Religion is a subset of magic. What's the matter with aka? It's just an abbreviation, abbreviations are pretty normal. I probably abuse parentheses but that's my natural writing style, something to clean up during editing; this hasn't been edited at all yet.

Structuralist literary theory is very closely related to structuralist anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and linguistics. It would be impossible to talk about the function of fiction in a reader's mind and in a society without talking about all of these.

Another paragraph of intro, directly following the first chunk:


Fiction also fulfills for its writers and readers many of the same psychological purposes as magic ritual. Inside the story world the writer is god – they can right injustices and solve problems that are infuriatingly or depressingly intractable in the real world. The writer can also attempt to change society with persuasive power of their stories. Within the fictional world the writer and reader can both temporarily have their wishes and real-life lacks fulfilled, be reassured that they are strong and wise and good and the heroes of their lives, explore philosophical dilemmas, experiment safely with different identities and relationships, and rehearse for difficulties which may occur in the future. Fiction is designed to manipulate people's minds – consider the fact that any work of fiction which did not affect a reader's emotions and convey ideas to them would be a total failure as fiction. So fiction is thus a powerful tool for adjusting one's own psychology, another person's psychology, or even a whole society's psychology. Just like a magic ritual.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Sympathy, the idea that two objects may be connected even if they are far apart, is also fundamental to human cognition, particularly tool use. For most animals, if they can't see, hear, or smell something, it might as well not exist (this is why many pets get anxious when their owners go to work, even though their owner has come back safely many times before, and also why most pets will not try to open containers to get objects out of them.) Human infants on the other hand are fascinated by objects that hide and reappear, and go in and out of containers. Toddlers can be told to retrieve an object, and will go into a different room, get the object, and bring it back. More importantly humans can recognize the potential of an object – for example, that a rock is fundamentally similar to an arrowhead, and could be transformed into one.

You're introducing a lot of concepts really fast, isn't an introduction supposed to prepare a reader for the material to come and give them an idea of what to expect? Also, the period goes outside of the parenthesis (which is again being abused, but whatever). You keep talking about animals and their relationship to humans, and you keep ignoring primates. Anthropologists have debated whether or not Chimpanzees have culture because of the amount of learned behavior and tool usage (potential of a rock and twig anyone?) that is involved in their survival.

Quote: So what about magic? The proper function of the human brain is observe the world and extract theories about causality from these observations. A good theory would be realizing that if it's summer and you are hungry, try looking at the apple tree to see if you can eat some apples. On the other hand, a magical belief such as the idea that making a cave painting of an antelope stuck with a spear will improve one's luck at hunting, or praying to a god will cause that god to make events turn out in your favor, is a bad theory. Human thought is a complex system, and complex systems can be complete or consistent but not both. The human brain naturally generates both good and bad theories because it is a complete system rather than a consistent system – it can theorize about any possible causality, but sometimes comes to incorrect conclusions. (If human thought was instead consistent but incomplete we would be more like Vulcans, perfectly logical but unable to make intuitive leaps.)

This magic business again... I'm going to assume you don't mean theory in the scientific sense and let it slide (though the rest of your book is sort of dealing with a science, so I would say "hypothesis") and the inclusion of "you" in formal writing really bugs me, but it's your style I guess. Now, some of your bias has apparently slipped through and at the same time you're confusing religion with magic- you saying that praying is a "bad theory" when many people strongly believe and feel that prayer works. Bringing religious belief into a book on writing is just outright distracting. The hanging parenthesis at the end, ick.

Quote: Okay, fine, magic is a mistaken theory of causality; a common error resulting from otherwise very useful fundamental human thought processes. Which has what to do with fiction, exactly? Well, we call this magical causality 'teleology'. Teleology is the belief that things exist or happen to fulfill a purpose, and this purpose can either be some sort of destiny or the desire (will) of a human or supernatural being. Destiny in turn can also be defined as the desire (will) of a god or the universe. So to simplify, teleology is the belief that things happen because someone wants them to happen. Now, from a strictly scientific point of view this is total nonsense – things do not happen because someone wants them to, they happen because of the laws of physics. But! Humans don't live in just the physical, mechanical universe, we also live in a social universe composed of other humans and animals. And other humans and animals can have desires and be motivated by those desires to cause things to happen. So in the social realm teleology makes sense – a fire is started, a mountain is climbed, a person is killed, because someone wanted that result to happen.

You start this paragraph out telling the reader that you will finally relate all of the ideas presented thus far back to fiction (with a rhetorical question no less, but you already know how I feel about that), and you don't fulfill that promise. The hanging "But!" is really strange, I can honestly say I've never seen that. I can also honestly say I have no idea how all of this much argued philosophy (the idea of wanting something to happen making it happen, I suggest you pick up Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson) fits into writing fiction and I am growing tired of being left out, as a reader that is.

Quote: Teleology is one of the essential organizing principles of fiction. Perhaps you've heard the rule of thumb, “If a gun is going to be fired in Act 3, it should be hanging on the wall in Act 1.” Aristotle's principle of unity in fiction is the idea that a work of fiction should use as few locations and characters, and as little time, to tell the story as possible. No flab, no extraneous junk allowed; everything in the story must contribute to the teleological purpose of getting to the climax and thereby conveying the moral of the story.

I definitely trust Aristotle, perhaps you should have brought him in sooner? The quote is nice, but what good is a quote if you're not going to attribute it to anyone?

Quote: Stories are also clearly made out of symbols: settings, characters, every action or speech made by a character is a symbol. Combining these symbols according to the grammar of plot creates a teleological act of communication – in other words, a spell. Every work of fiction is an act of magic.

You just told us that magic didn't really exist and that science is a better way to go about solving problems. Now, you're telling us that fiction is magic.

--Off the initial post---

Quote: Religion is a subset of magic. What's the matter with aka? It's just an abbreviation, abbreviations are pretty normal. I probably abuse parentheses but that's my natural writing style, something to clean up during editing; this hasn't been edited at all yet.

You have it backwards, magic exists within religion. Writing aka, to me, is a sign of laziness and sinking to abused slang discredits your skill as a writer. If you're going to be telling me how to write, I better not find any faults with yours.

I'm a bit offended that you didn't bother editting this before pasting here. If you haven't even bothered to go over it and make changes that a Word check would have picked up on, why should we do your work for you? If you want us to give you an honest opinion and analysis of your introduction, shouldn't it be your best effort thus far?

Quote: Structuralist literary theory is very closely related to structuralist anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and linguistics. It would be impossible to talk about the function of fiction in a reader's mind and in a society without talking about all of these.

If you're going to be addressing these subjects, as I reader I expect you to be an expert. Based on my experiences with anthropology and evolutionary biology, thus far you don't strike me as an expert. Also, in taking the scientific route, I expect sources for your facts (which not only demonstrates you know what you're talking about it also adds to your credibility).

Hope this helps.

*sigh* I did spellcheck it before posting it. I'm not using Word, so there is no auto grammar checking. I wanted feedback on this as the contents of my introduction, which I am getting, and am grateful to get, but since I may rewrite the whole thing particular grammatical issues are fairly irrelevant. Please note that I said in the first post that I was posting a messy first draft. I would however like to comment that the "But!" all by itself is gramatically legal, it's called an "ejaculation" which is probably why no one ever talks about them in English class any more. It's chatty, but I'm going for a friendly casual style rather than a formal one. I guess that same statement applies to the "aka" and the "you" as well (although the parentheses are probably still excessive).

I intend to do thorough fact-checking before submitting this for publication, but I wanted to pound out a rough draft first to see what I had to say and what order I wanted to say it in. Fact-checking takes a lot of time so it makes sense to save it until I have a complete list of all the facts in my manuscript I need to research. Then, any area I need to talk about I will _become_ an expert in or consult experts on so I can make sure I get it right in the final draft.

As for you trusting Aristotle and asking what good a quote is without an attribution, I personally do not judge anything based on who said or wrote it, I judge every statement on its own merit. I'm not really interested in talking about people, I just want to reference these ideas that exist in the current body of writing theory so I can show how they fit together with my own ideas, help the reader build all the little things into a coherent whole. But I realize that a lot of people are hung up about what 'the experts' have to say, and name-dropping is a sales point, so that will probably be another thing I fix up in the second draft.

The religion and magic thing, I'm sorry, but religion truly is a subset of magic. A religion is an organized system of magical beliefs involving the creation of the world, the afterlife, what rituals humans can do to affect the unseen forces and the future, and usually one or more gods. Praying IS magic and that's a point I specifically wanted to make, not a distraction. Maybe I need to explain that more? Anyway, while I don't believe that magic 'works', I do believe that it has important sociological functions, and that fiction functions in exactly the same way: writing a romance will not make love come into one's life any more than painting a slain bison make good hunting come into one's life, yet both acts have value in people's minds such as making them mentally prepared for romance or the hunt.

Robert Anton Wilson - I hope that's a joke. I've looked at his writings before, and he was a druggie crackpot. That 8-circuit model of consciousness is transcendentalist hippie bullshit. Sorry, I tried to think of a more polite way to say that but really couldn't. I have no respect for transcendentalist thought of any kind.

Okay I re-wrote the first half of this based on everyone's feedback. [smile] I removed the animal psychology (which also killed most of the parentheses), got rid of the aka, tried to explain the magic better, tried to be more consistent in my casual useage of pronouns, and added a footnote about religion. Still see any problems?


So, what is fiction anyway? Well, at its root, fiction is a form of magic. “What?!” you may be asking, “I thought this book was supposed to be a logical orderly analysis, not some mystical mumbo jumbo!” Yes, it is a logical orderly analysis. Anthropological analysis of human beings in all cultures and all times reveals that we seem to have this odd instinctive belief that magic ought to exist (regardless of any evidence that it actually does or not). We even seem to instinctively agree on the principles by which magic ought to operate: symbolism and sympathy.

Humans in all times and places have come up with the idea of sympathetic magic – the idea that a drawing of a prey animal, a doll made to resemble an enemy, or a lock of someone's hair, can be attacked to injure the animal or person represented by the symbol. The sun can be encouraged with torches and candles, human copulation can encourage the fertility of the fields, making two men bleed and mixing the blood together can make them brothers. Logically you may know that none of this magic actually 'works'. Yet, when we dream and our conscious minds aren't getting in the way, it becomes obvious that the instinctive language of the human mind is symbolism. Everyone 'just knows' that an egg can represent a baby, being naked can represent feeling emotionally vulnerable, spreading your arms like airplane wings can make you fly despite all laws of physics. Symbolism is thus one of the fundamental bases of human cognition, including such forms of thought as language and stories.

Language and stories are both ways of organizing symbols in a grammatical structure to communicate a meaning. This grammatical structure is also instinctive – specifically it is referred to as the human language instinct in the case of sentences, and the narrative instinct in the case of stories. Linguistic studies have demonstrated that all human languages can be represented with a fairly simple set of grammatical equations; this book will describe the principles of story structure and generation in a similar fashion.

Sympathy, the idea that two objects may be causally connected even if they are far apart, is also fundamental to human cognition, particularly tool use. Humans can recognize that a rock and an arrowhead are similar in all properties except shape, and thus deduce the potential that one could be transformed into the other. We can understand that if I create a message here, it can be sent (whether by carrier pigeon, telegraph, or internet) there. We can understand that if we plant seeds in spring, we can get food in summer. We can even anticipate that if someone has a tool (whether it's our neighbor holding a shovel or a hero given a magic ring) they are probably going to use that tool in the near future.

Ah yes, magic again. Why are we spending so much time talking about magic if it doesn't actually 'work'? A major function of the human brain is observe the world and extract theories about causality from these observations. A sound theory would be realizing that if it's summer and you are hungry, try looking at the apple tree to see if you can eat some apples. On the other hand, a magical belief such as the idea that making a cave painting of an antelope stuck with a spear will improve one's luck at hunting, or praying to a god* will cause that god to make events turn out in your favor, is a faulty theory of causality.

[Footnote: The religious people in the audience may complain here. Religious belief is not a subject of this book except that, anthropologically, it is considered a subset of magical belief, and philosophically it is a transcendental belief, and transcendentalism is fundamentally incompatible with structuralism, because structuralism assumes that the world has meaning because the human mind imposes that meaning on it, and thus the world consists of only what the human mind can sense to give meaning to. That doesn't mean you can't use this theory if you happen to be religious, it just means this theory doesn't and can't contain any transcendental ideas. I have nothing to say about any mystical value or function of fiction, only its psychological, sociological, and anthropological values and functions.]

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
*sigh* I did spellcheck it before posting it. I'm not using Word, so there is no auto grammar checking. I wanted feedback on this as the contents of my introduction, which I am getting, and am grateful to get, but since I may rewrite the whole thing particular grammatical issues are fairly irrelevant.

Grammar and style issues directly affect the presentation of your content. When all you've offered is a draft, rather than your research, it is difficult to address only the content because all you've given us is your translation of the information.

Quote: I intend to do thorough fact-checking before submitting this for publication, but I wanted to pound out a rough draft first to see what I had to say and what order I wanted to say it in. Fact-checking takes a lot of time so it makes sense to save it until I have a complete list of all the facts in my manuscript I need to research. Then, any area I need to talk about I will _become_ an expert in or consult experts on so I can make sure I get it right in the final draft.

I was under the impression that research came before writing, rather than trying to force your research to fit your writing.

Quote: As for you trusting Aristotle and asking what good a quote is without an attribution, I personally do not judge anything based on who said or wrote it, I judge every statement on its own merit. I'm not really interested in talking about people, I just want to reference these ideas that exist in the current body of writing theory so I can show how they fit together with my own ideas, help the reader build all the little things into a coherent whole. But I realize that a lot of people are hung up about what 'the experts' have to say, and name-dropping is a sales point, so that will probably be another thing I fix up in the second draft.

If you're book depends on such a vast number of fields I would expect some sign that you actually know the big names from those fields. And how you personally judge statements is probably irrelevant at this point. Your writing should be dictated by the way your audience will interpret and analyze the information that you present.

Quote: The religion and magic thing, I'm sorry, but religion truly is a subset of magic. A religion is an organized system of magical beliefs involving the creation of the world, the afterlife, what rituals humans can do to affect the unseen forces and the future, and usually one or more gods.

Magic exists within religion, therefore magic is a subset of religion, not the other way around. If I am wrong, please cite a source.

Quote: Robert Anton Wilson - I hope that's a joke. I've looked at his writings before, and he was a druggie crackpot. That 8-circuit model of consciousness is transcendentalist hippie bullshit. Sorry, I tried to think of a more polite way to say that but really couldn't. I have no respect for transcendentalist thought of any kind.

I mentioned his name as an author who can defend his ideas with research and an author who succeeds in using a conversational style while remainining professional. If you don't like him, that's fine. But the difference between him and you is about 14-16 successful books.

There are different types of non-fiction writing. Some of them are strongly based on research, while others are an explanation of a personal theory. Since my goal is to explain my own theory of the structure and function of fiction, I can't look that up in a library somewhere because it doesn't exist yet, it's only inside my own mind, and I have to feel may way through it because it's difficult to articulate a complex new theory. The research and quotations in the book serve a secondary, supportive function to the original theory, and thus I won't know what specific research I need to support the original theory until I'm done writing. I've already done piles of general research, otherwise I wouldn't understand the topic enough to have an idea for a book about it, much less already have written most of the book in the form of various essays. This method of researching between first and second draft is standard for books written to express a person's philosophical ideas or craft techniques gathered from experience.


Source for religion being a subset of magic, arrgh, was that Durkheim or Fraser? I believe it's in Durkheim's _The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_ but I don't have a shelf copy of that and it's not on project Gutenberg. Wikipedia has an article on Durkheim which mentions the title of the book, but doesn't mention magic at all. If not there, than Fraser's _The Golden Bough_. But whereever it was, the argument went like this:

1) Magic is "The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural." - American Heritage Dictionary

2) Religion is "A personal or institutionalized system grounded in belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe." - American Heritage Dictionary

3) An act of magic may occur as part of religious ritual, or independent of any religion.

4) While not all religions have rituals, most do. All ritual is inherently magical.

5) Therefore a religion is a specific system of magical belief and (usually) ritual.

FWIW, The Golden Bough does not consider either of Religion or Magic to be a subset of the other. Both are considered, but as parallel concepts.

Ah must be the Durkheim then, thanks. [smile]

(I thought you said you didn't want to read my intro?)

Quote: There are different types of non-fiction writing. Some of them are strongly based on research, while others are an explanation of a personal theory. Since my goal is to explain my own theory of the structure and function of fiction, I can't look that up in a library somewhere because it doesn't exist yet, it's only inside my own mind, and I have to feel may way through it because it's difficult to articulate a complex new theory.

You said earlier that your theory was based on your experience reading how-to books and similar analyitical texts on fiction. Surely your theory is based on evidence and ideas already explored by other writers instead of being created without any influence from prominent figures in the field.

Quality persuasive papers, essays, and books, are rooted in research and consequently in sources. Since you lack successful novels to prove that your theory and method is solid and correct, you should at least provide reliable evidence to show that you have a basis for your belief.

Quote: This method of researching between first and second draft is standard for books written to express a person's philosophical ideas or craft techniques gathered from experience.

You're contradicting yourself, I thought Structuralist fiction was based on:

Quote: Structuralist literary theory is very closely related to structuralist anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, and linguistics.

Those topics don't sound very philosophical to me and on what experiences are you basing your crafting techniques?