Re: Film Noir Simulation (Kyle's message)

["Laura J. Mixon-Gould" <ljm@digitalnoir.com>]

An excellent discussion!  I can't tell you how fascinating it is for me, as
a fiction writer, to read the discussions and ponderings of computer game
designers analyzing story, seeking a deeper understanding in order to create
a new form.  I think you guys are really onto some important issues.

Let me jump in with a few of my own observations.


on 2/14/01 8:28 AM, WFreitag@aol.com at WFreitag@aol.com wrote:

> I'm not sure that losing some of the messy richness of the real world is a
> bad thing. I think this is a quality of almost all narrative; indeed, perhaps
> of all craft. "Simplification:" it takes fewer bits of data to codify the
> movements of the dancers in a ballet than to codify the movements of the
> shoppers in a supermarket; fewer bits to codify the notes of a symphony than
> the sounds of a city street. In literature high and low, the snow always
> melts promptly on the first day of spring. Would adding a more realistic
> weather model be an improvement?


This is exactly right.  One of prose's primary tools is to subtract out the
"noise" elements of life, and to exaggerate and distort the "signal"
aspects, to reveal underlying patterns that get lost in our day-to-day
lives.  (Also to provide some emotional and intellectual distance from the
issues in play, so that the reader can more easily discern patterns not
obvious from closer up.)  That's what we writers mean when we say that
stories are a bunch of lies strung together to reveal a deeper truth.

Short stories simplify much more so than novels, but both use these
simplifying and distorting (and distracting -- but that's a separate
discussion) techniques.

Here is an excellent article on how plot works, by Damon Knight, a grand
master of SF:

www.efn.org/~dknight/


 
>> It seems that there is something not so straightforward about the
>> ingredients of a lifelike story experience.  As in real life, things are
>> seldom what they appear to be.  People know themselves to be something
>> other
>> than what they show to the world, for a multitude of reasons, not simply
>> cosmetic ones.  If they know each other well, this sort of illusion does
>> not
>> really fool them, and yet covertly, they continually strive to confound
>> one
>> another's expectations.  They are not simply expressing irony; they
>> sometimes seem almost paradox-driven.  "I am more than I can possibly show
>> you, but I can at least surprise you with glimpses."
> 
> This would appear to tie into, in ways I can't yet define, some thoughts I've
> had recently concerning the nature of metaphor. Specifically, why is a
> metaphor presented in great detail, such as over the course of a novel, more
> evocative than a brief and vague one? One might think that a vague metaphor
> would express broad ideas by allowing the reader's mind to use its
> associative powers to the fullest, while a metaphor with all the details
> already filled in could express only a narrow specific idea. Yet if anything,
> the opposite appears to be true. It's as though the more detail we receive,
> the more those details seem to be only glimpses of an even larger truth. The
> same could certainly be true of characters: the more we know about them, the
> more about them appears to be hidden, and the larger the totality, seen and
> unseen, of the character becomes.
> 
> But is "real-world messiness" a good source of such detail? It certainly is
> for real-world people. But I wonder if fictional characters are similarly
> deepened by real-world messiness, or whether the detail that broadens them
> must come from narrative artifice, as it does for metaphor.


There is so much that is important here that I hesitate to snip anything
away.  Walt, you are exactly right about the importance of metaphor.
Metaphor is the atom of fiction.  It's at the foundation -- and it's also at
the larger stages.  Like a mandelbrot equation.  Story is extremely
holographic.  I believe that it is in this way that story somehow reflects
the memory and thought structures of the human brain, and that this is one
reason humans are so story-hungry.  Kirk, I agree with you that paradox is
linked to our need for story -- I just came across a great quote by Niels
Bohr:  "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

I think fiction seeks to "solve" these conundrums of life for the reader,
not through elimination but through illumination.  By revealing larger,
common underlying patterns between them that enable us to hold the paradoxes
inside us without fear of mental or ego-annihilation (which is why these
conflicting beliefs and values create anxiety in us, imo.)


>>> ...but I'm skeptical on whether uncovering
>>> relationships without some sort of overriding goal would generate
>>> sufficient interest. What do others think about this question?
>> 
>> I have given some thought to questions that are very much along the same
>> lines as this one.  I have long been inclined to think of a story or drama
>> as having at least something in common with a legal argument, or even a
>> mathematical proof.  The author's task is to present a compelling sequence
>> of actions, one that leads to a particular conclusion.  But what compels
>> the
>> audience to accept that conclusion?  I suppose it is due largely to the
>> author's skill in showing how these actions emerge naturally (if not
>> inevitably) from the motivations that have been ascribed to the characters.
>> 


I believe some kind of obvious problem the user has to solve is essential.
That problem needs to tie into all the other elements of the story (ideally,
though of course there is often slop or loose ends there), and the problem
and its solution can't be obvious until the resolution is reached.  (The
user is allowed to _think_ the problem and/or solution is obvious, however.)

A story creates a conflict either within the protagonist (between
conflicting loyalties, motives, or goals) and/or between individuals, that
defy easy solution, and then takes the reader or user through a series of
events that bring these conflicts into high relief.  Ultimately the aim is
to bring the story to a conclusion that reveals deeper meaning about those
motives and events.

With story, the reader/user is seeking that "aha!" feeling that happens when
all the pieces fall into place, and they perceive a larger pattern about
human nature or the meaning of life that they didn't see before (Damon
Knight talks about this in that URL I referred you to above):  some
universal characteristic that we all share.  Relationships between the
characters are a very important part of the equation, but by no means all of
it.  Each character's personal values and goals are also a big aspect, as
well as the society and physical environment they are in.

About the process of story creation -- one of the most important things you
the creator must have to succeed at any form of story is a close and careful
collaboration in your own mind between your analytical brain and your
creative, non-verbal brain, a collaboration in which you know just when to
turn the reins over to the analytical/critical side, and when to release the
controls and let the creative side take over.  It's an extremely difficult
feat and takes years of practice, and it appears to be true regardless of
medium.  I am certain that this will also turn out to be true in interactive
storytelling.


>> I could be overstating it somewhat, but real people seem to have a rather
>> perverse habit of subverting any attempt to pin them down as objective
>> entities in a factual world.  Why do people object to being objectified?
>> Perhaps because each of us is, in our heart of hearts, an ideal entity
>> in an
>> "imaginary" world.  It is a rather interesting paradox in itself, that
>> what
>> is most directly experienced as real is what we mostly agree to regard
>> as
>> imaginary and the stuff of fantasy; meanwhile, what we loosely refer to
>> as
>> the "real world" is by and large a construction that could never be directly
>> experienced by anyone as actual.


This is a fascinating point, Kirk!  I'll have to give it some further
thought.

But I think there's more to it than that -- or that I would come at it from
another angle.  I would argue that we resist being objectified because when
others do it to us, it's a form of death:  an object has no life, no
intrinsic right to exist--no real value, other than to be used by the
subject.  We recognize that the person objectifying us is denying our very
self.  Our humanity.

We are social animals.  If our fellow humans deny our human reality, they
are leaving us out of the weave of existence in a fundamental way.  How can
you have a relationship with an object?  You can't.  We anthropomorphize
everything -- we seek to give things, events, existence, human meaning.
Objectification is the reverse.  It leads to annihilation of meaning.


>> So my sense of this problem is that if we are hoping to tell a lifelike
>> story, or to enable others to take part in telling or acting out anything
>> lifelike, we cannot approach excellence without a strong sense of that
>> paradoxical nature at the heart of what truly grabs us.  I agree that it
>> would also be a mistake to do without goals.  At some point maybe it will
>> become more clear how these distinct approaches could be integrated.


I agree completely.  Goals are needed.  Something needs to drive the
experience.  Some problem must be introduced that needs solving, some goal
that needs to be accomplished.  The true storymaking will happen on other
levels, but the story must have a backbone.

Plot provides traction in narrative -- it's what keeps you turning the
pages.  The other stuff provides the hints and flavorings that the user
doesn't necessarily pay close attention to, but absorbs on an unconscious
level, and at the end it is these harmonics that suddenly provide the "aha!"
when blended with the "melody" of the story resolution.

If you want to use a musical analogy: the plot is the melody, and the
storybuilder's goal is to _also_ create the harmonics needed to take the
experience from a simple and obvious "this happened and then this happened
and then this happened, and then I won!" to an experience, in which the
underlying human meaning can be revealed by the ending.

I picture the builder of an interactive story creating various "resonance
states" -- potential important turning points for the user that are natural
intermediate (and end) points based on choices they've made earlier -- that
allow the user to assemble the kind of experience he or she wants -- within
the "natural" constraints the storybuilder imposes in order to provide true
(albeit simplified and metaphorical) human meaning to the storyworld
experience.

Does this make sense?



-l.
-- 
Laura J. Mixon      *  ljm@digitalnoir.com      *  www.digitalnoir.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 _Proxies_:  A Tor Books SF paperback Nov 1999  *   ISBN 0-812-52387-3
 "At Tide's Turning:" terraforming run amok     *   Asimov's SF- 4/2001
 _Burning the Ice_:   on a Jovian moon, hi-tech mystery, betrayal & intrigue
                      A Tor Books hardback 2001 *   watch for the webpage!