tautological belief system. Any critical questions of the belief are referenced back to the belief itself.

An oversimplified example would be something like: “You are questioning the existence of God? Just have faith!” Faith is part of the religion itself. Questioning the existence is asking a critical, or from some views even neutral or objective question. The answer supplied is one which is biased in favor of the belief system. Of course you should have faith, because it keeps you in the religion, that’s what the religion wants. But it’s not just what the religion wants, they’d like for you to want it too–to want it for yourself. The religion wants you to willingly give up your time and mindspace, to sacrifice something in the name of the ideas and concepts they represent.

Some authors, such as Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash, have suggested religion as a mind virus. The viral ideas and concepts get in, and once they do you are ‘hooked’ in a way that everything you do and think will be centered around or providing host for the religion itself.

This isn’t that different from marketing.

Of course, no discussion of these type would be complete without the mention of memes. Religions are memeplexes. So are brands and products. Many corporations would love for you to ‘bow at the altar’ of their brand.

Any well constructed fiction, or any marketing-driven product design for that matter, should take cues from religion. While your story can borrow from somebody else’s mythology, or even Christian mythology as Dan Brown has done in The DaVinci Code, a writer is also served by creating a mythology of their own within the context of their story.

Some of the most successful stories create their own mythology. Star Wars for example, with concepts like The Force. The Force adds depth and meat to the story. It is the central belief of the Jedi, the heroes. It is twisted for evil by the Empire.

George Lucas surely could have cast his story within the framework of an existing religion. You could have had “Good Christians (Jedi) vs. Bad Christians (Empire),” but I’m sure almost everyone would agree that The Force makes for a more appropriate analogy to religion and faith in a way that strengthens the identity of the story through the use of it’s own concepts.

Another example is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are massive universes filled with supporting and self-reinforcing details that not only make great brands but also appear from some perspectives to be mini-religions out of the cults of fans.

This is marketing-driven design. If the word ‘marketing’ leaves a bad taste in your mouth, think about it as constructing your own mini-religion. If your story is your bible, how might you get people to believe it?

The idea of mythologizing or mystifying your fictional universe via memes is within similar territory of logos, the Word of God, a god, or a religion. In early Pre-Socratic philosophy it was a term used for logic of the world and the order of the universe.

An interesting nugget from Wikipedia:

“In rhetoric, logos is one of the three modes of appeal (the other two are pathos, emotional appeal, and ethos, the qualifacation of the speaker). Logos refers to logical appeal, and in fact the term logic evolves from it. Logos normally implies numbers, polls, and other mathematical or scientific data.”

So you have logic, emotional appeal, and the qualification of the speaker. That reads like the ingredients for a bonified storyteller if I ever saw one!

Lastly, the definition as it relates to religion is interesting. Dictionary.com’s second and third definitions are:

# Judaism.

1. In biblical Judaism, the word of God, which itself has creative power and is God’s medium of communication with the human race.
2. In Hellenistic Judaism, a hypostasis associated with divine wisdom.

# Christianity. In Saint John’s Gospel, especially in the prologue (1:1-14), the creative word of God, which is itself God and incarnate in Jesus. Also called Word.

Creative power and a medium of communication? The Word? It is here that the evolution of human language into codified written form begins to enter our mythologies and religions themselves. It is no surprise that some of the earliest human documents were religious. But was the written word doing service to religion, or was religion doing service to the written word? If we are to take the meaning as The Word, or Gospel, in a very strange secular kind of way it seems the latter is true.

So we have a deep mythological heritage as writers. Part of that mythological heritage involves the glorification of writing itself, the craft.

Every story needs a mythology of some kind. Every story needs an ‘order of the universe’, and maybe a little divine wisdom. Here the metaphor between God and the writer gets a little fuzzy. I’ll leave that one up to you. But I do have one question.

Got logos?

log·ic
n.

1.The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.

a.A system of reasoning: Aristotle’s logic.
b.A mode of reasoning: By that logic, we should sell the company tomorrow.
c.The formal, guiding principles of a discipline, school, or science.

2.Valid reasoning: Your paper lacks the logic to prove your thesis.

3.The relationship between elements and between an element and the whole in a set of objects, individuals, principles, or events: There’s a certain logic to the motion of rush-hour traffic.

Writers need logic, even if just for characters because they are a “relationship between elements and between an element and the whole in a set of objects.” Definition number three probably best suits the writer though the others are equally valid. Writers need to use logic not just between the relationships of characters, but also the events or plot of a story.

There is also the formal philosophy of logic known as epistemology. Epistemology features many ideas, concepts and tools for identifying logical truths or trying to separate fact from fiction. One of these concepts, or an umbrella concept, is the Criterion of Truth. The best explanation I’ve found comes from a little known book called Ideas of Great Philosophers which has been a source of great interest for me in the last few years. That summary of the Criterion of Truth goes like this:

“One important area of logic is concerned with tests of truth – the criteria used to distinguish truth from error. A criterion of truth is a standard, or rule, by which to judge the accuracy of statements and opinions; thus, it is a standard of verification. To obtain a clear, correct view of any philosophy, one must understand its criteria of truth. This is particularly the case because of the many conflicting ideas to be found in different philosophies. The laws of logic cannot of themselves disclose facts about the world of man or nature. In order to discover such facts, or to evaluate the content of an argument, the individual must decide upon the criteria which can enable him to distinguish what is true from what is not true.

Not all criteria have equal validity or value; while some are adequate, others are of questionable worth. The criteria dealt with in the present discussion have been chosen, not necessarily because they may be widely regarded as most useful or adequate but rather because they have become most familiar to, and are in common use among, the general public and academic or scholarly circles.”

The list of Criterion goes:

Custom
Tradition
Time
Feelings
Instinct
Hunch
Intuition
Revelation
Majority Rule
Consensus Gentium
Naive Realism
Correspondence
Authority
The Pragmatic Criterion of Truth
Loose (or mere) Consistency
Rigorous Consistency
Coherence

The definition of each of this is not particularly important. You can look them up on your own or check out the book for yourself. The important nugget to be gained as a writer from this is that none of the criterion are valid alone. For example, Time is not a valid indicator of truth when a person says “Only time will tell.” What valid proof will time deliver? If you know nothing about subject A, and make no effort to learn anything about A, will the passage of time make any difference? Time alone will not solve any given problem. Another example is tradition. When in doubt, if you follow tradition will that solve your problems or illustrate the truth, or the best course of action? And which tradition? Feelings are not indicative of the truth. Feelings can mislead you or prompt you towards an incorrect course of action.

So all of these criterion may be useful as measurements of ‘correctness’ to varying degrees in different situations. But no single criterion is the lone tool for the individual, philosopher, or even the writer.

If there is one criterion that stands out, though, it is coherence. Ideas of Great Philosophers has this to say on coherence:

“As a criterion of truth, coherence refers to a systematic consistent explanation of all the facts of experience. To be coherent, a person must arrange all pertinent facts so that they will be in proper relationship to one another consistently and cohesively as parts of an integrated whole. Whatever facts are brought to light must be explained, must somehow be fitted into the system as a relevant or integral part. That explanation which most fulfills the requirements of coherence may be regarded as adequately verified.

Of all the criteria treated, coherence meets the demands of a standard of verification or test of truth most adequately. It includes reason, facts, system, integration, relationships, and consistency. Its obvious limitation lies not in the criterion of coherence, but in man’s limitations or his inability to obtain all the facts of experience. Only an omniscient mind possesses all the facts of experience; consequently, man must be content to deal with all facts at his disposal and at the present time, allowing that point to be regarded as proved true which is the most coherent under prevailing circumstances. That person, school of thought, or idea which is supported in a coherent manner by most of the facts must be accepted as verified.

One who objects to coherence as a criterion places himself in a delicate position logically, for he thus implies a preference for incoherence, which is absurd; furthermore, to attack coherence necessitates the use of a criterion that is either coherent and rational, or incoherent and irrational; to appeal to irrationality is absurd, thus obligating a person to accept coherence as his criterion of truth.
Finally, a moot question arises as to whether or not there could be several equally coherent systems, each containing all the facts of human experience.”

To be coherent and have all the facts of experience a person would have to be God, or a god. And an omniscient one at that. Striving for coherence is a worthwhile ideal in life but can never be fully attained. But for the writer it is a much different case. The fiction-writer is omniscient. They are The Creator of their universe. They define everything that exists and everything that happens. If there ever was a perfect opportunity for a person to practice coherence, writing is that perfect opportunity. But only if the writer focuses on it.

Do the character relationships seem natural and make sense?

Does the plot evolve, or have I hammered in arbitrary points and contrivances?

Does the plot even make sense? Would these things actually happen? Would people actually be the cause of them?

There are also fallacies of logic which are often found within arguments. The writer can either use these fallacies by allowing a character’s argument to rest upon them, or they can check any personal philosophy distributed through the fiction against known fallacies to make sure it is logically sound.

These are all important things for the writer to consider. Logic is one of the most important tools a writer can possess.