My next writing project, which I mentioned in last month's post, is - Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds. I decided this in late March 2021 and started getting underway in early April 2021. I currently am at the "Organizing My Thoughts" stage. While I am not one of those writers who outlines their work in detail, I do like to have a general idea of the structure and content of a piece of work before I dive into it in earnest. So, at this stage, the project is on the back burner, as they say. I will think about various ideas, approaches, content and perhaps cover art. I don't have a checklist and I tend to work on whatever I feel like working on. But, I do have some ideas which I thought I would share as the project shapes up.
First, I need to make an argument explaining why writing stories to explore possible worlds is a legitimate and important role for stories. I will do this by examining two questions: Why do we read stories and Why do we write stories. These will be the topics of my next two blog posts and eventually will be early chapters in the book. Obviously, I intended to add "To Explore Possible Worlds" to both sets of reasons. That will create a willing suspension of disbelief which will, in turn, allow readers to buy into the basic idea behind the book. People with highly developed imaginations will immediately see the possibilities. Those with slightly less imagination will need a little encouragement and coaxing.
Along the way, I will have to clarify the term "possible world". One could argue that every story, even the most bizarre fantasy stories are about possible worlds. But, I have to explain that I am focusing on a more specific kind of possible world that might better be called possible futures. So, why don't I just use the term "possible futures" ? There are two reasons for this. First, it does not help clarify. As I explained in my book Predicting the Future, one of the biggest barriers to predicting the future is the vagueness of the term - future. The second problem is that my focus is not only on predicting the future, but in helping us make better moral decisions about things that affect our future. So, I am interested in stories that help us make better predictions about the future as well as stories that help us make better moral decisions. Actually, moral decisions are usually about the future. But, as the future we are talking about is further out and the difference between that future and today is greater, the consequences of today's decisions become of greater moral significance and more difficult to anticipate.
One could argue that we already have stories that predict the future (H. G. Wells Time Machine for example) and stories that focus on moral outcomes (George Orwell's 1984). I can't dispute that and could easily make the lists of examples much longer. However, I would dispute that we have enough stories like those as we face increasingly more change in the future and the challenges brought on by those changes. I would also point out that writing stories to explore possible worlds is not the same as just writing stories. And understanding the differences will make it easier for more people to chime into the debates about the future. This will also be expanded upon in upcoming posts and further expanded in the book when it comes out.
For this project, I have many, many books on writing which I have read or plan to read. I will map their general suggestions into more specific ideas for the topic at hand. For example, generic advice about plots, characters and dialog needs to be made more specific to explore possible worlds. A more specific example can be found in the character arc. Usually, although not always, main characters confront a challenge or conflict in the story and how they respond to that conflict will determine how the character at the end of the story differs from that same character at the beginning of the story. This rule does not always apply. In most detective stories, the detective does not undergo a transformation over the course of the story. In fact, it is often the consistency of the detective's character which draws readers to these stories. In stories written to explore possible worlds, the character of the protagonist is more like the detective than it is like the hero or heroine in a great work of literature.
I also have a collection of notes from a class I taught some years go on Writing Stories to Explore the Ethics of Technology. The topic of this book is a broadening of that idea. So, the notes will come in handy. This is not to discount the work involved in reading, rewriting, rereading and reworking existing material. But, it still makes it easier than starting with whole cloth.
(Made from Whole Cloth is a very interesting expression and I am very tempted to go off on a tangent. But, I will spare the reader. Wool gathering is another relevant textile metaphor which is also relevant to the early stages of a project. I will spare you that digression as well. Sorry, but this is how my mind works. No wonder nobody will have coffee with me.)
Since I have a lot of open time while my thoughts about this book are coming together I am filling it with other projects related to my writing. For example, I have been learning skills related to cover art to make my book covers more attractive. So far, they are attractive but a bit bland and I am learning things that will help me to improve their appearance. I am also learning to draw, which is a HUGE challenge, as I want to draw illustrations for a series that I have planned for the future. That may prove to be a bit too ambitious. I also created a YouTube Channel called "retiredprofessor" where I can post content from my books in order to promote them. So far, all I have is 17 minute narrated PowerPoint which explains what I plan to add over the next year. If you would like to have a look, you can find it at:
But, to get back on track, a really cool idea occurred to me regarding this project and my blog. (I started to explain this idea but drifted away.) I thought I would post ideas in progress from the book on the blog. Some examples of this can be found in earlier paragraphs of this post which provide teasers for upcoming posts. These upcoming posts, in turn, will provide teasers for chapters in the book. This serves two purposes. (I always like ideas that have multiple purposes. It is hardly worthwhile to have an idea that is only good for one thing.) First, writing helps me organize my thinking. So, writing blog posts containing ideas that I am working on for the book will help me clarify them for the book. Second, people often think that ideas and even books spring from the author's head in final form as Venus sprang fully formed from the head of Jupiter. I am pretty sure that this did not happen to Venus and I am confident that it never happens in writing. This is something aspiring writers should know.
I will try this out with my next two posts which will be entitled Why We Read and Why We Write. If that works, I will follow up with the other two posts mentioned above. If that also seems to work out OK, I will continue sporadically with more ideas from the upcoming book. I hope to have this book finished by the end of the year which is six or seven months away. If this idea turns out to be a dud then only two of those months will be taken up. If the idea works out great it may be four, five, or even more. We'll see.
This post is a bit disjointed which is exactly how I feel as I begin this new project.
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