I haven’t posted in awhile for 2 reasons. First, I noticed that by accident that I had posted every three days and I didn’t feel that was organic and I don’t want a pattern, so I decided to wait even though I had a topic in mind. Second, I had some people IRL check out my webpage to give feedback and I was waiting for that so I could be positive that the page was accomplishing what I wanted, so you may notice some rearrangements.

Last post I mentioned tropes. Plato wrote that humans communicate through universals, if I write ‘bird’, an image of a bird pops in your mind. It may not be the same image that I have, but it should be sufficient to communicate the concept of bird. However that is where communication can go awry, I am pretty confident no one thought of penguin when I wrote bird. And if I am trying to convey specific aspects of birds, such as flight, then there is a miscommunication if I am thinking about crows and you are thinking about ostriches.

I feel that tropes are those Platonic universals in story telling. And since Shakespeare covered a lot of different stories, it can seem derivative unless you can tell the story in a different way. There has to be an emotional hook. A steampunk bird, how about a steampunk penguin? Ok, but what happens to the penguin? Is there an epic trek to breeding gorunds or to find a lost chick? What obstacles have to be overcome and how can we relate them to the reader’s personal trials as a metaphor? I feel that this is what is lost in AI generated stories, this emotional connection.

And tropes allow us to set the scene in a show not tell way in a very succinct way. Sci Fi story in space, an image of spaceships, lasers, planets, aliens all pop in your head. However, it is not the science that emotionally connects with the readers, it is the fiction. So a sci fi bird, how about a sci fi penguin? Well, that is new, but what is happening to the penguin? Antarctica melted on Earth and the last colony is looking for a new ice water world with fish. What happens along the way and are they successful? That is what makes a compelling story IMHO, not a 23 chapter manual on FTL drives and the different types of ice (I am looking at you Herman Melville). But read Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut  for a story featuring Ice IX. SO what do I know😉 SSBK – Jim Cobb