Orson Scott Card on story characters: Four basic factors … are present in every story, with varying degrees of emphasis. … milieu, idea, character, and event. The milieu is the world surrounding the characters, the landscape, the interior spaces, the surrounding cultures the characters emerge from and react to; everything from weather to traffic laws.
They didn't have counterfactuals to work out. For example, Tolstoy just wrote in Tsarist Russia. Shakespeare would occasionally assume e.g. a ghostly dad as a plot device, but again no real counterfactuals. Their worlds were belieavable because they were mostly just our world.
More than anything, I think people enjoy reading about characters that they can identify with. Could it also be that as literacy increased, and printing became widespread, that more common people began writing about characters that more people could identify with, leading more people to appreciate character stories?
alternatively, novels are higher status because you need to have above average self-discipline and general knowledge to extract enjoyment from them. nearly everyone consumes visual storytelling,
I'm not sure it's alternative except in a chicken-and-egg sense. Sustained far-mode thought is in general high status because of its discipline and knowledge requirements. Visual story is near-mode: that's why everyone can consume it. (Near-mode, of course, can be demanding too. But it's not necessarily demanding, even when sustained. Perhaps a test case is novels written in extreme near-mode, like harlequin romances.
alternatively, novels are higher status because you need to have above average self-discipline and general knowledge to extract enjoyment from them. nearly everyone consumes visual storytelling, but only a tiny minority still spend their money on long-form textual stories.
the simplest explanation for many perceived or imagined (the truly bookish are low-status, whereas phony bookishness is a status boon in the SMV) status differentials is the superiority exclusiveness often implies.
But why are they high status? I think they're high status because they can deal with character effectively! Character/personality is far, situation is near, and far-mode is high-status relative to near-mode.
Construal-level theory hierarchy (high to low construal):1. Character and idea2. Mileu3. Event
Civilization is progressively more far-mode. Hanson predicts Malthus will reverse this trend within a century, but his prediction isn't really in tension with the trend: "EM society" is a form of barbarism.
Alternative hypothesis: character stories are what novels are especially good at (whereas movies are good at event stories), and novels are high status...
"Rich self-indulgent folks are more likely to be obsessed with their own internal feelings."
Why do you think that? I could say rich people are freer to contemplate things beyond their narrow circumstances.
"Impressively realistic character stories are mostly impressive to other cognitive elites, and much less so to ordinary readers."
If true, the important question would be, why is it true?
Character stories are easier to tell in a society that isn't threatened, because writers don't have to spend their words preaching how great their society is, and can write about sympathetic characters in conflict with their society, who can't find or don't like their place in it. Such stories have been taboo for most of history.
Which explains why Odysseus has had such a grip on the Western imagination ever since. Without such a great portrait of the central character, the Odyssey would be just one damn thing after another. For really great literature, character rules.
Homer, Virgil, Greek Tragedy, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes, Moliere, you get the idea. Dante and the Bible are a bit sketchier on character, but it's still important even there.
Yes, this strikes me as mostly false. A story is an optimization problem. You do decide what type of story you want to make, and what sacrifices to make, just like when designing a car you should have in mind whether you want a sportscar, a luxury sedan, or a practical economy vehicle. But that doesn't mean it's okay for a sportscar to get 5mpg, or for an economy car to lack seat cushions.
"A good rule of thumb is that to create a 3D character that person must contain at least two different 2D characters who come into conflict. Contrary to the first thought that crosses your mind, three-dimensional good people are constructed by combining at least two different good people with two different ideals, not by combining a good person and a bad person."
Very good observation. You might even say they should be orthogonal to each other...
"I consider the most successful moral conflict in HPMOR to be the argument between Harry and Dumbledore in Ch. 77 because it almost perfectly divided the readers on who was in the right."
If only more mass-market authors thought this way. But a more-intelligent author generally perfectly divides the readers when the author has a definite opinion about which is right. If the more-intelligent author is divided on an issue, it's likely there is some subtlety in it that escapes most people, and the audience will not be divided. Aiming to challenge the readers more than to challenge the author seems uncomfortably polemical to me.
"Character shallowness can be a symptom of moral shallowness if it reflects a conflict between Good and Evil drawn along lines too clear to bring two good parts of a good character into conflict. This is why it would've been hard for Lord of the Rings to contain deep characters without becoming an entirely different story."
Hmm. I'm curious: how far do you take your objectivity—if that's the right word? Would you defend a Scientologist against ideological preconception? (By the way, my distaste for this churchy, preachy writer has nothing to do with his views on gay marriage — http://tinyurl.com/yz3zhbw .)
Yes, of course. Robin has made similar points before and it's not difficult to see why it's a mostly correct view. Introspection takes a back seat during societal struggles. It's no surprise Office Space was made in 1999 instead of 2013: you don't think about the meaninglessness of jobs when you're too busy finding one.
You are Steve Sailer and I claim my five pounds :-)
They didn't have counterfactuals to work out. For example, Tolstoy just wrote in Tsarist Russia. Shakespeare would occasionally assume e.g. a ghostly dad as a plot device, but again no real counterfactuals. Their worlds were belieavable because they were mostly just our world.
More than anything, I think people enjoy reading about characters that they can identify with. Could it also be that as literacy increased, and printing became widespread, that more common people began writing about characters that more people could identify with, leading more people to appreciate character stories?
Maybe the novels. Most of the classic SF short stories were probably Idea stories...
alternatively, novels are higher status because you need to have above average self-discipline and general knowledge to extract enjoyment from them. nearly everyone consumes visual storytelling,
I'm not sure it's alternative except in a chicken-and-egg sense. Sustained far-mode thought is in general high status because of its discipline and knowledge requirements. Visual story is near-mode: that's why everyone can consume it. (Near-mode, of course, can be demanding too. But it's not necessarily demanding, even when sustained. Perhaps a test case is novels written in extreme near-mode, like harlequin romances.
alternatively, novels are higher status because you need to have above average self-discipline and general knowledge to extract enjoyment from them. nearly everyone consumes visual storytelling, but only a tiny minority still spend their money on long-form textual stories.
the simplest explanation for many perceived or imagined (the truly bookish are low-status, whereas phony bookishness is a status boon in the SMV) status differentials is the superiority exclusiveness often implies.
But why are they high status? I think they're high status because they can deal with character effectively! Character/personality is far, situation is near, and far-mode is high-status relative to near-mode.
Construal-level theory hierarchy (high to low construal):1. Character and idea2. Mileu3. Event
Civilization is progressively more far-mode. Hanson predicts Malthus will reverse this trend within a century, but his prediction isn't really in tension with the trend: "EM society" is a form of barbarism.
Alternative hypothesis: character stories are what novels are especially good at (whereas movies are good at event stories), and novels are high status...
"Rich self-indulgent folks are more likely to be obsessed with their own internal feelings."
Why do you think that? I could say rich people are freer to contemplate things beyond their narrow circumstances.
"Impressively realistic character stories are mostly impressive to other cognitive elites, and much less so to ordinary readers."
If true, the important question would be, why is it true?
Character stories are easier to tell in a society that isn't threatened, because writers don't have to spend their words preaching how great their society is, and can write about sympathetic characters in conflict with their society, who can't find or don't like their place in it. Such stories have been taboo for most of history.
Which explains why Odysseus has had such a grip on the Western imagination ever since. Without such a great portrait of the central character, the Odyssey would be just one damn thing after another. For really great literature, character rules.
Did Shakespeare or Tolstoy need to focus more on worldbuilding?
Homer, Virgil, Greek Tragedy, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes, Moliere, you get the idea. Dante and the Bible are a bit sketchier on character, but it's still important even there.
Yes, this strikes me as mostly false. A story is an optimization problem. You do decide what type of story you want to make, and what sacrifices to make, just like when designing a car you should have in mind whether you want a sportscar, a luxury sedan, or a practical economy vehicle. But that doesn't mean it's okay for a sportscar to get 5mpg, or for an economy car to lack seat cushions.
"A good rule of thumb is that to create a 3D character that person must contain at least two different 2D characters who come into conflict. Contrary to the first thought that crosses your mind, three-dimensional good people are constructed by combining at least two different good people with two different ideals, not by combining a good person and a bad person."
Very good observation. You might even say they should be orthogonal to each other...
"I consider the most successful moral conflict in HPMOR to be the argument between Harry and Dumbledore in Ch. 77 because it almost perfectly divided the readers on who was in the right."
If only more mass-market authors thought this way. But a more-intelligent author generally perfectly divides the readers when the author has a definite opinion about which is right. If the more-intelligent author is divided on an issue, it's likely there is some subtlety in it that escapes most people, and the audience will not be divided. Aiming to challenge the readers more than to challenge the author seems uncomfortably polemical to me.
"Character shallowness can be a symptom of moral shallowness if it reflects a conflict between Good and Evil drawn along lines too clear to bring two good parts of a good character into conflict. This is why it would've been hard for Lord of the Rings to contain deep characters without becoming an entirely different story."
Most-concise analysis I've seen of LotR.
Hmm. I'm curious: how far do you take your objectivity—if that's the right word? Would you defend a Scientologist against ideological preconception? (By the way, my distaste for this churchy, preachy writer has nothing to do with his views on gay marriage — http://tinyurl.com/yz3zhbw .)
Yes, of course. Robin has made similar points before and it's not difficult to see why it's a mostly correct view. Introspection takes a back seat during societal struggles. It's no surprise Office Space was made in 1999 instead of 2013: you don't think about the meaninglessness of jobs when you're too busy finding one.