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Fictional logic

Read­ers don’t often think about log­ic when read­ing fic­tion, but they know it when it’s not there: “That makes no sense!” Or, “I don’t believe it.” Or, even “But on page thir­ty, you wrote .…“

Fic­tion­al log­ic, by which I mean cause, moti­va­tion, and result, needs to be seam­less, per­haps invis­i­ble, yet that log­ic is the inner core of the sto­ry. It makes a sto­ry go from page one to “the end.” Yet, it if it is too obvi­ous, the tale seems pre­dictable, per­haps dull. Too obscure and the read­er can’t fol­low the trail. To make it more com­plex, I love the notion I have quot­ed many times, Robert Frost’s dic­tum, “No sur­prise for the writer, no sur­prise for the reader.”

What’s a writer to do? He/she must imagine—and set down—the whole com­plex­i­ty of the char­ac­ters’ world, but in the sub­tlest way possible.

As in life, all peo­ple are com­plex. Imbed­ded in that com­plex­i­ty are mul­ti­ple choic­es. The com­plex char­ac­ter thus can log­i­cal­ly do any num­ber of things, and the read­er will believe.  Is that hard to achieve? Oh my, yes!

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