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Story Logic vs. The Laws of Physics: Part Two

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Last time, I talked about how speculative fiction frequently defies the laws of physics, and how fans sometimes like that and sometimes hate it. So how can writers break the laws of physics without irritating their audience? Like I said, it seems to vary from person to person (a phenomenon I call the Personal Logic Threshold). Based on my experiences as a fan, however, I believe a few guidelines can maximize a storyteller’s success in this area, where most fans are concerned:

  • When breaking the laws of physics, do it in such a way that it matches the overall tone of the story. If you’re writing a silly space opera that resembles fantasy more than hard science fiction (i.e. Star Wars), fans are more likely to forgive technological inaccuracies or physically impossible action scenes.
  • Generally, resist the temptation to defy physics in order to give your characters an easy out from conflict. Remember, this also depends on what kind of story you are trying to tell (see #1). Are you George R. R. Martin, who writes gritty realistic fantasy in which people facing death cannot hope to escape by, say, using magic martial arts moves? Or are you Brandon Sanderson, who writes such RPG-inspired action scenes as part of the fun? The latter will have more leeway.
  • Any way in which a story world defies physics (as we know them) can be improved by foreshadowing it, long before it becomes crucial to the plot. If you show a character flying when the fate of the world is not at stake, then the audience knows that human flight is possible in that particular story world, and won’t get confused or angry when it happens during the climax. Picky fans with a lower PLT might quibble about the specifics, like Sheldon does in the clip from my last post. But they won’t be surprised or befuddled, which is worse.

There is one more aspect to this topic that I should mention. In the end, like with Superman, story logic matters the most. Being faithful to story logic means the writer must satisfy the audience’s needs for a good story, and understands that those needs may trump certain physical realities—and that, especially in the case of speculative fiction, defying those realities may be a selling point for a large portion of the audience. But this doesn’t mean the characters should be able to defy physics at will with no foreshadowing whatsoever, especially as a way to escape the conflicts they face. In fact, it generally means the opposite. (Refer back to guideline #2, as well as my post on Story Structure.)

In the end, since everyone has a different Personal Logic Threshold, you’ll never be able to satisfy everyone in the audience when you defy the laws of physics. From what I can tell, you can please the most fans by trying to tell a satisfying story, and not breaking physical laws without any sort of foreshadowing or explanation for doing so.

To conclude, I am now going to contradict everything I just said, and point out that sometimes, this whole conundrum doesn’t really matter. Back in my college days, I was a fan of a sports anime called The Prince of Tennis. (I still am, in fact!) The story is about a twelve-year-old tennis prodigy who moves from America to Japan and joins a middle school tennis team. It starts out as you would expect: the main character meets a lot of talented tennis players, and they play a ton of tennis matches. Some of these characters have “special moves” that stretch a tennis expert’s sense of disbelief, but nothing too major, at first. By the time of the show’s second incarnation, however, the characters are hitting tennis balls so hard that they shatter concrete walls on a semi-regular basis.

This, as I hardly need to point out, is not physically possible.

So do I care about this, as a fan of the show? Not at all. For me, the absurdity is part of the fun. I will admit that, as a former tennis player, I often burst into laughter during certain scenes. Sometimes, the “upgraded” versions of the characters’ moves cause me to raise a perplexed eyebrow. But in the end, I love the show because it’s campy and ridiculous. I enjoy it because they shatter those concrete walls. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to watch it.

(In case you don’t believe the part about concrete walls, or how closely this show can resemble Dragon Ball Z at times, here’s the opening sequence from the newest season, which aired last year. I offer no justifications for the saxophone, the pirate, or the glowing tennis ball, either.)

This brings me to my final point: if your audience is having fun, they are much less likely to care (or even question) if your story defies the laws of physics.

Why, exactly, do I enjoy the absurd parts in a show like The Prince of Tennis? I’m not sure. For one thing, I expect a sports anime to be over the top. More importantly, I’ve grown to have so much affection for the characters that I don’t care how many times they twist the laws of physics. I just root for them to be awesome, to grow and change during the course of the story’s conflicts. If they do that by playing supernatural tennis, I don’t mind.

But that’s me. I know plenty of people who don’t like the show, for exactly that reason. The show is really popular, though, especially in Japan—to the point where it’s still ongoing, even though it started as a comic book all the way back in 1999. (Clearly, then, I’m not the only one who doesn’t mind!)

So as a writer, I always try to keep in mind what sort of audience I want, and what their needs might be. Am I writing for a guy like Sheldon, or someone more like me? Would I overlook a certain story development, if I read it in someone else’s novel? (Would Sheldon overlook it, if he’s a part of my target audience?) Does it match my story’s tone? And if all else fails, is it awesome in a story sense?

If the last answer is yes, my target audience will probably overlook a moment that breaks the laws of physics—even if it’s not foreshadowed or explained. They might even love it. Meanwhile, fans with different needs will look for stories that satisfy them elsewhere.

Story Logic vs. The Laws of Physics: Part One

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As I’ve said in the past, I love speculative fiction in all forms, especially stories in the fantasy genre. I also love to discuss them with fellow fans. Lately, I’ve been wondering why many fans (including me) can accept certain unrealistic elements in speculative fiction, but not others. I also wonder why those boundaries seem to be different for everyone—and if writers should worry about this balance when they’re writing, and if so, how.

But first, a clip from The Big Bang Theory that illustrates exactly what I mean…

So why does Sheldon accept that Superman can fly, yet go on to complain about the fact that when he saves Lois Lane from a fall, his success doesn’t conform to the laws of physics? The logic of the story dictates that Superman must rescue Lois, or the ending won’t be as satisfying to the audience. (Unless the audience wants a dark or genre-defying Superman story, which is another discussion entirely!) Since Sheldon didn’t mind one violation of physics (a man flying), why does he care so much about the second violation?

You could argue that this is due to Sheldon’s career as a physicist. But then how he can accept Superman’s impossible abilities in the first place? Besides, this kind of conversation happens constantly, not just among fans who are physicists. I’ve overheard plenty of heated debates exactly like this one, while standing in line at comic conventions. So, why? Why do some fans dislike certain scientific inaccuracies in their speculative fiction, while letting other inaccuracies slide?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer. But it may have something to do with what I like to call the Personal Logic Threshold (PLT).

Basically, the Personal Logic Threshold refers to the point at which an individual can no longer suspend their disbelief while experiencing a story. Many times, the occurrence is distracting enough that the person can no longer pay attention to the story at all. Instead, they fixate entirely on the moment that bothered them. Usually, it happens because the story broke the laws of physics in some way, or because some kind of logical fallacy or plot hole occurred. The trouble is, this threshold differs for everybody. I’ll give an example.

(Spoiler warning for The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies up ahead!)

The final movie in Peter Jackson’s version of The Hobbit features a lengthy battle. At one point, Legolas is fighting some orcs atop a mountain, around the crumbling ruins of a fortress. He starts to fight inside one of the towers, which falls over and wedges between two cliffs. Unbelievably, he continues to fight, as though the tower has simply become a bridge. In the end, the tower begins to break apart. Legolas then proceeds to jump across the falling rubble like it’s a staircase, in order to reach solid ground and avoid a deadly fall.

After we saw the movie, several of my friends pointed out that this moment defies the laws of physics. Which it does. In the real world, Legolas wouldn’t be able to push up from those falling bricks in order to step across them like that. It’s physically impossible. My friends disliked this moment; some of them were even angry it happened. As for me? I didn’t love it, but at the same time, I felt it wasn’t completely out of place in a Tolkien story. Here’s why:

Legolas is an Elf, part of a magical race. One thing Elves can do—which Legolas demonstrates in both the book and movie versions of The Fellowship of the Ring—is walk on top of the snow without snowshoes, when no one else can. (Not even hobbits, who are smaller and move quietly.) This implies that the way an Elf walks doesn’t conform to our laws of physics. Tolkien never wrote anything about Elves being able to float across falling rubble. But Legolas, like Superman, already defies physics in that respect. So from my point of view, I didn’t think that him jumping across falling rubble was entirely inconsistent with the setting. I thought it was cheesy, but not so implausible that it truly bothered me (especially when compared to other problems I had with the film).

My friends, on the other hand, acknowledged that they could accept a Legolas who walked on snow, but they could not accept a Legolas who floats over falling rubble. For them, it broke their Personal Logic Threshold. The idea bugged them too much for them to accept it as a part of the narrative. Clearly, this is a subjective phenomenon, and varies from fan to fan.*

So should writers worry about this? If nothing else, I think it’s useful to acknowledge that it happens, and try to understand why.

From what I can tell, this break happens in one of two ways. Sometimes, individuals in the audience are concerned with accuracy in a specific area of a story. This usually happens because they have expertise in that area, so they tend to fixate on it. (Like Sheldon with physics, for example.) However, this can also happen when a story goes too far for the audience’s tastes, breaking the rules in a way that doesn’t fit with their idea of what the story was supposed to be like. In the case of Legolas, my friends felt the falling rubble episode was a cheesy “action” moment, which undermined the serious tone of Tolkien’s setting.

(Also worth noting: the Legolas example comes from an adaptation of a beloved author’s work, not from the author himself. This is another factor that can affect a fan’s ability to accept such a moment as a valid part of the narrative.)

So what can those of us who are interested in stories and writing learn from the Personal Logic Threshold? I’ll deal with that in my next post.

(Note: for this reason, Teatime Tuesday will be Teatime Thursday this week!)

*The question of whether stories that conform to the laws of physics are “better” in some way is another subject entirely.

Make-Believe

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When did I first start loving stories? As soon as I was old enough to act them out. When I was little, my sister and I played make-believe every day. We told stories for hours on end—sometimes with our dolls, sometimes wearing costumes and wielding props. These tales were filled with danger and excitement, and a bizarre amount of tragedy.

My sister and I enacted many a death scene. Our poor dolls suffered from all kinds of injuries—lost limbs, scarred faces. I went through a phase where my favorite doll was a constant invalid, usually from diseases I had read about in Victorian novels. (Scarlet fever was a favorite, for some reason!) My longsuffering grandmother often played the parts of villains from Disney movies, “kidnapping” my sister over and over so I could rescue her.

Yup, Disney movies. I was a kid in the nineties, during the height of the Disney Renaissance. I never grew out of it. Just a few weeks ago, I went to Disney World again. I can’t count how many times I’ve been to the various Disney theme parks. I did a report on Disneyland in the fifth grade, and I even tried to draw a guidebook, with reviews on all my favorite attractions.

Why? What’s so great about a commercialized theme park? And why do I love the Disney take on fairy tales, as sugary and simplistic as it is, when I enjoy darker stories just as much? I guess the best explanation comes from a phrase written on a plaque over the entrance to Disneyland. A phrase that as a kid, I read each time I entered the park, committing it to memory like some sort of prayer…

“Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”

My love for Disneyland comes from my fascination with make-believe. Make-believe is about fairy tales, about fantasy and magic. It allows you to visit other times and places. It invites you to pretend to be someone else, a person who is both like and unlike you. In other words, make-believe is about stories. As a writer, I pretend to be my characters all the time, and try to imagine places I’ve never been. As a kid, I practiced that skill every day, by putting on a princess costume and waving around a plastic sword.

I still put on costumes sometimes. (More on that later!) I still watch cartoons. And I still go to Disneyland and watch the fireworks and sing along with hundreds of little girls while they pretend to be Queen Elsa, the newest Disney heroine— who is not searching for a prince*, and who is not powerless, but discovers a powerful magic inside herself.

Frozen Singalong

The Frozen Singalong at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. (Apologies for the poor photo quality!)

Basically, I’m still a huge kid on the inside. In a way, that’s part of my job. (That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!) And as for those girls who sang in the audience? I’m excited to see what kind of stories they will share with us someday.

*Unlike her sister Anna, interestingly enough. But the intricacies of the plot of Frozen are a topic for another blog post.

So, Why Story?

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I’ve wanted to write a post about this topic for a long time. This is the short version; I might expand later. Basically, I want to answer a simple question… Why am I so fascinated by stories, and fiction in particular?

The first part of the question is easy to answer. Humans are hard-wired to enjoy story. We crave the narrative form, even in nonfiction. It hooks us, holds our attention, and feels more personal than a basic repetition of facts. (I could go into more detail about this, but I’ll leave that for a later post.)

The second part of the question is harder. When it comes to stories, why do I prefer fiction? I think it comes down to two reasons: possibility and meaning. To a certain extent, stories about factual events are limited. They’re constrained by what actually happened, by the limits of the “real world.” I enjoy broader possibilities when it comes to story—infinite outcomes, unusual characters, different worlds.

Then there’s the issue of meaning. When it comes to factual events, there’s an element of randomness that can’t be avoided. Sometimes, things in life just happen. Fans of narrative nonfiction appreciate this; they feel that the “realness” of chance improves the story, making it authentic and unpredictable.

Personally, I prefer the orchestrated meaning of fiction: where the author chooses each outcome, as part of a larger narrative. A fictional story is an act of creation—intentional, constructed. Good fiction is a work of art; each detail is included for a reason. Generally, I read nonfiction to find out what happens. I read fiction to experience the author’s vision, to discover new thoughts and ideas to appreciate.

To sum up, I like real-life stories about interesting people… Olympic athletes, musicians, and so on. But I love stories about characters who do incredible things that no one in this world ever could. These stories are exciting, and expand my mind—but they also make me think, and give me courage, because the characters’ struggles still remind me of my own. Which means the conclusions they reach about their lives can also become meaningful to me.

I guess what I’m saying is, an epic story can make life more epic. I crave that feeling, but I also need it to keep living. I think Samwise Gamgee in The Two Towers said it best…

“Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.”

This is My Story

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Hello, Internet! I’m returning to this blog after a two-year hiatus. I stopped posting for many reasons—some of them too personal to share here—but one of the biggest was a lack of direction, as far as blogging is concerned. To be honest, I’m still struggling with the question of what I want this blog to be. I’m an aspiring writer, and this is my professional website. But I don’t want to lecture fellow writers about the writing process… I’m still learning, and other writers give better advice about it than I can. I also don’t want to post too much about my daily experiences. My life is pretty boring, generally. I drink tea and I edit manuscripts. Not exactly post-worthy stuff.

But I do want to talk about stories. Stories are what excite me, what inspire me. I became a writer because of my love for fiction, and narrative in general. I’ve loved stories since I was a kid, and they define me—who I have been, who I am now, and who I want to become someday.

So I want to talk about why I love stories, and how I came to love them. I want to talk about my experiences with story—as a girl, as a geek, and as a writer. In the process, I hope to take a few trips down memory lane, and by exploring my own journey with story, become more enlightened about my views on it.

Most of all, I hope it will be interesting—both to myself, and any readers out there who might be curious.

Well, here’s hoping!