Just as real people are inevitably tinted by biases, experiences, backgrounds, opinions, and perspectives, the notional storytellers of our writing are bound by the same tendencies.
Novel-ty
Studying these matters causally might be impossible, but a recent paper, “Sameness Entices, but Novelty Enchants in Fanfiction Online,” explores a correlational relationship between the enjoyment of a work and the work’s originality through a data analysis of an online fanfiction archive.
Reading Series
I wonder if perhaps this whole debate is somewhat missing the real point, which is obfuscated by the forms in which we happen to package stories.
An Oblique Approach to Reality
Thinking of poetry as an oblique approach to reality reframes my understanding of poems and helps explain why I’ve always struggled with writing original poems, but it doesn’t mean I can suddenly write poetry.
Intentionality in Storytelling
With only a handful of lines, and a few words in each line, each one of them must bear a larger load for the poem. Everything must be intentional.
Identifying Descriptions
Many modern books which intrigue me enough to look up a description, or which I hear or read about, lose me at the description stage because they are not highlighting what I’m looking for in a story.
The Language of AI
Tailored machine learning mechanisms and large language models can be far more useful, but ideas about AI “going rogue”, and the more revolutionary predictions for the capabilities, are rather overblown and unrealistic. Some of these misconceptions may come from the language we use.
Reference Communication
Explicit references are a key way we continue to communicate complex ideas.
Dispelling Myths about Mythology
Myth is a way of interacting with the world via story, and is as dynamic as the people who tell the stories, whether oral, written, or in any other form. Stories are not themselves the myth – the myth arises from the conversation between stories set within its ecosystem.
New Old Stories
It is reductionist and unimaginative to contend that there are no new stories to tell, akin to the assertions that history is just a cycle that repeats itself. As long as there are new people, as long as the world is changing and entropy hasn’t prevailed throughout the universe, there will be new stories.
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