Plot Meets Laws of Motion

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Since writers tend to look for metaphors everywhere, they’re apt to find some of them in the strangest places.

How strange?

Think Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. Then, think plot. Now, there are a couple of strange bedfellows, to be sure.

Nevertheless, the metaphor seems to work, and, for writers, being the pragmatic souls they are, that’s all that matters.

To wit:

1. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

In fiction, the external force is the plot’s inciting moment, which is the launch pad, so to speak, that launches the rest of the story’s action. However, in fiction, the inciting moment can be either internal or external and, in fact, is often likely to be both, as is Dorothy Gale’s decision to run away from home and her subsequent leaving, which results in her being caught in a tornado and whisked off to Oz. Once he or she is set in motion, the main character will continue to overcome obstacles (see the third law of motion, below) until he or she succeeds or fails in realizing or attaining his or her goal.

2. The relationship between an object’s mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F=ma. Acceleration and force are vectors, and the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

This law corresponds to the pacing of the story’s action. The bigger the threat that the protagonist encounters, the faster the story’s pace becomes; lesser threats or absent threats slow the pacing.

3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The protagonist is locked in a dance with the antagonist. Every time the former attempts to realize or attain his or her goal, the latter acts to block or otherwise frustrate the protagonist’s effort or other obstacles appear to oppose the main character. These series of antagonistic reactions to the protagonist’s actions represent the story’s rising action (that part of the plot wherein the story’s basic conflict is complicated, prior to the climax, or turning point).

Of course, the laws, which may be sufficient to account for motion, don’t exhaust the mechanics of plot, but they are a memorable way of summarizing at least some of the important elements of this element of fiction and kind of cool and interesting in a nerdy sort of way to writers, readers, literary critics, and other geeks and nerds.

Fictional Stories as Thought Experiments

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

According to James Robert Brown’s article in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, thought experiments are “devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.” (This definition makes fiction itself a grand and complex thought experiment, we may argue.) Among the more famous of such experiments are “Newton’s bucket, Maxwell’s demon, Einstein’s elevator, Heisenberg’s gamma-ray microscope, and Shrodinger’s cat”:

Schrödinger's cat. . . does not show that quantum theory (as interpreted by Bohr) is internally inconsistent. Rather it shows that it is conflict with some very powerful common sense beliefs we have about macro-sized objects such as cats. The bizarreness of superpositions in the atomic world is worrisome enough, says Schrödinger, but when it implies that same bizarreness at an everyday level, it is intolerable. . . . Einstein's elevator showed that light will bend in a gravitational field; Maxwell's demon showed that entropy could be decreased. . . . Newton's bucket showed that space is a thing in its own right; Parfit's splitting persons showed that survival is a more important notion than identity when considering personhood (“Thought Experiments”).

Thought experiments are just as important to philosophy, Brown observes, as they have proven to be to science: “Much of ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind is based firmly on the results of thought experiments,” and, to illustrate his observation, he identifies several of the more important philosophical thought experiments: “Thompson's violinist, Searle's Chinese room, Putnam's twin earth, Parfit's people who split like an amoeba.” (We might add the example of the philosophical zombie, discussed in a previous post, as well.)

Describing an early thought experiment, which appears in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Brown identifies three “common features of thought experiments”: “We visualize some situation; we carry out an operation; we see what happens.”

Like special effects, thought experiments can be conducted even when actual conditions or moral considerations make an actual experiment impossible or objectionable.

Occasionally, thought experiments might help to revolutionize scientific theory as well, according to Thomas Kuhn: “a well-conceived thought experiment can bring on a crisis or at least create an anomaly in the reigning theory and so contribute to paradigm change” (Brown). For additional benefits from, and some objections that scientists and philosophers have advanced concerning the use of thought experiments, those which were conducted by the likes of Newton and Einstein notwithstanding, check out Brown’s article (liked above).

We suggest that, before science, there were also thought experiments, called fiction (or, before fiction was recognized as invented rather than of an inspired or an empirical origin), as myths, folktales, and legends. Ancient Greek (and Egyptian and Norse) myths were of special significance in establishing the ways by which storytellers and their audiences (pretty much all of any society of the time) understood, thought about, and interpreted themselves and the world around them. Such stories, from time to time, also sought to investigate the possibilities of human existence and of nature. At such times as these, the myths became what we could call narrative or dramatic thought experiments. Even today, stories, especially in the fantasy and science fiction genres, continue to pose and conduct thought experiments about all aspects of human existence and nature itself. Horror fiction also conducts such experiments on occasion (as the popularity of the mad scientist, for example, suggests).

Brown’s analysis of Lucretius’ thought experiment led him to posit three features characteristic of all thought experiments: “We visualize some situation; we carry out an operation; we see what happens.” The what-if mode of envisioning stories (an abbreviated way of saying “What might happen if”), common, once again, to fantasy and science fiction (and to alternate history stories) virtually demands such an approach, at least at times, but horror fiction and literature in other genres can do so, too. In horror fiction, we might ask, “What if a chemical compound could, when ingested, cause abnormally large growth in the animals that had consumed it?” The result of this visualization of a specific situation, carried out by the telling of the tale, might be H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, in which the result is shown to be an imminent war between the haves (the “Children of the Food” and the have-nots (the “Pygmies”) to determine whether growth shall win out over the non-growth of the status quo.

Unhampered by modern science’s knowledge of natural laws, Greek myths (as well as those of other ancient nations) asked what-if questions with the abandonment that can result only from the naiveté of the abysmally ignorant:

• What if a person (or maybe a demon) could assume whatever shape it chose, for as long as it chose to do so?
• What if a person were of gigantic size and had a single eye in the middle of his forehead?
• What if a creature were half-man and half-horse?What if a creature were half-woman and half-fish?
• What if a horse, having wings, could fly?
• What if men and women lived forever and could rule over various aspects of nature?
• What if one man had the strength of twenty men?
• What if women could fight as good as--no, better than--men?
• What if a woman had a baby after being raped by the devil?
• What if God mated with a mortal woman?
• What if a house were haunted by a vengeful ghost?

Horror fiction asks similar (or, indeed, on occasion, identical) questions, but with an emphasis on the horrific:

• What if a person (or maybe a demon) could assume whatever shape it chose, for as long as it chose to do so? (It)
• What if a demon could animate a corpse? (Dracula)
• What if the spirits of the dead exist in some shadowy manner and can interact with humans? (The Turn of the Screw)
• What if a scientist could cause a body constructed of parts from corpses to live again? (Frankenstein)
• What if a man could change into a wolf and back again into a man? (The Howling)
• What if a woman, raped by the devil, gave birth to a son? (Rosemary’s Baby)
• What if a child abuser, torched by his victims’ parents, returned as a vengeful bogeyman? (Nightmare on Elm Street) \
• What if an extraterrestrial female came to earth, seeking a mate? (Species)
• What if vampires came to a small town in modern America? (‘Salem’s Lot)
• What if a modern-day Cinderella with telekinetic powers had a terrible time at the ball? (Carrie)
• What if myths were based upon true incidents or creatures? (Dominion)
• What if the earth were invaded by a Martian military force (The War of the Worlds)
• What if a scientist tried to create an intelligent, hybrid human-animal species? (The Island of Dr. Moreau)
• What if a brain could survive inside a decapitated head on life-support? (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die)
• What if an extraterrestrial creature, trapped in a block of ice, were thawed out by a group of scientists operating an arctic research laboratory? (The Thing)

These and countless other what-if questions allow writers to envision a situation that is improbable or impossible in nature or because of moral concerns, carry out a thought experiment (writing or reading the resulting story), and see what happens. Different genres appeal to different concerns and respond to different issues:

• Adventure appeals to the desire to escape and to explore new worlds.
• Detective and mystery stories appeal to the desire to solve a puzzle and to see that justice is served.
• Fantasy appeals to the desire for experience wonder and awe.
• Horror appeals to the desire to survive against seemingly impossible odds and to endure great losses and suffering.
• Science fiction appeals to one’s innate curiosity about the world and the desire to discern the realities behind appearances.
• Romance appeals to the desire to meet and marry Mr. Right.
• Westerns appeal to the desire for law, order, and justice, especially for the underdog.

Each genre of fiction is apt to pose imaginary (and imaginative) situations that, peculiarly appropriate to their own purposes, allow writers and readers to “carry out an operation” and “see what happens” with regard to the genres’ own special interests and concerns. As much as the myths, legends, and folktales of yesteryear, contemporary fiction, including horror stories, remains a vast and complex series of never-ending thought experiments that can draw upon not only science and philosophy but also theology, art, and all other cultural realms and practical aspects of human existence.

Source cited

Brown, James Robert. "Thought Experiments.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007.

Going Through the Motions, or The Physics of Fiction

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Viewing a subject from an unfamiliar or little-used perspective renews one’s own appreciation and understanding of the matter, making the familiar appear strange and new again. In The Physics of Superheroes, Professor James Kakalios, himself a physicist, provides such a vantage point as he applies the principles of physics to the powers of costumed crime fighters with superhuman abilities in order to explain why they could perform the feats they routinely perform (or, in some cases, why they could not perform such deeds), given the willing suspension of disbelief that is required to accept the premise that these characters can perform such exploits to begin with, the “miracle exception” that represents “the one thing you have to buy into to make the superhero plausible” and that allows “the rest that follows” to “be consistent with science” (15). The various superheroes whose mighty deeds Kakalios considers comprise a true who’s who list of caped crusaders (and a few super villains), including Superman, Spider-man, Flash, and Ant-man (in “Section 1” of his book, concerning “Mechanics”) and Flash, The Atom, the X-Men, Superman, Electro, Superboy, Magneto, Iron Man, and others (in "Section 2" of his book, concerning "Energy--Heat and Light.") It’s an interesting book for bookworms like Peter Parker and geeks of all ages.

We’re interested in the book for reasons of our own, though, which pertain to the theory and practice of writing horror fiction. The principles that Kakalios uses to explain the actions of the superheroes and villains in DC and Marvel Comics also explain how, if not always exactly why, horror fiction chills and thrills its readers, offering a fresh way of seeing the effects of dramatic structure and plotting.

In the first section of The Physics of Superheroes, Kakalios reminds his readers of the “three laws of motion” laid down by Sir Isaac Newton:

1. An object at rest remains at rest, or if moving remains moving in a straight line if no external forces act upon it.
2. If an external force is applied, the object’s motion will change in either magnitude or direction, and the rate of change of the motion (its acceleration) when multiplied by the object’s mass is equal to the applied force.
3. For every force applied to an object there is an equal and opposite force exerted back by the object (24-25).

Let’s apply these laws of motion to the horror story plot (or, for that matter, any other type of plot).

According to Gustav Freytag, an incident in the story’s plot sets everything that follows it into motion. This incident, called the inciting moment, is like a spark that starts a fire or, in terms of Newton’s laws of motion, it is the external force that changes the plot-as-object’s motion, causing it to take a new direction. Were it not for the inciting moment, the plot would continue forward, in a straight line, so to speak, rather than changing direction as it begins its upward climb which commences what Freytag calls the plot’s rising action.

The third law of motion is also useful as a means of envisioning what writers, literary critics, and readers call conflict, for it is the “force applied” by the protagonist to the antagonist, or “object,” countered by the “equal and opposite force exerted back” by the antagonist that balances the story’s action (at least until the turning point, a second inciting moment of sorts, which intervenes to set the plot off in a new, downward direction, as it were, Freytag’s falling action.

As Kakalios points out, the second law of motion (“If an external force is applied, the object’s motion will change in either magnitude or direction, and the rate of change of the motion (its acceleration) when multiplied by the object’s mass is equal to the applied force”) can be represented by the mathematical formula F = ma, wherein F = force, m = mass, and a = acceleration (25). (Acceleration differs from velocity, Kakalios reminds his readers. The former refers to the change in speed over time, whereas the latter refers to the change in speed over distance [30].) Mass is simply a measure of how many atoms make up an object. A piece of plastic is made up of relatively few atoms, whereas lead is comprised of many more atoms, packed, as it were, in an equal amount of space. The more atoms-per-space (mass) and the greater the rate of acceleration, the more force results. In terms of story plotting, we mentally replace atoms with narrative incidents (or, in description, perhaps with action verbs and shorter sentences). The more incidents, action verbs, and sentences we “pack” into a passage, the greater its force, or narrative effect, upon the reader. It seems that Edgar Allan Poe has something similar to this concept, minus the physical laws of motion, in mind, when he argues, in “The Philosophy of Composition,” that a shorter story, especially one that can be read in “a single sitting,” without interruption, has a greater effect upon its readers than a longer story which is, in effect, simply a series of shorter stories told successively and related to one another through cause and effect. To make a story more horrifying, speed up the action (writing action verb-packed short sentences in a rapid-fire series of narrative incidents); to slow the pace and the story’s effect (horror), slow down the same process.

It seems that, understood figuratively, Newton’s laws of motion apply to plotting horror fiction (and other literary genres) as much as they do to physical and mechanical motion.

Source cited

Kakalios, James. The Physics of Superheroes. New York: Gotham Books, 2005.