Fiction As Magic

Mare Kuntz · 2006-05-04T17:07:45

(This is intended to be part of the introduction to my how-to-write book. This is a pretty messy first draft so I would appreciate comments on what parts are confusing, underexplained, disagreeable, etc. Thanks! [smile]) 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. Symbolism (aka semiotics) is one of the fundamental bases of human cognition; one of the key instincts which makes us different from the animals. Certain other animals instinctively recognize a few symbols (bees) or can be trained to recognize symbols (dogs, dolphins, parrots, primates) but humans are the only animal which is instinctively inclined to generate new symbols and assign meanings to them. Assigning symbols, such as names, to particular objects or actions is somewhat useful, but symbols become truly useful when a creature can also understand abstract classes and assign a symbol to the whole class. A dog, for example, can learn to recognize a few names of toys, people, food, and activities, but you can't tell a dog to bring you the smaller of two balls. In addition to abstraction, true communication also requires the ability to combine two symbols. Any toddler can understand “put the toy in the box” and “put the toy on your head”. This is why parrots can't truly speak – they are perfectly capable of saying the words, they are perfectly capable of recognizing a single word or phrase and responding to it, they can even understand abstract properties like shape and color, but they can't grammatically combine symbols to form sentences. 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. 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.) 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. 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. 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.

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by sunandshadow April 26, 2006 06:21 PM

39 comments, last by Zenphobia 18 years, 4 months ago

Zenphobia

142

May 04, 2006 05:07 PM

Quote: You know, it's not really wise to harass a mod so persistently. If I were her, I'd have suspended you a while ago.

I was not harassing her. I was addressing her responses to my posts which were in response to her asking for an opinion on her writing. Never once did I insult her character or make excess, unwarranted posts aimed at her. Each of my subsequent posts responded to her subsequent replies.

If she doesn't want me to say anything more, that's fine. All she has to do is say so.

Side Note: I've found that there is no point in dancing around an issue for fear of offending or hurting someone, when writing is concerned. I'm direct because that gets right to the problem and thus right to solving it. I was merely trying to think how a reader would think when reading her work, and I raised my concerns.

Fiction As Magic

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Fiction As Magic

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