Writers: do we actually do anything?

[avevale_intelligencer]

I'm a fan of the D'niverse, the fictitious reality created for the Myst and Uru series of games by Cyan Worlds (now Cyan Inc.), in which it's possible to write a book which contains a description of a world, and then travel through that book to that world. A better metaphor for my vocation I have yet to find.

There's an interesting philosophical point here, which as far as I'm concerned remains unsettled; do the Writers in the game actually create the worlds they write, or do they merely link to worlds that happen to match their description, in a quantum universe where all possibilities are equally real? Cyan has to my knowledge never officially pronounced on this; the characters in the game, though, being religious, definitely lean to the latter explanation, in the belief that thinking otherwise inevitably leads to a god complex and divine retribution. I don't agree. I think it's possible to believe that you create a world without going mad over it, and if God exists in that fictional universe, I don't believe he's that jealous. So, in the game and in my writings set in that universe, I'm the Heretic.

And why am I writing about this now? Because someone identified only as Grey Wolf has commented to one of David Gerrold's Facebook posts, to the effect that in his opinion actual writers in the real world, tellers of stories, don't actually create the stories they tell; they just spy on other worlds and report back on what they see. I've never seen that view seriously advanced before; a writer might jokingly suggest that s/he is just watching, just along for the ride, has no control over the characters, but in the end surely everyone knows that isn't true, don't they? Can we not even have acknowledged control over our own imaginations?

I think, if I weren't so stressed about more important things at the moment, I could get seriously harrumphy about this. So it's probably a good thing that I am. :)

Originally posted on http://avevale_intelligencer.dreamwidth.org. Comment here or there or both if you wish.

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I've quite often felt that I was merely eavesdropping on a fantasy world, listening to the people there rather than creating them. I've even had (and documented) lucid dreams in which my characters turn up at home and bribe me with stories if I'll just adjust the plot in another one a little in their favour :) Certainly the characters can come up with things that my conscious mind would never have managed - but note that qualification. What the unconscious mind could have done is anybody's guess, and since it's the characters asking me for favours, not the other way round, I'd say I'm still in control.

But for that to be real? Well... I suppose for certain definitions of/questions about reality, in which I might for all I know be a butterfly dreaming - maybe?

[howeird]

a writer might jokingly suggest that s/he is just watching, just along for the ride, has no control over the characters, but in the end surely everyone knows that isn't true, don't they? Can we not even have acknowledged control over our own imaginations?

The more cons I go to with authors' panels, the more I hear from writers that their writing goes where their characters take it. Maybe some people's imaginations run wild.

An analogy: when I read, I am still aware there's a real world around me. If someone calls my name, I hear it. When my older sister reads, she is completely surrounded by the world and characters of the book she is reading, and until there is a chapter break, the real world doesn't exist. And it may take her a moment after she stops reading to re-orient to the real world.

I suggest that some writers immerse themselves in the world they are writing about the same way my sister immerses herself in the world she is reading about.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

There are breaks between chapters? Unless someone or something physically pulls me out of it, the next time I re-enter the "real" world is when I run out of book.

[howeird]

Sis was like that too, before she had 5 kids. :-)