Hi,
there was a thread recently on a related topic, now closed. It got me thinking about why fiction is so attractive, while rationally/arguably it makes no sense to create non-existing things/worlds. Yet many love to do it and many love to read/view it.
This is an attempt to look at the topic from a different angle.
What are your excuses/reasons for producing something out of the air? It's fun of course, but is it fun for a reason?
Making things up is part of human nature. If we make things up, we can begin to understand "the new". Something we haven't met before, something possibly dangerous or puzzling. If we can imagine how this new/dangerous thing could possibly behave or watch it in action and imagine some rules it might follow, then we are making things up to help us survive or understand the world. Even if we can't actually see the thing in action, we could hear it move around and try to imagine what it's like, again, making things up to understand something new.
Could it be fiction is written as part of that deeply rooted need to make things up, where we can let that part of ourselves roam completely free (to the extreme in fiction writing, movies and art in general)?
Of course, logic/rigorous thinking enters into it to as well. So we have hardcore SF at one end of the spectrum and fantasy at the other. Creativity and rigorous thinking (logic) go hand in hand, yet we often view them as conflicting.
Would you go along with this rationalizing of fiction? It may explain why it is fun to write it. And what can we get out of the ultimate product as a reader/viewer? A new view on reality through oddly tinted glasses?
there was a thread recently on a related topic, now closed. It got me thinking about why fiction is so attractive, while rationally/arguably it makes no sense to create non-existing things/worlds. Yet many love to do it and many love to read/view it.
This is an attempt to look at the topic from a different angle.
What are your excuses/reasons for producing something out of the air? It's fun of course, but is it fun for a reason?
Making things up is part of human nature. If we make things up, we can begin to understand "the new". Something we haven't met before, something possibly dangerous or puzzling. If we can imagine how this new/dangerous thing could possibly behave or watch it in action and imagine some rules it might follow, then we are making things up to help us survive or understand the world. Even if we can't actually see the thing in action, we could hear it move around and try to imagine what it's like, again, making things up to understand something new.
Could it be fiction is written as part of that deeply rooted need to make things up, where we can let that part of ourselves roam completely free (to the extreme in fiction writing, movies and art in general)?
Of course, logic/rigorous thinking enters into it to as well. So we have hardcore SF at one end of the spectrum and fantasy at the other. Creativity and rigorous thinking (logic) go hand in hand, yet we often view them as conflicting.
Would you go along with this rationalizing of fiction? It may explain why it is fun to write it. And what can we get out of the ultimate product as a reader/viewer? A new view on reality through oddly tinted glasses?
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