Category Archives: Writing
Yesterday I was re-watching Arachnids in the UK, the fourth episode of the latest season of Doctor Who, and a somewhat goofy idea popped into my head about how to respond to the charge that sometimes stories are just ‘too improbable’ to enjoy — or to have happened at all.
That certainly is an accusation that seems to apply in many cases. In order for some story to have happened at all, certain events had to happen just so and in the right order. It’s easy to shake your head and think, “Yeah, right. As if that could actually ever happen.”
For many years I’ve had a generic response to that accusation, but yesterday I realized it can be justified mathematically!
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5 Comments | tags: Doctor Who, Hilbert Hotel, infinity, story plots, storytelling | posted in Writing
At one point in HBO’s Westworld (don’t worry, no spoilers) Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) gives a speech about stories, about the value of fiction. He references a belief that fiction elevates — or at least illuminates to good value — the human condition. The belief also holds that those who read a lot of fiction are in some sense “better” people.
The idea is controversial on several grounds. Firstly, it’s hard to define what makes people “better,” and you can’t measure or test what you can’t define. Secondly, even if “better” is defined, not everyone will agree with the definition. Thirdly, there’s a nature-nurture aspect that makes comparisons like this very hard to tease out of any data you can gather.
Maybe a place to start exploring the idea is to first define “fiction” and go from there…
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8 Comments | tags: facts, false, Fiction, lies, storytelling, theory of mind, true, truth, wisdom | posted in Books, Movies, TV, Writing
There are some notes that laid on the top of my possible next posts pile for a long time. Like the notes I posted recently, these clearly migrated from the same old boxes that I’m now excavating more seriously.
The ink is faded, and I can identify a fountain pen I used decades ago. I apparently thought they had potential. But as little statements on life — being from a younger me — they now seem trite and bumper sticker simplistic. Yet they’ve had just enough flavor to keep them out of the wastebasket.
I’m tired of looking at them. Here they are.
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1 Comment | tags: big world, Dunning-Kruger effect, gravel, idle thoughts, old notes, USENET | posted in Writing
A long time ago (nearly four years!) I wrote a post about my high school English teacher, Mrs. McGee (see The Love Connection) and a short story I’d written in her class. I complained in my post that she’d given me a low grade on the story because she objected to its conclusion.
Turns out my memory about the objection is correct, but she give me an ‘A’ on the paper anyway. (In fact, she compared the writing to Chekhov’s The Seagull … kinda sorta.)
I wanted to share it years ago, but didn’t know where it was. I found it just last week, and here it is:
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9 Comments | tags: English class, Phyllis McGee, science fiction | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, Writing
Nearly (but not quite) identical!
Yet another bit of flotsam washed ashore, this one from the mid-to-late 1980s I’m guessing. Another part of the same note has a file system diagram that, in part based on the “DOS” directory, confirms the era.
Back then I participated a lot in two online groups: Star Trek and Feminism. (Both were topics of avid interest to me!) This note seems to address a topic that sometimes arose as party line in the latter group, but which I thought missed the point.
It’s about examining versus ignoring differences…
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4 Comments | tags: differences, female, gender, male, race | posted in Writing
Another note that surfaced, this one actually dated: 1/17/79. Apparently, for some reason, I was moved to jot down a personal definition of innocence (as opposed to incense, which is defined by smell rather than words).
“Innocence: Trusting first rather than mistrusting. Thinking someone is right first rather than wrong.”
Sadly, tragically, life has a way of destroying that trust and changing that thinking.
On the note’s flip side…
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10 Comments | tags: define innocence, definitions, dominoes, innocence | posted in Writing
One retirement project of mine involves going through lots of boxes containing work stuff, hardware and software design stuff, and decades of writing stuff. It’s kind of amazing and weird how much stuff I’ve generated in well over 40 years of active stuff creation. Among all that stuff — the bulk of which turns out to be dead weight I can eject — are a few worth saving and recording here.
The writing stuff, especially, varies from short notes to, in a few cases, short stories or scripts written long ago. Here is a note that seems as relevant today as it was when I wrote it circa late 1980s.
It’s about violence…
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5 Comments | tags: force, means to an end, terrorism, violence, violence against cops, violence against race, violence against religion, violence against women, violent society | posted in Writing
Here’s something that caught my eye: Researchers at the University of Vermont, in the Computational Story Lab (!), did an interesting word content analysis on 1,700 stories downloaded from Gutenberg. Each story had been downloaded at least 150 times by readers.
The researchers used “sentiment analysis” that measures the positive or negative emotional impact of words. Using a sliding window, they attempted to characterize the “emotional arcs” of each story. Their goal was to see if there were common patterns.
Turns out, there are!
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26 Comments | tags: emotional arcs, printed word, seven plots, stories, story plots, storytelling, text, words | posted in Books, Writing
When I was a college film student, one of the first classes putting theory into practice divided the students into groups of three. The class goal was for each group to make three films. The group would rotate among themselves the key positions of Writer, Director, and Cinematographer. This allowed everyone a chance to experience those roles.
Our group produced one that was silly fun, one that was weird and off-the-cuff, and one that was interesting and affected people.
Sadly, I have only memories (so I might be making this up).
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16 Comments | tags: An Unconditional Value, college, student film | posted in Life, Movies, Writing
I don’t often crack up over internet gags, but when I do I crack up over ones like this:
As an added bonus, back in June (during their slump) I wrote a little blues tune for my Minnesota Twins…
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9 Comments | tags: Darth Vader, funny, funny images, humor, Minnesota Twins, puns, Twins 2015 | posted in From My Collection, Writing
Logos con carne 