Design Thinking vs Analytical Thinking

 I would like to start this post with a relevant digression and then return to story design.

Early in my career, I worked in software development. Writing software and writing stories have a lot in common, although it is beyond the scope of this post to explore that in any detail. I will, however, provide a few examples along the way. In fact, here is one. The hierarchical decomposition with step wise refinement that I discussed in the last post comes straight out of software design.

Nonetheless, in the world of software development you would start with a business problem, go through a process called analysis and design, and then turn it over to programmers to write the software. The people who did analysis and design were often called analysts and they often saw the results of their analysis as the input to the programmers. If you asked an analyst when they were doing analysis and when they were doing design, they would give you an odd look because, in their minds, the two were simultaneous. But sadly, they are not, and this was probably why the first few decades of software development were characterized by massive cost over runs and abundant user dissatisfaction.

Analysis and design are two distinct activities requiring different cognitive skills that may occasionally be found in one person although that is not common. Analysis is the process of decomposing an existing phenomenon in order to understand it better. Design is the process of constructing a solution to a given set of objectives. It is generally true that if a person is good at one kind of analysis, they will be good at another kind of analysis. And if they are good at one kind of design, they will be good at another kind of design. We can consider a few examples to establish the difference between analysis and design more concretely.

Let us begin with a simple personal problem that most people can relate to - your social life is not satisfying. What do you do? Well, you begin by determining what the underlying problem is. I am going to offer a few common reasons. Your life is just not interesting enough. You don't have ways to fill your free time. You don't have enough friends. You have friends but they are not satisfying enough. In the analysis phase of this, you would examine your life closely and try to determine which of these (or something else) is the problem. The first and most crucial step in solving a problem is figuring out what the problem actually is. 

Once you have identified the problem, you can take steps towards solving it. Consider how very different solutions to the problems listed above might be. Also consider how unlikely it would be to solve the problem if you were just trying different things. People often jump to solutions before understanding the problem which is a very hit or miss approach.  Now let us take a more complicated example.

In this next example, we will consider a business problem. Advertising costs are going up while sales are going down. We actually have two problems here that may or may not be related. How do we find out? Well, since we are trying to better understand an existing phenomenon, analysis of the situation is required. We need to determine why advertising costs are going up and why sales are going down. 

There are many reasons why advertising costs may be going up. Perhaps we are using the wrong advertising firm. Perhaps we are inefficient in reaching our target market. Similarly, there may be many reasons why sales are declining. Perhaps our products are out of date. Perhaps, we are appealing to the wrong market. Perhaps our products are too expensive or too poorly made. Perhaps it is a combination of the two. In order to find the answer, we must do some analysis of the current situation. 

Once we understand the current situation, we must come up with some solutions. Solutions don't exist in the world. We need to construct them according to some set of objectives. We may look for a new advertising firm. We may try a different advertising medium. We may more carefully target our prospective buyers. If everything looks good on the advertising side, we might decide to come up with ways to improve sales. We might need to update our products. We may need to change our pricing or ad some incentives. It may be that the problem is a combination of the two and the solution is going to be more complicated. 

Now let’s consider this process for a novel we are struggling with. In the case of sales and advertising there are fairly well understood places to look for problems. And the same is true for writing a story. Is there an overarching message or theme? Is it compelling? Is it clear? Are the characters interesting? Are they relatable? Is it set in the right kind of setting? Is the setting well presented? Does the plot move along at the proper pace and are things revealed to the reader to keep the reader interested?

In the advertising and sales example, we barely scratched the surface of what an expert in this area needs to know. And in the writing example, we similarly barely scratched the surface. If you are an experienced writer, you may want to make a list of things to consider. If you are less experienced, you might ask someone to read it and make suggestions. Or you may wish to read some books on writing that are written for new writers. They are full of things you need to consider. But remember, the purpose of the analysis phase is to understand the problem. The purpose of the design phase is to come up with a solution. So, let me emphasize this next point.

Don't jump to a design (solution) until you fully understand the problem.

Perhaps your protagonist is a bit flat. So, you decide to make him a wealthy playboy and get busy modifying your story accordingly. But then you decide the wealthy playboy doesn't work so you try making him a well-meaning public servant. Will this work? This is what happens when you try to solve the problem through trial and error instead of designing possible solutions and thinking them through. In the world of software, this is called prototyping and, as we shall see in the next post, it is the costliest way to find a solution. But, in understanding prototyping, we can understand something very important about writing stories. While prototyping is a costly way to proceed, sometimes it is the only way to fully understand the problem.

Story Objectives

The more time we spend on story design, the less time we need to spend on writing. If you have created a hierarchy as discussed in the last post where the elements of the story all contribute to the solution of the problem statement, we can take each element now and treat it as a sub-problem. This is the beauty of Teleological story design. You can create the design hierarchically with step wise refinement through step wise decomposition. The main problem of the story can be decomposed into the commonly used story elements of plot, character, setting and point of view. You can go beyond foundational story elements and add in less common story elements such a voice, tone or pace, conflict, resolution, or symbolism. You can use less traditional story elements such as Who, What, Where, When Why and How. We will refer to this first level of decomposition as story elements and revert back to the basic character, plot, setting and so on as needed for examples. 

For the next layer of decomposition when need to take each story element and decompose it into story objectives. But, in order to do that we need to discuss some different kinds of objectives. There can really be any number of kinds of objectives, but for the sake of simplicity we will focus on just three: component objectives, competing objectives and constraining objectives. 

Component objectives form a hierarchy of objectives and sub objectives which is an ends/means decomposition of one aspect of the problem.  In order to achieve objective A, we must achieve sub objectives B, C, and D. If B, C or D is not an achievable unit of work, then we may have to decompose further until we arrive at achievable units of work.

Competing objectives cannot be achieved simultaneously and thus must be evaluated in a trade-off analysis which determines the relative priority of each. If A and B are competing objectives, then we might decide something like 60% A and 40% B.

Constraining objectives place limitations on the possible solutions. The different between a constraint and a constraining objective is that a constraining objective is something you are trying to achieve, and it can be achieved in a variety of ways. However, too many constraining objectives may make the problem unsolvable.

As I said a few paragraphs earlier, there can be any number of kinds of objectives and this tripartite structure is merely to simplify the model to make it easier to get started. As you get more comfortable with it, you might very well invent various kinds of new objectives and see whether they facilitate your writing or just make it more difficult. Now, let us see these three kinds of objectives in some examples.

At some level in your decomposition, your sub-objectives should be solvable problems and doable pieces of work. If this is not possible, then you have probably not defined your objectives correctly. Here are some common mistakes that people make when defining objectives. 

As mentioned earlier, the use of objectives is nothing new but successfully using objectives is a challenge. One of the reasons for this is that there are some predictable mistakes that people make when trying to define objectives. Simply because a statement is a goal that someone wants to achieve does not make it a good objective. Following are some examples of statements that may sound like objectives to one who does not fully understand the concept but are not really objectives. Poorly defined objectives can even do more damage than not defining objectives at all. This is because poorly defined objectives can waste effort in pursuit of a goal that cannot be achieved.

A common mistake that people make when defining objectives is that they simply replace objectives with values. We can think of these as universal objectives. Universal objectives are objectives that are true regardless of circumstances. Consider the following statements: the objective of our company is to make a profit; my objective in writing this story is to get an A for the class; my objective in life is live life to its fullest. These are not well-formed objectives for two reasons. First is that they do not represent units of work and cannot reasonably be decomposed into units of work. Second, it would be difficult to imagine a circumstance in which the opposite objective would be appropriate. An objective should not only contain a statement of what is to be done. But it must also, by implication, suggest what is not important.

A second mistake is the unrealistic objective. Consider the statement – my objective is to change the way the world thinks about biotechnology. This is more specific than the universal objective in that it focuses on biotechnology. But it is unrealistic because one is unlikely to impact the entire world. Further, it is too vague as “changing the way people think” can mean a lot of different things. Some people may have thought biotechnology was a wonderful thing and then changed their minds to think it was a danger. Other people may have gone the other way. But both would have changed their thinking. Others yet may have thought biotechnology was interesting but changed their minds to think it was boring. These kinds of objectives may feel good but are of limited value in achieving goals.

Sometimes we forget about what we are trying to achieve and state a possible solution as an objective. This is a little more difficult to explain in stories so consider a different kind of example. Let’s say that your social life has begun to sag a bit. You notice that you spend way too much time watching TV and eating junk food. Your clothes no longer fit as well as they once did. So, you decide to go on the XYZ diet and state, as your objective, that you want to go on the XYZ diet for four months. We view the diet to be a solution to our problems here, but we have not really articulated the problem. Is the problem that you don’t have enough friends? Or enough interests? Are you bored or maybe boring? Are you antisocial or lazy? There can be any number of problems here and any number of things that we may want to achieve. But jumping to the diet solution is not the answer. It may well be that you stay on the diet as you planned but other than your clothes fitting a little better, you haven’t solved anything. 

What if your objectives look fine to you but they are not decomposed into doable units of work? The answer is easy. Start writing. You are no worse off that if you had not gone through the process of defining objectives and writing crude drafts and following with a lot of rewriting.  If you have at least a crude decomposition you have at least a crude model of the story and you don't have to discover the model of the story through rewrites. And any mistakes that you make will be of more limited scope. Further, any thought you put into the model of the story is thought you don't have to discover through mistakes.

Think of your hierarchical model as a pyramid. There is far less detail at the top and far more at the bottom. Mistakes discovered at the top are easy to fix. But as you discover mistakes further down the pyramid the cost of the mistakes grows exponentially. So, even if your objectives are not perfect, they are better than no objectives, assuming that you have not made one of the common mistakes addressed above. And the more you define objectives and use them in your writing the better you will get at it.

 

Story Design: A Teleological Approach

Books on writing will often refer to a common dichotomy which identifies writers as pantsers or plotters. A writer who simply starts out a story with no idea where it will go is referred to as a pantser, since they are writing by the seat of there pants. They may just start and wait for inspirations. They may create some characters and see what those characters do. They may start out with a situation and see how the situation evolves. Other writers will begin by sketching out a plot, or if they are more sophisticated, a narrative argument. They are referred to as plotters. They know how the story will end, although they may not know the exact fate of all the characters from the beginning. There is much to be said and much to be learned from the pantsers vs plotters dichotomy, though few, if any, books on writing, that I have seen, explore it in any depth. And, I would say, respectfully and with some reservation, that this dichotomy is somewhat naive. It is probably useful in writing workshops or academic classes in fiction writing as it allows prospective writers to orient themselves in the complex world of writing talents. But, it does not tell you what you need to do if you want to learn how to write, nor does it tell you what to do if you want to improve your writing. 

I would like to offer a Teleological approach to writing stories in which the story is designed. I need to define a couple of terms here in order to make this a little more clear. First, we understand things teleologically when we  understand them in terms of their purposes. For example, the purpose of your heart is to pump blood throughout your body. This explains why you have a heart. But, it does not explain how your heart achieves this. Second, design is the process by which we construct a solution to specific problem or to satisfy a specific purpose. So a teleological approach to writing stories would begin by defining the purpose of the story and then design a story that satisfies that purpose. I will go into design more deeply in the next post. But, this is enough to get us started with story design.

When we begin with story design, we begin by defining the purpose for which the story is being written. And, to keep things simple, we will assume that the purpose of the story involves some sort of impact upon the reader. That may seem obvious. But it is conceivable that a writer may write a story to satisfy a purpose of the writer. For example, one might write a story so that the writer can understand something a little better. Or the writer may write a story for some therapeutic purpose such as learning to see a parent as a person rather than a monster. Or the writer may want to write a story so that he or she can feel good about their self for having written a story. These are all legitimate purposes. But they are beyond the scope of what we are addressing here.The story design process would be very similar for other story purposes. But, it simplifies explaining it if we focus on the impact on the reader.

I am going to simplify the impact on the reader as well into two categories. Either the writer wishes to entertain the reader or the writer wants to provide the reader with an opportunity for personal growth. Here we are going to focus on the later. There is nothing wrong with entertaining the reader. In fact, the reader may not get to the end of a story that is not entertaining in some way. But, for the purposes of this post, we want to change the reader in some way. And that change, to narrow things down a bit more, will be in their comprehension of an ethical problem of some kind. Again, this same reasoning could apply to any number of reader impacts and the basic teleological structure would not change. But the details would and we need details if I am going to provide an example.  

Since I am currently focusing on Possible Worlds, let us consider an emerging technology which allows you to read the minds of other people and the question is whether or not there should be any restrictions on its use. I could provide some plausibility arguments here but, for the sake of space, I am just going to ask you to accept the premise. We have a spectrum that ranges from banning the technology completely to allowing its use without restrictions. Along that spectrum are any number of more nuanced positions such as only the government should be allowed to use it or only the government should be banned from using it. Perhaps it is a phone app and individuals can allow or disallow others to read their minds. If you have any creativity at all, you should be able to come up with plenty of additional options.

Next, let us assume that we have some concerns about this technology and we want to make others aware of those concerns. So, we decide to write a story to explore those concerns. What is our concern? Perhaps we feel that there are potential downsides to unrestricted use of the technology. What are those downsides and how can we explore them in a story? Perhaps we feel that there are potential upsides that skeptics need to be aware of. What are those upsides and how can we explore them in a story? Perhaps, we feel that it is a mixed bag and want to explore difficult trade offs in a story. These are basically the options for exploring this Possible World, although there are endless, more nuanced, possibilities.

Once we figure out the point of the story, we can ask some simple questions about it. Where might this story occur (setting)? What kind of people might encounter these upsides or downsides or both (characters)? How might the circumstances that reveal the main points come about (plot)? In the case of point of view, do you want the narrator to be more objective (omniscient) or personally involved (first person). You can sketch out the entire story in a hierarchical chart where the problem you are trying to solve is at the top of the chart and each of the elements in this paragraph are below it. Then we can ask - how do each of the sub-elements contribute to the solution of the problem? You can tinker with the chart elements until you have the story design you are looking for. Then all you need to do is write the story. I don't mean to minimize the work involved in writing. But the work of writing is reduced by working out the design to determine the structure rather than by having it emerge through rewrites.

Are Possible Worlds Fiction or Non Fiction

 I wrote a paper a couple of decades ago on different kinds of truth. I wrote the paper because most people see truth as statements about the material world that actually correspond to the real world. Philosophically, there are numerous theories of truth. The ones I am most familiar with are correspondence, coherence and pragmatic although there are others. You can Google Theories of Truth if you want to know more as I am not going to digress into that. I will say, for those interested, that I lean most heavily toward the pragmatic theory of truth.

Nonetheless, in the paper I just mentioned, I took a different direction on the ontology of truth. I pointed out that there are many kinds of truth including but not limited to: scientific truth, literary truth, and journalistic truth each of which has its own criteria for determining veracity. For example scientific method provides a means for establishing scientific truth. In order for a story to be true it must resonate with an individual's subjective experience of being human. So, this is the basis for literary truth. Journalistic truth has to do with checking sources and triangulating them. And so on. I also introduced another category of truth which I named (somewhat perversely) imaginary truth.  I will come back to that later in this post. But, I need lay out some background first.

 As I mentioned, most people see truth as statements about the material world that actually correspond to the real world. For example if I claim that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, that is a true statement. If I say that water freezes at 100 degrees centigrade, then that is a false statement. Most people think of this example as the gold standard for truth. So, let's pick apart the gold standard before moving on to the silver and bronze standards.

Water boils at 100 degrees centigrade given several conditions. The water must be free of impurities. The device for measuring the temperature must be accurate. And, it must be boiled at sea level at a specific barometric pressure of 1 atmosphere. If you add impurities, have an inaccurate measuring device, or are conducting the test on Pike's Peak, the statement that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade is no longer true. So, this is not an absolute truth, it is a contingent truth. That is, it depends on the situation. Before leaving this example, let me point out that anyone who is stupid enough to jump into a vat of boiling water believing that it may not be 100 degrees centigrade will quickly go from idiot to boiled idiot. Often went we say that something is true, we really mean that it is true enough for our purposes.

My point here is that determining what is true and what is not true is a little trickier than one might imagine even in simplest of cases. Now let's look at some less simple cases. The example above is a truth from the physical sciences. They have rules for verifying truth. For example, you need to know why its true. In the case of the water, the heat excites the molecules until they get so excited that they escape from the water in the form of steam. Statement must also be falsifiable. You cannot say that water "likes" the heat as there is no way to prove or, more importantly, to disprove a statement like that. Finally, independent parties must be able verify the claim. I should be able to boil water with a thermometer and verify that it does boil at 100 degrees Celsius. So, this is the gold standard for truth.

 Social sciences are a little different. The phenomenon under study does not have a physical presence. Instead concepts are created and studied. This complicates matters because you are not testing things; you are testing concepts you have constructed. While social sciences  does attempt to draw validation from physical sciences such as fallibility and repeatability, the most important questions are: are the concepts designed correctly and are they useful in helping us understand social phenomena? So this is the silver standard for truth.

Moving to other areas where truth maters (the bronze standard) we can ask - what is truth in journalism; what is historical truth; or what is literary truth? Each of these has criteria for truth that is largely defined by the profession and I already touched on literary and journalistic truth. But, we can push this a little and ask what is engineering truth; what is aesthetic truth; or what is moral truth? I am not going to attempt to answer these because my goal here is only to assert that there are different kinds of truth and each has its own criteria for determining the truth status of an assertion made in that area.

This brings us back to the kind of truth which I call imaginary truth. An imaginary truth is a truth about a possible future. While a scientific truth is an assertion about the the material world and a literary truth is a truth about the human experience, an imaginary truth is an assertion about the future or an alternative world. The criteria for establishing an imaginary truth is that the assertion must be possible or believable and it must provide some insight into the target of the assertion. 

Literary stories are held to the standard of literary truth while stories written to explore Possible Worlds are held to the standard of imaginary truth. The goal of these stories is not to explore aspects of the human condition as is the case for fiction. The goal is to explore possible consequences of current conditions projected into the future. And the source of the stories is not what has happened as is the case for non fiction. Rather the source is the imagination of the writer projecting possibilities into the future. So, it is neither fiction nor non fiction. It is a different kind of story that requires a new name, perhaps Imaginary Non Fiction. Yes, I like that. And it is a little perverse as well.

Deconstructing Fiction and Non Fiction

In my previous post, I asked the question whether you should write fiction or non fiction. In this post, I am going to go a little deeper into that question and show how the answer is a little more complicated because understanding the differences between fiction and non fiction is a little more complicated.

A dichotomy, according to an online dictionary, is "a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different." I wanted to start with a commonly understood definition before picking it apart. We use dichotomies to organize and simplify our knowledge about the world. Common ones include: day vs. night, good vs. evil, black vs. white, hot vs. cold and so on. Dichotomies are handy and, at the extremes, very clear. For example, if the sky is black with twinkling stars, we are pretty sure it is night. If, on the other hand, the sun is overhead radiating warmth, we are pretty sure it is day. But, when did night turn into day and vice versa? The fact is that many, if not most, dichotomies are actually continua with exemplars at the extremes. We often make up names for points along the continua. For example, sunset, twilight and dusk are used to identify transition points between day and night. On the continuum from black to white we have dark grey and light grey along with any number of boutique colors such as off white, ivory, platinum, ash grey, battleship grey, and charcoal.

It is also worth pointing out that the definition says, "two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different". It does not say that they necessarily are entirely different. It only says that they are represented as being entirely different. That is to say that when we organize our knowledge, we choose organizational schemes to represent thing that have some utility.

Fiction and non fiction is a similar dichotomy. One would think that if something is fiction, it should be pretty clear and anything that is not fiction must be non fiction. But, things are never that clear. For example, we have historical fiction which is based on fact but enhanced with narrative interpretation and some literary license. And we have creative non fiction which is facts which have been enhanced to make them more interesting and/or more understandable. 

Wikipedia defines creative non fiction as follows, "Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as academic or technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact but is not written to entertain based on prose style. Many writers view creative nonfiction as overlapping with the essay." This is certainly a workable definition. But, if a scholarly scientific article uses a story or a narrative argument to explain something, does that move it from non fiction to creative non fiction? And if the move to creative non fiction is acceptable, just how creative are authors of scientific journals allowed to be before the article moves from being creative non fiction to just plain fiction. One of the problems we faced during the heat of the COVID pandemic was that scientific articles, news reports, blogs, and podcasts were appearing everywhere on the spectrum from non fiction to fiction. Some glaring examples occur when the virus is anthropomorphized. For example, if someone says that the virus prefers to infect the lungs, this humanizes it by suggesting that it has preferences. It doesn't. Talking about it as though it has preferences just makes it easier to understand.

The new journalism, defined in the 1970's by Tom Wolfe, employs creative non fiction techniques in journalism. If you wanted to understand New York in the 1980's you could read The New York Times (clearly non fiction) or Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (clearly fiction). Which would give you a better understanding of the city? My opinion is that Bonfire of the Vanities gives the reader a much better understanding. So, which is more true, which more effectively conveys the reality of the situation, the newspaper accounts or the fictional book?

Another great example of this can be found in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle which was a fictional book that revealed the horrible conditions found in meat packing plants. It had such an impact that food safety laws were changed. Were these laws changed based upon information that was fictional? Similarly, Abraham Lincoln said that Harriette Beecher Stowe's  novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had caused the Civil War. Was the Civil war fought over a fictional account of a fictional character?

In fact, we can take a step back and ask - why do we have categories like fiction and non fiction at all? The answer is that it simplifies things for both readers and writers; and for everyone in publishing such as agents, publishers and booksellers. When a reader goes to the fiction area in a book store, they expect a story that has been made up. When they go to the non fiction area in a book store, they expect something that is largely based on fact. Is the fiction story based on reality at all? Almost certainly. A writer who spent his or her entire life locked up in a closet would not be able to write a fictional story that anyone would want to read. And a non fiction story without any literary or narrative embellishments would be dry as dust.

We refine these categories further in genres such as romance, mystery, horror and so on. This is also done to simplify things for readers and writers. Is it possible to write a book that is romance, mystery and horror? Absolutely? But, you risk confusing the reader, the writer and everybody in between. To be fair I should mention that there are some confusing genres such as historical fiction. Is it pure fiction or is it based on things that really happened? Well, it depends on the book, but few if any are pure fiction as few if any are completely based on things that really happened.

So, why shouldn't a writer stick strictly to the accepted categories and not confuse anyone? There are two reasons: 1) sometimes you can't say what you want to say without bleeding from one category to another; and 2) while popular fiction is highly respectful of categories, quality fiction is driven more by theme and message than category.

Before I wrap this piece up, I should get off my high horse for a moment. Categories are not altogether a bad thing. When I buy a Big Mac, or some Dunkin Donuts I do so because I know what to expect and the producers of these products deliver that reliably. There are several authors whose books I enjoy for the same reason. They may not be the haute cuisine of the literary world. But, they are enjoyable and entertaining. They keep people reading. And there is a lot to be said for that as well.

Should I Write Fiction or Non Fiction

 There are writers who focus primarily on fiction while other focus primarily on non fiction. How do you know which is right for you? I write both fiction and non fiction and although non fiction has dominated my past, I believe that fiction will dominate my future. 

Being an academic, you tend to focus on non fiction. I have published around four dozen scholarly papers, a couple of hundred book reviews, and the non fiction books I have written since retiring. However, I am slowly transitioning from non fiction to fiction. Eventually, I would like to see myself, primarily, as a writer of fiction.

This is a quirk of mine which I should explain. I spent the first two decades of my career writing software. (Writing software and writing prose, fiction or non fiction, have a lot more in common that one might expect. In all three cases, you are writing to achieve an end of some kind.) I got bored with software and moving into academia provided a much needed change with equally as much needed new challenges. It was almost like a change of identity. When I told academic colleagues that I used to be a practitioner, they were often quite surprised, if not stunned. I liked my new identity and the changes that came with it.

Then, as I approached retirement from academia, I wanted a similar change. I wanted to tell people that I used to be an academic and enjoy their surprised looks attesting to my identity change. To those people who have done the same thing for their entire career or, even, their entire lives I say "Hats off to you!" But, I could never do that. I get bored too easily.  

Non fiction requires research and an ability or organize your material in a coherent fashion. If you already know something, that will make it easier. For example, I had thought long and hard about the Meaning of Life before I decided to write a book about it. Similarly with Predicting the Future. The book I am currently working on - Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds - began as the germ of an idea when I was interested in Computer Ethics decades ago. It blossomed further when I decided to teach a class in Writing Stories to Explore the Ethics of Technology. I developed a lot of notes for that class and still there was a lot to be done. If you enjoy researching, organizing your thoughts, pondering elusive concepts and then explaining it all in reasonably simple terms, then non fiction may be for you.

I am on my fourth non fiction book, Writing Stories to Explore Possible Worlds, the foundation of which was developed when I taught the writing class which I just mentioned . I enjoy writing non fiction because like to learn new things. I like to organize my thoughts. And I like to explain things in (hopefully) simple terms. I have one more non fiction book in the current batch. However, this batch is based on ideas that I investigated while I was an academic. I have three or four more ideas on the shelf which will require a lot of research as I am starting them from scratch. We'll see how much I enjoy non fiction when I have to do a lot of research and then organize my thoughts facing a (self imposed) deadline.

I also like writing fiction. Back in the 1990's, when I was learning to write fiction, I wrote 3 1/2 detective stories. The first one (Identity) is available on Kindle and the second one (Spider) will be out soon (if all goes well). (Am I getting a little carried away with these parenthetical remarks? Probably. But I like making them.) Writing fiction is a very different experience, for me, than writing non fiction. You basically get to make everything up, although there are some boundaries on this. For example, your characters must be believable and your plot must make sense as a narrative argument revealing an important aspect of the human experience. Still, you have a lot of freedom. 

For me, the experience of writing fiction is a sublime experience. Personally, I like writing better than I like reading. I also feel like I learned a lot more writing fiction. For example, you cannot make your characters do anything they don't want to do. They will argue with you. The novels I wrote but did not publish back in the 1990's were written using what people call the pantser approach. That is, I wrote them by the seat of my pants. I would even say it was an extreme pantser approach. For, at least, the first one or two, I wrote a short chapter each week and sent it out to an email list. It is a high wire act. But, Dickens did it, and the writers of the many streaming series we have on TV today do it as well. My pantsing was not a high wire act like these, but I understand, to some extent what these writers must have gone through.

Recently, I decided to up my writing game from pantser to plotter and maybe even to designer. How this impacts the writing experience is hard to tell. It makes it sound like a lot more work. But, I suspect that, once you get used to it, plotting, or even designing, will work out best in the long run. I should explain what I mean by designing, but that would be a huge digression. So, for now I will say that it is more teleological than plotting in that it defines goals for the story. The plot, characters and setting are then created to satisfy those goals. I will explain that in more detail in a future post.

So, after all that, I think I can say that I am equally as comfortable with fiction and non fiction although I need to improve my skills in writing fiction in order to be at the same level. But therein lies, what I believe to be, the major issue most writers face when going back and forth between fiction and non fiction. They are likely to be better at one or the other. This could be due to more talent in one area or just more practice.

First let me point out the similarities. Both fiction and nonfiction require that you know something in order write. Both require that you organize your thoughts to make them coherent. Both require better than adequate writing skills. Both require that your writing has a feel of verisimilitude. Both allow the reader to learn something they did not know or reinforce something that they did know. 

Now, some differences. Non fiction is based on facts about the world. Fiction is based on the experience of being human. Non fiction must be more precise while (limited) ambiguity makes fiction richer.

Why do writers often feel that they are either a fiction writer or a non fiction writer? I think that one starts out, for what ever reason, writing one or the other. They get better at it with practice. When they consider switching, they already have knowledge and experience of the current style and hope to hop into the new style with the confidence, ease and knowledge they have already acquired from the first. Let's say they started out with fiction and decided to give non fiction a try. It may turn out that non fiction is really their strong suit. But, the edge experience gave them in fiction leads them to believe that they will never achieve that level of confidence and ease in non fiction. Any time you go from something you know to something you don't know there will be a learning curve. And the same problem occurs whether one is going from fiction to non fiction or vice versa.

But, the real problem with switching from fiction to non fiction or vice versa is that we think of fiction and non fiction as two independent (mutually exclusive for the most part) categories rather than poles on a continuum. Pure fiction would be something to which a reader could not relate as it would have no basis in the human experience. Pure non fiction would be dry as dust seemingly irrelevant to readers who are not, themselves, dry as dust and irrelevant. The question is not whether to write fiction or non fiction.The question is - where on the continuum is the writer most comfortable? And, if the writer wishes to try something a little different, the questions become - which direction on the continuum do you move and how far?

 If you are not convinced of this continuum idea, hang on. In the next post we will deconstruct fiction and non fiction providing further evidence that this dichotomy like so many others, (hot and cold, light and dark), are just linguistic conveniences which can be employed when they are convenient and dispensed with when they are not.

I Read, I Think, I Write

My trade name LegoCogitoScribo, (or LCS for short), is badly corrupted Latin for I Read, I Think, I Write. I probably don't have the tenses correct, but the roots are recognizable. I mentioned, in last month's post, that I really liked the concept of I Read, I Think, I Write and promised that I would explain why in this month's post. To be perfectly honest, having a trade name just makes things complicated and I would be better off just using my real name exclusively. Yet, I really like the idea behind I Read, I Think, I Write.

Let me go back to the late 1980's and early 1990's when I wrote my dissertation. I promise, this will be brief. When you write a dissertation, you must find sources for all the claims that you make. Dissertations are not the place for your own ideas unless they are conclusions at the very end. By the time I finished my dissertation, I felt like I couldn't even have a casual conversation without citing references for any claims I had made. Being a creative person with a robust imagination and a gift for making cognitive leaps, I found this stultifying. Over the next three decades and dozens of scholarly papers, I was very frustrated by editors and reviewers who completely lacked imagination and the ability to make reasonable cognitive leaps. I could go on and on about the importance of imagination and the ability to see more than what is right in front of you, especially in a time rapid technological change, but I will spare you that rant.

Lest I sound like a raving lunatic, of which we have far too many these days, I think it is important to have evidence in support of any claims that you make. Having said that, the word "evidence" is interpreted in a wide variety of ways many of which are counter productive while some of the productive interpretations are dismissed. What constitutes "evidence" is another rant entirely. So, let's get back on track with citations.

When should you cite something? Here is what The Author Learning Center says under Citation Best Practices for Non Fiction:

"The best practice for nonfiction writers is to cite any of the following material:

• Direct quote: Cite the reference whenever text from another source appears in your book.
• Paraphrase: When you rely heavily on another source, even if it's not a direct quote, you should cite the reference.
• Springboard idea: Include a citation for any idea or concept that you use as a springboard to develop your own ideas and theories.
• Obscure fact: When mentioning a fact that's hard for readers to verify, it's helpful to cite where you obtained the information."

 You can verify this at https://www.authorlearningcenter.com/editing/basic-editing/w/citations/6967/citation-best-practices-for-nonfiction

That is an appropriate use of citation. It is a quote from somewhere else. Even if I took their four suggestions and reworded them slightly, I should still give them credit. And I have let the reader know where I obtained the information. This is handy for me so I don't have to think of all the reasons why you should cite something. But, I also have some ideas of my own regarding improper use of citations that are my own thoughts. Solid citations enhance the credibility of the writer and provide pointers for the reader who may wish to dig a little deeper. This is all good, but the use of citations can be damaging if they are abused; damaging to the creation and dissemination of knowledge, that is.

First, a word about the environment in which "knowledge" is created.  In the past half century or so there has been a proliferation of dozens if not hundreds of new academic fields that range from "not ready for prime time but promising" to "pure crap''. To be kinder I should say that they range from nouveau to pseudo. To be even more economical, I am going to group these fields under a single term and call them wobbly. Some wobble only a little and will eventually become fully respectable. Some wobble so much that they will eventually wobble themselves out of existence. This growth in the number of new fields occurred due to growth in the number of colleges, growth in the number of students, and growth in the public's curiosity to understand all aspects of life as well as we understand gravity. Where is Newton when your dog dies or your girl friend leaves you for a better choice?

In this expanding industry of education, academics are under extreme pressure to publish. This is how knowledge is expanded in traditional fields. People do research and write papers while their peers in the field review the papers to insure that the contributions are legitimate. This is not a perfect system. But, it is not a bad system, unless you are working in a wobbly field in which case the quality assurance becomes as wobbly as the field if not more so. While our base of knowledge has expanded greatly, the base of not really knowledge has expanded much faster. How does this happen? Their are many reasons, but I am going to focus on two that are inextricably tied to citations.

1) People who publish papers abuse citations giving a false sense of veracity to wobbly papers. How do they do this? First, they do a search of any number of article databases to find papers relevant to their topic. Then they put the most popular ones in their bibliography. If they are bold, they may even cite a few of them in the paper. You can see this in statements such as "many researchers have expressed concern about..." [1][2][3], etc. They will rarely explain what the cited paper said and how it supports the author's claims.

2) Reviews are often more concerned with their reputation or the reputation of the field than they are with the quality or veracity of a piece of research. That is, they are more likely to approve your paper if it generally agrees with papers they have written and even more likely if you have cited one of theirs papers.

Once this bit of wobbly knowledge has escaped into the real world, people who have political agendas latch on to the results and present them to support their worldviews. Wobbly journalists who often have agendas of their own, take the baton of wobbly knowledge and carry it to the next step. They inform a wobbling public to reinforce their world views or to ridicule the world view of "the other". Second tier advocates take this baton to the next step and represent it as confirmation. At this point anyone who disagrees becomes dismissed as a denier.

To be fair, I should point out that all this wobbling is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it doesn't get too far out of control. There is no time in recorded history when we have had 100% certainty about anything. There is no chance this will happen in the future. We need our knowledge to wobble a little lest their be no room for improvement. We just don't want it to wobble too much. If it does, it risks shaking itself apart and being replaced by something different whatever that might be. So, we try to strike a middle path between an order that suffocates new ideas and a chaos that makes daily life a struggle. How do we do that? Well, we all just have to do the best can.

For my part, I try to earn credibility though my content. What I say is interesting or makes sense to you or it doesn't. I avoid references unless I feel they are necessary to show the reader where an idea came from. I write what I think. Others may not agree with what I have to say. And that is perfectly reasonable. But they cannot tell me it is not what I think unless they believe that I am joking or somehow being contrary. I read a lot, mull it over and write about my thoughts and reactions. Or, in short, I read, I think, I write. LegoCogitoScribo.