The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
stillmoving.org
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
Arts large and small, major and minor, are always on a constantly turning wheel of invention. One generation’s “Such irony!” is the next generation’s “So obvious!” What makes a great magic trick is not skill alone, nor even performance alone, but skill and performance placed within a story that stays one neat step ahead of the audience’s expectatio
... See moreAdam Gopnik • The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery
“Each requires the imagination of altered circumstances, and in each case beings must see themselves to be living in time. Making a tool immediately implies a succession of events in which one exercises some control over outcomes. Either to tell a story or to make a tool is to adopt an imaginary position outside immediate sensory experience. In eac... See more
L. M. Sacasas • Resistance Is Futile: The Myth of Tech Inevitability
Our story arcs are a legacy from the Greeks, who gave us tragedy, a genre built on rises and falls that peak with a climax. Aristotle called the moment of maximum intensity peripeteia — which translates to reversal — and named the aftermath catharsis, the release of emotional energy. That’s how we all know pride comes before fall and that the darke
... See moreAngus Hervey • Collapse, Renewal and the Rope of History | by Angus Hervey | Future Crunch | Aug, 2021 | Medium
for a fiction writer the question of where things come from is, in my experience, a bit mysterious.