How Stories About Future Possible Worlds Are Different

Let us begin by defining what we mean by "Possible Worlds" as this term can be very misleading in its most general interpretation. Certainly, any world that can, potentially, exist in reality or in one's imagination, is a Possible World. But, that is not very helpful as it would be difficult to conceive of an Impossible World. In fact, it one were to conceive of an Impossible World it would have to exist, at least, in their imagination. According to this general definition that would make it a Possible World. Hence, this path circles back into itself and we need to put some boundaries on it.

A story exploring a Possible World will focus on possibilities brought on by social policy, emerging technology or even current trends with possible consequences. The story is a vehicle for examining and evaluating outcomes. The protagonist is of secondary importance as the protagonist, if there is one, is there for his or her epistemological value in examining the possible outcomes. And the theme has to do with the ethical question being examined. Other major elements of the story such as the characters, plot or setting are chosen for their epistemological value as well. We could even say they are chosen for their probative value, although we are not trying to establish facts, merely possibilities.

In some ways, stories written to explore Possible Worlds are no different than stories written for any other purpose. Yet, in other ways, they may be very different. First, any technique, approach, or genre used to write a traditional story can be used to write a story exploring a Possible World. So, if you are already comfortable writing a particular kind of story, you can use that approach for a Possible World as well. But, the overlap does not end there. In Wired for Story, Lisa Cron points out "Story is what enabled us to imagine what might happen in the future." So, every story is about the future. In an earlier post I quoted Aristotle who said “it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, -- what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.” (I provided it here so you wouldn't have to flip back.) So, a story, in general, is not only about the future but it is about a future that may never even come about. What is the difference?

The phenomenon under exploration is the impact of a social policy, technology or current trend. There may be other motivations for a story to explore a Possible World, so I will offer those as examples. What happens to the protagonist and those close to him or her is far less important that what happens to large groups of people whom we do not know personally. Hence, changes in the character arc of the protagonist are far less important than resulting arc of social and political changes. While a writer may extrapolate the impact on a protagonist based on his or her own experience, the impact on a possible world may not be (in fact probably won't be) anything the writer has experienced. Hence, it requires more imagination.

Writing stories to explore possible worlds presents a unique writing challenge. Writers may not be familiar with possibilities inherent in changes brought about by social policy or technology, while planners or engineers who might be able to envision possibilities may not have the writing skills to express them effectively.  A catch phrase you often see in books on how to write is "write what you know". This is a problem because nobody knows the future. So, it must all be done in your imagination. But isn't every story a product of the writer's imagination? Yes, but it is informed imagination. And Possible Worlds are based on informed imagination as well. If you know what has happened in the past, and you know what is happening in the present, then extrapolating possibilities that might occur in the future is a reasonable next step.

Writing a story to explore a possible world might sound like a daunting task. After all, just writing a story is a major challenge. Writing a story that somebody might read is yet a bigger challenge. And when you add the requirement that your story focus on a Possible World that may or may not lay in the future, it sounds like and impossible task. But, it turns out that writing a story to explore a Possible World can be much easier.

If you pick up a recent book on writing (or read one of the many series on writing) you will, almost certainly, encounter a concept called character arc. Character arc is the inner transformation of a character over the course of a story usually as the result of facing a conflict or crisis of some kind. Readers enjoy stories with a character arc because they identify with the protagonist and vicariously experience the forces that led to the change along with the accompanying emotions. They often wonder what they would have done in similar circumstances and may get some insight into their own character as a result. But, while character arc is an important element of many popular stories it is not a necessary element of every story. 

For example, in mystery stories, the most important element is the mystery and most hard-boiled detectives do not change a great deal over the course of the story.  Sherlock Holmes didn't change much. Neither did Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer or Spencer. Still there are many wonderful stories involving these characters and readers like their consistency. Similarly, in series using the same detective, or the same central character, the protagonist may change slightly over the course of the series. But, readers don't read individual volumes to see how the protagonist changes. They read the individual volumes to see what the protagonist is doing this time.

Similarly, in expository novels such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the point of the novel is to reveal circumstances of which the reader may not be aware rather than to reveal inner struggles and the resulting changes in the protagonist.  This is much closer to a story exploring a Possible World which is also expository although it is exposing a possibility rather than a reality.

If you feel you need a character arc, you can try a simple one such as the loss of innocence character arc where the protagonist goes from a state of naivete to state of mature realization.  Here the protagonist starts out unsophisticated about the technology or emerging social pattern, but realizes its potential (good or bad) by the end. The protagonist is converted. They may even be converted to a different assessment of the phenomenon being explored. That is, they started out with a negative assessment and were converted to a positive one or vice versa. If you have written stories before, and are comfortable with more sophisticated character arcs, you are certainly welcome to make the arc as sophisticated as you choose. However, the goal of a story which explores a Possible World is to shed light on the impact and/or outcome of the Possible World, not on the psychological growth of the protagonist.

The recent work on the science of storytelling, some of which was discussed in earlier posts in this blog, points to the fact that readers like stories that resonate emotionally. And, certainly, a good way to invoke the readers emotions is by having them identify with the protagonist. But, it is not the only way. In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, it would be difficult for readers to not feel an emotional connection with the protagonist. However, it would also be difficult for the reader not to have an emotional reaction to the processes in the meat packing houses of the day where anything from rats to rat poison might end up in the sausage. In fact, it was the repulsion that readers felt in response to the meat packing processes that led to Federal Food Safety laws rather than sympathy for the protagonist.

Another way in which stories written to explore Possible Worlds may differ from more traditional stories is that several stories may be written to explore a Possible World from different perspectives. This is largely unprecedented in current fiction. Imagine if the view of the future presented in George Orwell's 1984 was challenged by Bob's Version of 1984 where everybody finds happiness in the new age of technology or Aaron's Version of 1984 where the new age of technology, even with its drawbacks, allows humanity to thwart a threat of some kind which would not have been possible without the technology. Maybe Sarah's Version of 1984 might see the technology being used to group or pair people with similar outlooks to reduce social conflict. Ah, but sadly, we never saw Bob's, Aaron's or Sarah's version because once 1984 was written, it because the only perspective we are exposed to.

So, to get to the point here, there are four main ways in with stories written to explore possible worlds are different: 1) they don't require character arcs; 2) multiple stories can be written offering alternative views of possible futures; 3) writing a story to explore a Possible world requires more in depth understanding of current circumstances and their implications; and 4) writing a story to explore a Possible World requires more imagination than writing a more traditional story that explores the human condition with which most of us are already familiar.

Wired for Story

In the last post, I introduced Lisa Cron's book "Wired for Story" as an exemplar of the third wave in the evolution of thinking about writing stories. I called this the Grounded Technique Phase because it not only takes a very structured approach to writing but it grounds that approach in recent developments in cognitive neuroscience. This is both good and concerning. It is good because writers will be able to design and construct more compelling stories. If you think of stories as the humanities equivalent of experiments (perhaps thought experiments) we can learn a lot more about ourselves by writing stories and, perhaps, follow on stories. (I am tip toeing into Possible Worlds here, but will tip toe back so as not to digress further.) 

It is concerning because writers who know more about how stories impact people will have a major advantage over readers (think propaganda and advertising). The food industry in the end of the last century learned a lot about what makes food taste good and that is why we have potato chips claiming, rightly so, that you cannot eat just one. What if stories were that compelling and that addicting? Would brainwashing replace obesity as one of our leading (mental) health problems? Just thinking out loud.

Earlier in this blog, I mentioned Will Storr's book "The Science of Storytelling" as an example of this emerging approach to writing. But Storr's book did not come out until 2020, eight years after Cron's book came out. Was Cron's book the first in the third wave? I really don't know, but I suspect it was.

Regardless, it is a well written, informative book and an exemplar for the Grounded Technique Phase. So, I am using Cron's book as a marker for this significant turn. What, exactly, is this significant turn? In simple terms, it is the integration of reader psychology (cognitive neuroscience) with storytelling techniques. You don't create a sympathetic protagonist because we think readers like a sympathetic protagonist. You create a sympathetic protagonist because the reader wants to feel what the protagonist is feeling in response to the events that are occurring in the story, specifically those events that affect the protagonist in a current area of vulnerability. It is all about the reader's emotional experience reading the story and the reader's ability and desire to identify emotionally with the protagonist. Nobody wants to read a story in which the protagonist is just fine.

At the risk of being simplistic, I would summarize the Grounded Technique in the following way. 1) You need a protagonist who is in a moment of crisis because there is something that matters to the protagonist which is not the way the protagonist believes it should be. 2) The reader must care enough about the protagonist to emotionally bond with him or her and feel what the protagonist feels as he or she seeks resolution to the crisis. 3) The writer must reveal important information about changes in the protagonist's condition on a timely basis so as to maintain the interest of the reader.

Sounds pretty simple. (Perhaps because I have over simplified it). But, how do you do this? Well that is what the book (Wired for Story) is about. Some of this is what some writers already know. Some is counter to traditional views. Some is clarified tradition views. And some involves mistakes that beginning writers make and could avoid if they knew more about what they are doing. I have avoided getting into any detail regarding the cognitive neuroscience which grounds this advice as the book does an admirable job of explaining this as it goes along. And, if you are interested, which you should be if you wish to write popular fiction, then you read this book at some point.

So, on the positive side, I would strongly recommend this book to any aspiring writer of fiction. It not only spells out what you need to do, but why and how as well. Most of the techniques you might, eventually, figure out for yourself. But, that would take some time and study. And, figuring out the "why" would be even more challenging. This is a problem because without understanding the why, one cannot easily vary from the script (that is the 'how to write' script, not the script you are writing), which means that the end products will look a lot alike. For a lot of writers this is OK. After all, if you can sell a few TV scripts and get a book on some best seller list now and then, why complain?

 Here is the problem. You often hear advocates of the Refined or Grounded Techniques Phases making a distinction between "literary" and "popular" fiction. They will say things like "The difference between literary and popular fiction is that popular fiction sells and literary fiction doesn't". They might pull up examples of literary fiction such as James Joyce's Ulysses or William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury" as evidence that there is no joy as well as no profit in literary fiction. OK, OK, I get it. But, I feel inclined, if not obligated, to defend literary fiction even though I am no fan of either of the works just mentioned.

I would make a distinction between three types of fiction: popular fiction, quality fiction and experimental fiction. Although there is some overlap, each has a very different purpose and must be judged by different standards. The purpose of popular fiction is entertainment. The reader wants to enjoy the story. It is possible that a work of popular fiction provides more than entertainment, but if it fails to provide entertainment, it fails as a work of popular fiction. The purpose of quality fiction is to hold up a mirror to the human condition so that we can better understand it. The reader is looking for growth and enrichment. If the reader enjoys the story as well, then so much the better. But, if the story fails to provide any enrichment, then it has failed as quality fiction. Some might argue that a piece of work must provide quality writing in order to be quality fiction and I would agree. But, if a work delivers great insight into the human condition through simple prose, it does not lose the designation of quality. On the other hand, if a piece attempts to provide insight into the human condition by barbarically abusing the language, I would respectfully submit that it has fallen short of quality fiction. Finally, the purpose of experimental fiction is to push the boundaries of what we consider as legitimate fiction. There are plenty of examples of this within the academic realm. There purpose is to expand our understanding of fiction as opposed to our understanding of the human condition. At one point, stream of consciousness pushed the boundaries.  At another point film and graphic novels joined the challenge. It is unfair to restrict experimental fiction to fiction which is difficult to read, although it may very well be. It is the quality of providing insight into our understanding of fiction that makes it experimental. Personally, I would say that the books by Joyce and Faulkner mentioned above were failed experiments. But, that is just my opinion.

The three types of fiction mentioned in the previous paragraph still don't cover the full range. For example, children's stories, folk tales, zen stories and so on don't really fit into the trinity just provided. The good thing about an approach like the Grounded Technique approach is that it structures the work of writing for the aspiring writer  and reduces the complexity of fiction to a manageable level. 

I have heard advocates of the technical school attempt to prove that this technique is more general than it really is. Examples are presented, usually from quality fiction, that arguably fit the technical mode as though this gives the technical approach credibility. This is not necessary. It can easily stretch to other kinds of fiction and can be intentionally ignored in cases where it does not apply. After all, if we did adhere to the strict use of the Grounded Technical approach, we would have to give up children's stories, folk tales, and the majority of quality and experimental fiction.

I have gone on a bit here as I both herald the Grounded Technique approach and stress its limitations. My reason for this is that stories written to explore possible worlds may not easily fit the Grounded Technique paradigm. (They may, as well, but that is a different argument). The purpose of a story written to explore a possible world is different from the purposes of Popular Fiction, Quality Fiction or Experimental fiction. Why is that? We will take that up in the next post.

Three Waves of "How to Write a Story" Pedigogy

 I just finished a delightful book on fiction writing by Lisa Cron entitled Wired For Story. It was written in 2012. I purchased it in 2016, and didn't start reading it until just recently in August of 2021. This is not unusual for me. I often buy books because I am pretty sure that I will want to read them at some point. Later on I read them. I actually do this more often than one might imagine.

Another oddity that I have is that I sometimes will get a book and the audio version so I can listen to the book while following the text in print. I do this because my listening comprehension far exceeds my reading comprehension. But, you cannot easily highlight parts of an audio book for later reference. I do not do this very often. But for some books, and for reasons I do not understand, this really works well.

I found Cron's book enormously useful for giving me greater insight into writing and how to write fiction more effectively. So, I thought would write a blog post about it and explain why. Although this seems like a digression from my posts on Possible Worlds, it is actually very much on topic and I will elaborate on this post in the book. It also ties in with my earlier post on why people write stories.

But, as it turns out, this post will become a digression from a digression. Your have to expect this with blogs where you cannot rewrite and restructure the material before anyone sees it as you can with books. Cron's book made me think about the evolution of books on how to write, which is the first digression. But thinking is always good. So, I am not complaining. And a deeper dive into Cron's book will be the second digression. I will address this in my next post so I can have enough room to do some justice to both digressions.

Over the several decades that I have been interested in writing, I have been reading a lot of books about writing and have been drawing some conclusions that may or may not be shared by others who are familiar with the literature on writing. This may be due to the fact that my interest in writing was spurred by the Possible Worlds idea and how it may be useful in the ethics of technology. This idea goes back to the mid 1990's. I am fairly sure that other prospective writers are interested in, and motivated by, other things.

Personally, I would divide the books on writing into three categories reflecting their evolution over time: 1) The Heuristic Phase: prior to 2005 books on writing tended to be self report books by writers attempting to explain how they do what they do; 2) The Refined Technique Phase: after 2005 when a book by Blake Snyder entitled Save the Cat changed the way we view the writing process; and 3) The Grounded Technique Phase: after 2012 when a book by Lisa Cron entitled Wired for Story (the topic of the next post) provided greater insight into reader psychology which, in turn, provided a foundation and some corrections for traditional views of writing. 

About a year ago, I posted a piece on the Expressive/Inspirational School of writing versus the Technical/Teleological School of writing. Books written before 2005 were, generally, in one of these two camps. Some of the books written in this period blurred this distinction. But most of the books written prior to 2005 were self report books in which writers tried to use their experiences to help others who were aspiring to be writers. I read quite a few of these books over the years, and while I really liked several of them, I did not find them very helpful. Why was this?

There is an overused saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't teach." Having been an academic for nearly 30 years, I can certainly attest to that. However, from the same experience, I can also attest to the claim "Those who can do. But, they probably can' teach it." Doing something, whatever it may be, and teaching others how to do it are very different bodies of knowledge. So, books on writing written by writers are often interesting but lacking in pedagogical value. Having said that, here are some books on writing that represent the evolution

The Heuristic Phase

I'm not sure who wrote the first book on writing fiction. But Clayton Hamilton A Manual of the Art of Fiction, first published in 1919 as a textbook, embodies the essence of the first phase of writing books with heuristic advice on writing fiction. It addresses the basic components: plot, characters, setting, point of view and so on. One has to start somewhere and the overly technical books of the second and third phase might be too technical for a beginning writer.  

Another early book on the craft is E.M. Forster Aspects of the Novel. You often see a reference to it in later books where Forster distinguishes between a story and a plot. According to Forster, "The King died and then the queen died" is a story. "The King died and then the Queen died because of grief" is a plot. The idea here is that a plot is a narrative argument expressing causality. To me, the most interesting thing about this is that it reveals how naive our understand of stories (or plots) was 50 or 60 years ago compared to where we are today.

Two books that I particularly liked that don't really fit into this trajectory are Stephen King On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft) and Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Both of these books address the writer's experience which I believe to be significant because writing is not just technique. There is a lot of the writer that goes into it as well for better or for worse. 

A couple of opposing views on the Expressive vs. Technical approaches to writing can be found in Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones and John Gardner Art of Fiction. I referred to these books in an earlier post. The second and third phases I refer to above suggest that the Technical School has won. I am a great fan of the Technical School but I would strongly warn readers against thinking that the competition is over. Here is an analogy. Science has made enormous strikes in the last couple of centuries. However, there are significant problems that science cannot address. In the same way, the Technical School of writing has made some amazing advances in the last couple of decades. But, eventually we will see its limitations, as we always do.

The Refined Technique Phase

During the Heuristic Phase writers and teachers of writing began to make writing heuristics more specific. As these suggestions evolved from suggestions to rules, a widely accepted body of such rules began to form and find its way into workshops, seminars, books and classes on writing.  In 2005 Blake Snyder refined these evolving heuristics for screenwriters in a book entitled Save the Cat. Snyder observed that the people who buy screen plays are looking for "the same thing ... only different." The idea here is that movie viewers do not want to spend a lot of viewing time trying to figure out what is going on. They want to recognize what 'kind' of movie they are watching so they can just go for the ride. Snyder identified 10 genres (kinds) of movies and 15 beats (plot points). This provides a structure for a screenplay so the writer can focus on writing instead of structuring and those who buy scripts as well as viewers can figure out what the story is about more easily. Over the next decade Snyder's ideas began working their way into the workshops, seminars, books and classes on writing that had previously been promoting the less specific heuristics from the early phase. I would point out, as someone who has developed and taught dozens of classes, having a well structured and widely used textbook makes the instructor's job a LOT easier and makes learning the body of knowledge much easier for students. There are also drawbacks of having a standard text, but that would result in a third digression. So, I will leave off there.

The Grounded Technique Phase

The Refined Technique phase was certainly an advance in the teaching and the practice of writing. It went beyond some vague suggestions about what you were trying to do, to some pretty specific advice. Prior to this point, writing was left to the inspired Illuminati. You had to be, to some extent, a born writer. With the highly structured and detailed approach spelled out by Snyder, the profession of writing screenplays was opened up to a much larger group. So this was a big step. However, although this was a big advance, there were two areas that were not really covered. The first and most significant was the teleological aspect. While Snyder's approach told writers what to do in a highly structured and detailed manner, it did not tell you why (other than saying this is what viewers and people who purchase screenplays like). And, second, it did not did not provide any limitations on the approach. Would Don Quixote have been a better novel if it followed Save the Cat. How about War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov? OK, OK, maybe James Joyce's Ulysses or William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury could have used more structuring.

In 2012 Lisa Cron's book Wired for Story came out and connected the process of writing with the psychology of readers by grounding it in some recent advances in neuroscience. This was another huge step. But, I have already gone on too long. So, I will pick up that thread in the next post.

Why Explore Possible Worlds

In his book Poetics, Aristotle said “it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen, -- what is possible according to the law of probability or necessity.” It bears mentioning that in Ancient Greece, poetry included drama and stories. So, for our purposes we can substitute the word writer for poet with the understanding that we are talking about writers of fiction. This gets a little tricky as Aristotle distinguished between poets and writers who wrote about history. Our modern-day sensibilities might see this as a distinction between fiction and non-fiction. But histories back then were not necessarily non-fiction as the events that occurred might well have been embellished or spun in favor of the winners (who would have written them) or to emphasize values such as bravery in warfare. 

But what we want to emphasize here is that stories contain what is possible given our understanding of probability and necessity. Or, more simply put, stories must be believable given our understanding of human behavior and the human condition. Given this, one could claim, without overstatement, that all stories explore possible worlds. So, how is that any different from what the book I am currently writing on Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds is about?

The answer can be found in an apocryphal quote from Marshall McLuhan which says, with some literary liberty, that looking to the past to understand the future is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. I have to take the literary liberty because there is some dispute over the exact wording and whether or not he actually said it. But, even if I made it up, it is a wonderful insight.

Think about it for a moment. Looking to the past to understand the future is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. Is it even possible to drive by looking in the rear-view mirror? Well, if the road ahead is very straight, and you are driving very slowly, and there are no obstacles in the road, then you might get away with it. However, if the road begins to curve or you begin to speed up, or unexpected obstacles appear, then looking in the rear-view mirror might not work anymore. In fact, it will, at some point, become extremely dangerous to do this. And, yet, for most of history, we have looked to the past to understand the future.

That was OK as long as the future was a lot like the past (a straight road) and things didn’t change very quickly (driving slowly) and we did not encounter anything unexpected (obstacles). However, we know that the pace, magnitude and unpredictability of change have grown increasingly for the past century or so, with more and more unexpected phenomena appearing out of nowhere. So, maybe we need to start looking out the front window of the car rather than the rear-view mirror. Maybe we need to look to the future in order to understand the future rather than looking to the past. But, in order to look to the future, we need to use our imaginations. Our imaginations are our headlights into the future. I already addressed this briefly in my book Predicting the Future and will get back to the imagination at some point in a future post. But to address the topic is this post, we need to ask why the rate of change is speeding up, if it is likely to continue, and if the rate of change is likely to increase.

There are three reasons that I see which are behind the increasing magnitude of change. I should point out that there are numerous opinions on this, and many people might come up with different answers. However, I see three main causes. So, I will address them. First are uniquely human characteristics. Second is increased population. And, third, is the amplifying effect of technology. Technology includes things like language, logical reasoning and science as well as more obvious examples such as computers, communications technology, and biotechnology. However, technological amplification can be seen in nearly every aspect of human life from food, to buildings, to weapons and so on. These affect the future in varying degrees as well.

How does being human cause the future to change more rapidly? Most living things on earth evolve slowly at the rate of biological evolution. Humans evolve socially and culturally as well, which occurs much more rapidly. And we evolve cognitively through new ideas which is even faster yet. In addition, non-human species evolve with changes in their environment or circumstances. Humans are constantly on the move changing their environment and circumstances. Crocodiles haven’t evolved much in he last 100 million years. Modern humans evolved about 200,000 years ago, developed language about 50,000 years ago and built the first cities around 10,000 years ago. So, we are on a roll.

How do population and social conditions cause the future to change more rapidly? It appears that cultural evolution and cognitive evolution are the fastest ways in which humans evolve. Both require ideas. The more people there are (and the better educated they are) the more ideas there are. So, growing populations (especially educated populations) increase the rate of conceptual evolution. And changes in our conceptual reality causes the future to be increasingly more different from the past.

How does technology cause the future to change more rapidly? Technology has always increased the rate of change for humans. Technologies include the discovery of fire, invention of the wheel, development of metallurgy, advances in science, development of information technology and so on. One could also include advances in food production, improved medicine, the railroads and so on. You could also include cognitive technologies such as language, logic and scientific method. But, one would have to keep adding things all day if you didn't stop somewhere. Technology amplifies the rate of change allowing us to communicate better, think faster, grow more food which affects population, and exert greater control over the environment.

So, as the future changes at an increasingly more rapid rate, the net result is that it comes at us faster and faster. And in order to deal with the onslaught of change, we need to get a lot better at figuring out what is coming our way and what we need to do about it. One way to do that is to use our imaginations and write stories about possible futures.

Why We Write Stories

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that people also write for a wide variety of reasons. And trying to explain these reasons presents the same difficulties we encountered in the previous post. There are many kinds of stories and people write them for a wide variety of reasons. Further, any given writer may write any given story for any number of different reasons. Some of the reasons why people write match up with reasons for reading. For example, a writer may write a travel log to learn more about a distant place and the reader may read it for the same reason. Generally, however, the writers’ reasons and the readers reasons do not coincide. Of course, some writers will write to market which means they are writing something because the think it will sell, or they think it is what readers want. However, in this case the writer is writing for the money, recognition or reputation while the reader is reading for quite different reasons. In general, the reasons why any given writer writes a given story won’t correspond to the reader’s reasons for reading it.

The first reason that we saw for why readers read was for enjoyment and entertainment. This is true for writers in extremely limited circumstances. When the muse is speaking and the words are flowing, the writing experience can be sublime. The writer is the scribe furiously typing away as the characters speak or the plot unfolds. This moment of engaged epiphany is so glorious that the writer is willing so suffer any number of agonies from unpaid bills to unrealistic deadlines, to writer’s block, to plot snags that seem impossible to resolve, to characters that won’t behave the way you want them to, just to get to the next rare occurrence of the sublime glory. When the writer is in this mode the world feels like a benevolent place and everything makes sense. Sadly, these experiences can be few and far between and there are other reasons why writers write.

Even if the writer is not experiencing one of those moments of otherworldly bliss, writing can be enjoyable. Writing can help you organize your thoughts. If you are one of those people whose mind is filled with random thoughts, you can pick one and write about it. The process will help you organize your thinking. People often write daily journals for this purpose. For several years, I wrote daily essays where I would begin with a topic sentence or question and no idea where it might go. By the end of the essay, I would have figured something out. If you have ever cleaned out a messy closet and experienced that feeling of satisfaction, you already know what it is like to write something to organize your thoughts.

But there are other enjoyable aspects of writing. Some writers enjoy the mental exercise of working out a plot; the psychological exercise of describing characters; the artistic expression of describing a scene, or the conceptual exercise of constructing narrative arguments to explain human behavior. Some enjoy the anticipation of writing something that somebody else would like to read. But, not everybody who writes wants people to read what they write. For example, people who write diaries would prefer to keep them personal. Marcus Aurelius, when on his deathbed, ordered that his Meditations be burned. Fortunately, they did not carry out his wishes.

Some people see writing as an enjoyable lifestyle. You can work alone to a large extent. This is particularly appealing to introverts or people with limited social skills. Some see writing as having the potential to be very profitable. After all, if your books sell, you continue to receive a stream of income long after the work is done. If they sell very well, you may be set for life. What other job would allow you to avoid annoying people and keep paying you long after you did the work? It’s a sweet deal!

Some people write to learn. In fact, William Zinsser, author of the classic instruction book for writing nonfiction On Writing Well also wrote Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All. Many writers do that. It is one thing to read about something you want to learn about. But that is full of pitfalls. For example, understanding a page of text as you read it can lead you to think you know the material better than you do. However, trying to explain it to someone will quickly reveal how little you actually do understand. Demonstrating your mastery by explaining the material in writing will further reveal the depth of your illusion as anyone who has taken an essay exam can attest to.

Perhaps you want to share some knowledge you have with other people. It is one thing to corner people in the snack room and try to explain something to them. It is something else entirely to commit your thoughts to writing and share what you have written. They can read it at their leisure, perhaps re-reading and taking notes and asking questions. What you have written will, almost certainly, be more coherent than your random thoughts over the coffee machine. And you can provide your wisdom to others who are not easily accessible geographically or temporally. This is the basis of scientific research publication but is also useful in sharing wisdom on experiences or political views. On that last point, it is far easier to organize, express and share your ideas in writing than it is in the middle of a heated argument.

Picking up on the geographic point, the initial reason the World Wide Web was created was so that scientists could more easily share their papers. And, picking up on the temporal point, writing allows us to share our acquired knowledge with future generations. The importance of this point cannot be overstated. Animals, other that humans, cannot create and store knowledge for future generations. The most they can learn is what they can learn in a short period in which the parents pass on what they know. For human offspring that learning period may go on for years, decades or even a lifetime due to that body of knowledge we have committed to writing. So, it is fair to say that some writers will write in order to communicate and share knowledge across generations.

Here are a few more reason with may fall within those already covered, but bear bringing to the foreground. Some people wish to record their memories or pass their experiences on to others. A lot of historical insights have been gained by reading personal correspondences between people who were alive at the time. Today's blogs serve a similar role as personal correspondences since they provide information for the historical record. Journalism may be the first draft of history. But, blogs, diaries, email and personal correspondences are notes which precede the first draft. And finally, people write, consciously or subconsciously, to pass on values to readers in the present or the future.

I doubt very seriously that I have covered the full range of reasons why the scriveners of the world put their pens to paper. If further ideas pop into your head as you read this, you are helping me make my point that people write for a wide variety of reasons. And, in keeping with the topic of the book for which I am writing this, I would suggest that writing is currently underused for exploring possible worlds but will hopeful address that challenge more aggressively in the future.