Twisting reality, then smoothing it out.

Writers conjure narrative worlds consistent with reality. Even the most outlandish sci-fi or horror genres rely upon ideas which can be understood by readers, such as aliens and pain. Yet when one examines what's going on, it's equivalent to drawing a picture, distorting the paper and then smoothing it out to make the thing conform to real life.

When we write, there are these little nuggets, essentially codes for reality. These squiggles come together in the reader's mind into a mental model of a story world. That this can be done at all is rather clever, that some can do it better than others is damned good going, that some can make is seem a viable alternative to everyday experience is extraordinary, and the fact that a few very skilled individuals can carry out this trick and make it into a sublime art form is a veritable miracle.

What I'm saying is this: Any sort of written story - ANY - is an incredible achievement!

And all this coding's mediated by the amount one has read, one's persistence, one's willingness to cross out and revise. One's distinct personality. It really is hard work to do it right - to construct a piece of fiction that another human being will willingly immerse themselves in. One that bears a resemblance to the one which flowed in pieces in the writer's mind. A story is an accretion of all these tiny granular bits.

Now here's the real mind bender the relative stability of the narrative world. The fact we can agree upon the way these fictional bits of apparatus work. Wow! Remarkable. That we can agree on what sort of character Macbeth is, or the degree of smaltz present in Jane Eyre. Well, at least in theory we can. Why should this be so?

That we can agree on portions of a shared realty is pretty good. It's also lovely that we can do the same with fiction, which is such a made up thing.

Let's say, for the sake of argument that I wrote down an amazing true life event and passed it off as fiction. Is that reality smoothing itself out and then twisting itself up?

Felt the need to ramble on and riff tonight. Sorry my thoughts didn't make sense - I'm living in your waking dream.