Moral Premise and Gaming

[Jeff_Nyman]

@Harry Giles

I think you’re partly right, and your expansion of your thinking in the last post is useful; however, I do think that working from moral premise structures, because they are dichotomous, tends to make writers work with moral binaries rather than introducing moral subtleties.

True. But as an author you are not writing about moral subtleties usually. You are approaching the story with a moral stance or viewpoint. You have a certain view that this is how the world works (or, at least, may work) and so you are setting out to prove that assertion. You may have antagonists or co-protaognists represent the subtleties, but ultimately you (and your protagonist) are taking some sort of stance.

An important point is that the plot is said to be an effect (a consequence of) the moral thoughts and values of the protagonist, who takes action based on those thoughts and values. It’s those moral thoughts, decisions, and actions that create in the audience an emotional feeling about the virtues and vices with which the protagonist struggles. It’s up to the audience to decide how they feel about the virtues and the vices – or even if they consider them as such – but it’s up to the author to make sure that the audience understands what the protagonist considers to be a virtue and a vice.

If there is too much subtlety, then there is a defocusing aspect to the story. Audiences tend to disengage from that because, after all, not getting meaning and structure is something they can get outside of fictional experiences. Fictional experiences are where they can go to get at least one possible meaning.

We’re likely to leave out the possibilities, which exist in the real world, that:

[Vice] leads to [desirable consequences];
[Virtue] leads to [undesirable consequences]; or
[Somewhere between Vice and Virtue] leads to [a mix of desirable and undesirable consequences];

True enough. But fiction is generally a focusing element for a given viewpoint. It’s not meant to present all sides necessarily, but rather to make a compelling argument. (Bear with me here because I’m not saying it has to be or that textual IF must follow that. I’m playing the Devil’s Advocate to your points.)

So let’s say we have a set of values. That set of values give us the motivation to take action. But what happens when those values are in conflict? This is when people must make a value-oriented decision under more extreme situations. But which value wins out? That is the dilemma and thus the drama. It’s dramatic conflict, more specifically, and the job of the author is to motivate the characters in a story into and out of such conflicts.

So my argument is that the focus needs to be conflict that is rooted in values structured around a moral premise. It needs to be clear that when a premise is moral in nature, that premise will make judgments of what is right or what is wrong. So the author is essentially coming down on one side or other of the “versus” dichotomy.

So going with what you say here:

Faced with a difficult choice between vice and virtue, the protagonist suffers moral paralysis, leading to either disaster or enlightenment through non-action;
The protagonist does what they think is virtuous and then realises they’re actually acting viciously (actually, this is quite common in blockbusters, though its inverse is rarer: it’s just that it’s usually introduced as a childish “plot twist” rather than a moral conundrum);
The world is too complex that making moral choices seems impossible;
The world is too complex, but the protagonist tries to make moral choices, leading to any of desirable consequences, undesirable consequences, personal fulfilment, personal anxiety, utopia or a totalitarian state;

Good examples. In your second example, what you have is the protagonist following the vice rather than the virtue. In the first case, “moral paralysis” may then be the vice side of your premise. (“Failure to take action and make decisions leads to disaster.”) In the third case, that’s a valid viewpoint but how do you characterize it? Believing that the world is too complex and that moral choice is impossible could be a vice that you explore thematically via a character. Recognizing that moral choice is possible even in the face of complexity could be a virtue.

So what your statements above are showing is that you have different stories you might want to tell. Now what’s a character that can be used to showcase those ideas? You may have people out there who do believe that the complexity of the world does mean no moral decisions are possible. Do you agree? If so, make that your moral premise and then prove it via a dramatic series of events. Do you disagree? If so, tell that story instead. That’s what I mean about the premise focusing you on the story you want to tell.

Going back to an earlier example, Mario Puzo wanted to tell the story of a guy who decided that immediate family was more important than anything, even the law or even a morality based on the idea that murder is wrong. Michael Corleone’s wife represented some moral subtlety as did other situational elements of the film (such as getting revenge for a killed brother). But Puzo had a specific story he wanted to tell and a premise he wanted to prove via Michael. Having Michael be vague and ambivalent towards whether to be a criminal overlord or a law-abiding citizen would only work up to a point. Michael had to start approaching one or the other.

Likewise, having Anakin constantly waffle between being a Jedi or a Sith would not have worked for too long. Yet notice there were moral subtleties played with. After all, the Jedi did often act like closed-minded jerks. They were using Anakin for a specific purpose without letting him in all details. Palpatine did, at the very least, have some good points about what the “quest for power” means and how it can take different forms and how “good and evil are points of view.”

In fact, what you’re describing is really how you apply inciting incidents, turning points, and an eventual moment of grace into a story, where the conflicting viewpoints and the subtleties ebb and flow until either the vice or the virtue dominates. Getting the moment of grace into textual IF is actually a lot bigger of a challenge than getting the moral premise in.

[Ron_Newcomb]

@Jeff Nyman

The “identification” aspect is important because when the audience sees a given protagonist struggling with the difficulty of making some tough decision, that audience will start to identify with that character and in some sense try to make the choice for them. So the protagonist has something at stake; and if the audience identifies with the need – with what’s at stake – then they’ll root for the protagonist to make the right decision.

But it’s also common knowledge that you can’t sympathize with yourself. So conflation of PC & player destroys this rooting-for aspect.

In textual IF, the audience (the players) gets to make the “right” decision – the one they believe is right.

Doesn’t this rob the story of a lot of its tension, when the will-he-or-wont-he decision points are made by the reader? The reader will never worry about the protag cause they control the protag.

I wonder that, rather than un-conflating PC & player, which can be difficult to do regardless the pronouns you use while the prompt drives the character, it would be more fruitful to divide viewpoint character from protagonist, letting the reader drive the VC and only influence the protag.

[bcressey]

@Jeff Nyman

In textual IF, the audience (the players) gets to make the “right” decision – the one they believe is right. If they go down the “virtue” side, they will agree with the author and experience the positive side of the moral premise. If they go down the “vice” side, they will disagree with the author and experience the negative side of the moral premise. The key is that the author has to have done a good job in presenting both arguments, as it were.

Well, I agree that the author has to present both arguments, but I disagree that the game has to accommodate both sides in the form of divergent interactive choices to do so successfully. An approach like that taken in The Primrose Path, where the protagonist will refuse certain actions for reasons grounded in character, is one way of handling this. Acknowledge the interaction but nullify the choice.

For that matter, Lost Pig offers an interesting perspective on the morality of conventional IF behavior. Grunk is permitted to ignore that morality, but the player is not permitted to justify his immoral behavior within the parameters of the game world and scoring system. You can either shrug off the consequences of your actions and accept a lower score, or you can make amends. This is successful but arguably a big part of why it works is that Grunk is not a character who can assert his own moral code.

The alternative is to accept a wide swath of behavior as acceptable and implicitly moral. Leaving the “right” decision up to the player rather than the character is effectively the same as making no decision at all. It doesn’t sharpen the sense of moral dilemma; rather, it undermines the foundation of morality by weakening the character’s identity.

Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability. Static fiction has an edge because it is fixed in form, but interactive fiction should be no less inevitable for its interactivity.

[Jeff_Nyman]

@Ron Newcomb

But it’s also common knowledge that you can’t sympathize with yourself. So conflation of PC & player destroys this rooting-for aspect.

Agreed. But there are degrees of conflation; it’s not an either-or.

Doesn’t this rob the story of a lot of its tension, when the will-he-or-wont-he decision points are made by the reader? The reader will never worry about the protag cause they control the protag.

It’s questionable to what extent people truly “worry” about a character they read about or see on film. What they are often doing is anticipating actions based upon what they think they understand about that protagonist (given what the author has presented up to this point) and what they themselves might do in a similar situation. A lot of this happens at a very low level, however. In fact, the extent to which you are thinking those things consciously while reading a book or viewing a film is a measure of how much you are being taken out of the immediacy of the experience. So the “worry” is often a measure of expectations being established and then seeing if those are met or not.

Readers will have certain expectations that they come in with (such as if they reading or playing in a certain genre). But some of those expectations will be built up as they interact with your particular instance of the genre. Given both of those operative concepts, readers will have their expectations and from those will establish a set of hopes regarding how the story can possibly turn out.

That being said, you could argue the tension is even more in place when the onus is on the player to participate at a greater level than just reading. However, this does also depend on the level of writing. I think if the writing is lackluster or doesn’t use established techniques for engaging someone who is taking part in a fictional experience, then the tension will not be there either way.

I wonder that, rather than un-conflating PC & player, which can be difficult to do regardless the pronouns you use while the prompt drives the character, it would be more fruitful to divide viewpoint character from protagonist, letting the reader drive the VC and only influence the protag.

The premise that it’s difficult to unconflate the protagonist character (PC) and the player is one that I haven’t seen borne out much so I’m at a disadvantage on that side of things. (Read that as: I may have blinders that I’m not sure how to remove in this case.) Personally, I’ve seen the opposite, when the writing is effective and when the protagonist is clearly defined as a character that the reader has to understand rather than “agree with” or “accept as themself.”

The issue I have with the viewpoint character is that the protagonist is going to be the person the story is about. They are the person that you, as author, have chosen as being the most interesting person to follow given the set of events that is going to transpire. A reader will logically ask why they would be playing another character if the protagonist is the more interesting one. And if the viewpoint character is the more interesting one, then why aren’t they the protagonist? How do you establish a engaging character arc when you follow what amounts to a co-protagonist rather than the protagonist?

But, again, this seems to be predicated upon the idea that it might be difficult to separate the protagonist and the player (in the eyes of the player) and I’ve not found that to be the case. That’s not the same as saying that I can’t see narrative possibilities where you have a protagonist who does manipulate other characters in the game into taking actions (or not taking actions). Maybe textual IF does offer some possibility for controlling the character who the story is not fundamentally about.

[bcressey]

@Jeff Nyman

Maybe textual IF does offer some possibility for controlling the character who the story is not fundamentally about.

Lock & Key is one example of this.

[Jeff_Nyman]

@bcressey

Well, I agree that the author has to present both arguments, but I disagree that the game has to accommodate both sides in the form of divergent interactive choices to do so successfully.

Agreed. I don’t think the game does. I think I confused how I was trying to accomodate the viewpoint of how the vice and the virtue could be enacted in the same game, but I didn’t make it clear that I don’t think that’s the best approach from an authoring perspective.

The alternative is to accept a wide swath of behavior as acceptable and implicitly moral. Leaving the “right” decision up to the player rather than the character is effectively the same as making no decision at all. It doesn’t sharpen the sense of moral dilemma; rather, it undermines the foundation of morality by weakening the character’s identity.

Could not have said it better myself.

Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability. Static fiction has an edge because it is fixed in form, but interactive fiction should be no less inevitable for its interactivity.

Agreed. What textual IF – and thus the interactivity – allow is perhaps more thorough explorations of the nuances or the consequences of a set of actions as they lead towards inevitable conclusions (i.e., proving the premise). This meshes with the reports of players who, in aggregate, respond more positively to games wherein the interaction is constrained along certain axes rather than being a wide open experience. It’s a matter of the depth of the experience (engaging with a story and its ramifications) rather than the breadth (i.e., how many multiple paths can I find in this game?)

[katz]

However, for me, structuring around the moral premise - around, effectively, prescriptive ethical dichotomies - is still a horrendously simplified approach to storytelling.

I agree: A print-fiction story with the theme “[Vice] leads to [undesirable consequences]; but [Virtue] leads to [desirable consequences]” would seem (to me) horrendously banal, suitable only for children.

After all, regardless of what you put in the brackets, the statement will never be true: the world is too complex for any action to have an absolutely guaranteed result. For instance, is it true that:

[Good job-hunting skills] lead to [a job]; but
[Poor job-hunting skills] lead to [unemployment]?

Of course not. Sometimes they do, but it may be overreaching to even say that they usually do.

Literature has always recognized this. Tragic figures, some of the most interesting characters and stories in literature, are often people who did everything right and somehow still failed. Oedipus; “star-crossed lovers”: It doesn’t matter what you do; fate has spoken. (It needn’t be a fate thing, either; sometimes it’s the opposite: random, unpredictable butterfly effect derailed your plans.)

True. But as an author you are not writing about moral subtleties usually. You are approaching the story with a moral stance or viewpoint.

Good print authors are virtually always talking about moral subtleties. Not that they are themselves cool and disinterested third parties, but stories where right and wrong are clearly and unambiguously defined are usually considered thematically week. Besides, who wants to read a tract proselytizing the author’s views?

I do think that working from moral premise structures, because they are dichotomous, tends to make writers work with moral binaries rather than introducing moral subtleties.

This is the problem with moral choice games; as Zero Punctuation once pointed out, the choices are always “save the orphans from the burning building” or “kill all the orphans”–they’re not very interesting because they’re never the sort of thing that would actually be a difficult decision in real life. For instance, in the Neverwinter Nights games, my characters always end up jammed against the good end of the spectrum because you have to do really horrendous stuff to ever get evil points. Neutral alignment might as well not exist.

[Jeff_Nyman]

@katz

I agree: A print-fiction story with the theme “[Vice] leads to [undesirable consequences]; but [Virtue] leads to [desirable consequences]” would seem (to me) horrendously banal, suitable only for children.

The only problem is that many, many of the most successful screenwriters do use a moral premise and those films routinely those that do very well with audiences. (Not all the time, of course. I don’t mean to imply that just having a moral premise means you have a hit.) Christopher Nolan, for example, wrote an article on the screenplay he utilized for The Dark Knight and how the moral premise was utilized. That film was far from being suitable “only for children.” Pixar Films utilize a moral premise in all of their films and those films are suitable for children, but very suitable for adults as well. Many of the most popular printed authors out there utilize a moral premise concept. And here by popular I don’t just mean by sales.

After all, regardless of what you put in the brackets, the statement will never be true: the world is too complex for any action to have an absolutely guaranteed result.

Fiction isn’t about the “real” world and thus the fact that world is more complex doesn’t have to factor in to that extent. Fictional people use focused dialogue that people in real life don’t use. Geography shrinks or expands based on need. Fiction deals with a facsimilie of the world in order to focus on more specific aspects. No one expects fiction to mirror the real world. That’s, in fact, one reason why people enjoy fiction: because it isn’t as complex as the real world in all cases.

Good print authors are virtually always talking about moral subtleties. Not that they are themselves cool and disinterested third parties, but stories where right and wrong are clearly and unambiguously defined are usually considered thematically week.

I would disagree with this, unless you have examples of stories that utilized a moral premise and were widely considered to be “thematically weak.” Certainly authors may explore moral subtleties. But the “good print authors” do tend to come down on a particular side of a particular fence because that’s what the protagonist ultimately does, regardless of whether they end up winning or losing. Even Kurt Vonnegut, who had the listless anit-hero down to an art form, and did explore moral ambiguity and subtlety, did have a very focused moral premise operative in his works.

Besides, who wants to read a tract proselytizing the author’s views?

That’s a mischaracterization of the moral premise and I hope it’s not one I have promoted. The problem is that the moral premise is a large concept, utilizing in a variety of ways in both stage, film, and novel. I have no doubt I haven’t necessarily done it justice. But, like it or not, when you watch a film or read a book, you are getting the author’s views. Those authors who do become preachy or proselytize do tend to do poorly with audiences. But equating that with authors that utilize a moral premise would be inaccurate.

That being said, please don’t think I’m dismissing your views here. I do take them seriously; it’s simply that I’ve worked with writers who have often been very dismissive of the moral premise, regardless of how much they have studied its application in film and book, and then eventually come around to see the power it has as part of the storytelling toolbox. Again, though, I don’t mean to suggest that just having a moral premise is enough.

Writing fiction is about giving your reader a powerful emotional experience. To do this, you need to master several main aspects of fiction, including creating an immersive story world, constructing believable characters, building a well-structured plot, and overlaying it all with a theme. These are your core skills. The character change (or arc) is a central element of the effective story. The story is exploring a theme with that character. So that means most scenes, characters, dialogue, and images should ideally be a reflection of that theme. The story thus becomes a tool to create circumstances that will showcase the theme. Theme is one half of moral premise.

Some writers, in fact, turn the theme into a question, not a premise. As an example, rather than state the premise for Romeo and Juliet as something like “Great love defies even death,” you could ask, “What does great love defy?” or, more likely, “Can love survive even death?” Then let the story reach a natural conclusion. (Not the only conclusion; not the “right” conclusion for everyone. Just a conclusion that is consistent with the story you want to tell.) Ask a question, and let your story provide readers with an answer by experiencing it emotionally.

Another way authors utilize a moral premise is by asking this: What’s the major emotional decision the protagonist must make in order to resolve the story problem? That’s where you’ll find your theme, at the very least. A good example is the film Groundhog Day. The film is about a self-absorbed, arrogant, cynical guy who for some reason is being forced to relive the same day over and over again. He suffers throughout, but then gains courage to transform into an authentic, self-actualized human being. In telling the story, the movie hits on the essential truth that when we go beyond resentment over the conditions of life and death and accept our situation, we can become authentic and compassionate. This message is kept in the background of the film by focusing on the protagonist’s growth, as he goes through bewilderment and despair to generosity and, eventually, deep compassion for life. That film utilized a moral premise very effectively and, again, I don’t think anyone could say it was “suitable only for children.”

[gravel]

Hmm. So I’m not even sure I fully understand “moral premise” now. Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises? I’ve been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.

[Jeff_Nyman]

@gravel

Hmm. So I’m not even sure I fully understand “moral premise” now. Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises? I’ve been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.

Here’s one interesting link on a film that (according to some) didn’t have an effective moral premise:

moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/0 … -sink.html

The key phrase there, and the reason I link to that article, is the notion of a “false” moral premise. It’s often not the case that there’s no “message” behind the story, but rather that it’s a “false” message. Personally I prefer to think of that as an ineffective moral premise or one that isn’t consistently applied. (That was the problem many people had with the film The Mist, for example.)

The idea really focuses more on consistency of purpose rather than a binary statement of presence or absence. If your story hsa characters doing things that cannot be explained logically as coming from a value, you may have problems. (The idea there being that every character action must be logically connected to the character’s value motivation.) Proponents of the moral premise will say that all action is preceded by a decision that finds its motivation in a psychological value (virtue or vice).

The protagonist must have a physical, tangible goal. The audience must care about that goal. It doesn’t matter if the goal is a “good” thing (the audience really hopes the protagonist makes it) or if the goal is a bad thing (the audience hopes the protagonist doesn’t get it). What matters is that it is tangible. However, the protagonist’s goal can’t be reached until they first overcome their vice, the inner obstacle to their journey. They embrace what the author feels is a virtue to get to the goal.

Mind, this leaves totally open the interpretation between “virtue” and “vice.” That’s a key point: it’s what the protagonist considers to be the “good side” and the “bad side” – not the audience. The audience will have it’s own viewpoint but they can also embrace the vice. (People did root for Michael Corleone in the The Godfather, after all.)

I didn’t answer your question here but I was trying to answer the larger question of how it’s possible to look for a certain consistency of purpose in terms of how characters act and how much depth those characters are given such that believable actions stem from logical motivations. (Mind, “logical” doesn’t have to mean strict logic; it’s logical to that protagonist. And that logic may lead to reprehensible – but believable – actions.) When aggregated over a variety of axes, books and films that tend to show that consistency of purpose and an engaging motivational arc, tend to be much better regarded by audiences.

In film, a good example of an effective moral premise was Titanic. Another film was structurally very similar to it but had a (widely recognized) inconsistent moral premise was Pearl Harbor. Notice the difference in box office results, audience reaction, and critic reaction to both films. (Granted, Pearl Harbor still took in a huge amount of money relatively speaking. But not as much as expected or hoped for and certainly did not get the critical success that Titanic did.)

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

@Jeff Nyman

@gravel

Hmm. So I’m not even sure I fully understand “moral premise” now. Could you give some examples of stories without moral premises? I’ve been thinking every story has one, with more or less strong adherence to its letter.

Here’s one interesting link on a film that (according to some) didn’t have an effective moral premise:

moralpremise.blogspot.com/2010/0 … -sink.html

I don’t find this helpful at all, because Williams is pointing out a bunch of flaws in the film and saying that it has a false moral premise, but he doesn’t say why the moral premise is false, or what the flaws have to do with the false moral premise. For that matter, he doesn’t say why the vice should be “Keeping your word to find justice leads to drunken insanity” instead of “Fanaticism in the pursuit of justice leads to unscrupulous behavior and remorse” or something like that, which sounds like the moral premise I would draw from the story of a cop using a little girl as bait for a killer. (Haven’t seen the movie, though.)

In film, a good example of an effective moral premise was Titanic. Another film was structurally very similar to it but had a (widely recognized) inconsistent moral premise was Pearl Harbor.

Can you please spell the moral premises out?

[Jeff_Nyman]

@matt w

I don’t find this helpful at all, because Williams is pointing out a bunch of flaws in the film and saying that it has a false moral premise, but he doesn’t say why the moral premise is false, or what the flaws have to do with the false moral premise.

He does in that he says: “The virtues and vices are not parallel, and neither is the consequence.”

That’s part of what makes a moral premise work. Granted, he doesn’t spell that out but I probably should have mentioned that Stan is writing his blog for people who probably have some familiarity with the moral premise.

For that matter, he doesn’t say why the vice should be “Keeping your word to find justice leads to drunken insanity” instead of “Fanaticism in the pursuit of justice leads to unscrupulous behavior and remorse” or something like that, …

Yeah, he doesn’t, I agree. That said, he did say: “Here’s a good take what the film’s really about at the psychological level.” That implies other interpretations are possible. However, in seeing the film, it’s hard to find other interpretations that are consistent given how the characters act and the motivations established for the characters.

The idea is that a moral premise is a structural element that is acted out in the scenes, dialogue, and so on as mentioned before. Protagonists will act out the virtue side, antagonists will act out the vice side. Although in effective stories, the protagonist is effectively practicing the vice initially. At least up until the end of the first act. The premise isn’t accepted until the moment of grace in the film. And this can happen quite late in a film or book. (Consider Luke Skywalker’s moment of grace in A New Hope. It comes very, very late in the film.) Essentially the high-level structural element of effective stories that use the moral premise is this for the protagonist arc:

• Discovers Opportunity (inciting incident)
• Rejects Opportunity
• Accepts Opportunity
• Rejects Premise (practices vice)
• Accepts Premise (recognizes vice is an issue | moment of grace)
• Tries Premise (practices virtue)
• Commits to Premise (recognizes virtue is the way to go)

The film The Pledge does not follow any sort of structure even remotely like that. Thus the premise itself is only one of interpretation because the motivations are not consistent and certainly not believable.

A good example is the older film An Officer and a Gentleman. Here’s one way to word the film’s moral premise:

Arrogance and dishonesty with others leads to despair and a life not worth living; but
Giving ourselves honestly to others leads to hope and a better life.

That can be shortened a bit:

Deceiving ourselves and others leads to despair and death; but
Truthfulness to ourselves and others leads to hope and life.

Yet another way to word that is this:

Honest friendships and counselors lead to hope and life; but
Dishonest friendships and counselors lead to despair and death.

Here what you see is a tightening of the concept of the moral premise. But if you watch the film, you’ll see that all the scenes play out this premise in all of the characters.

Another example is Braveheart. (And, yeah, I know: everyone picks that one.) Here’s one example of the film’s moral premise:

The willingness of leaders to compromise liberty leads to tyranny; but
The willingness of leaders to die for liberty leads to freedom.

If you contract that a bit, you get:

Compromise of liberty leads to tyranny; but
Dying for liberty leads to freedom.

Here you see how you can simply contract the guiding concept of the moral premise.

Another example is from Bruce Almighty. Here’s a possible moral premise from the film:

Expecting miracles, or others to labor with their gifts on our behalf leads to frustration, anger, and chaos; but
Laboring to be the miracle for others using our gifts for their behalf leads to contentment, happiness, and peace.

That’s a mouthful. A short form would be this:

Expecting a miracle leads to frustration; but
Being a miracle leads to peace.

This is contracting not just the guiding concept, but also contracting the end result of the application of the concept.

Another example is the film In the Bedroom which in many ways does match The Pledge in a lot of particulars. Here is one possible premise:

Ignoring moral instruction leads to death and bitterness; but
Flaunting moral instruction leads to killing and dread.

Another version is this one:

Watching over a child’s well-being leads to health and life; but
Undermining a child’s well-being leads to sickness and death.

Again, notice how you can be very specific (and in context) with the second case, which is a more specific interpretation of the abstract with the first case. Unlike The Pledge, this film routinely proves out each end of the premise through its various characters. It does consistently.

What you can see with these examples is that you can abstract the premise but also put it into a specific context of a story. For example, in Braveheart the concept went from the somewhat specific “the willingness of leaders to compromise…” to the somewhat general “compromise.” In Bruce Almighty, it was possible to go from the more specific “frustration, anger, and chaos” to the more general “frustration.” You can certainly see that with An Officer and a Gentleman, where you start with “arrogance and dishonesty with others,” go to “deceiving ourselves and others” to, finally, “honest friendships.”

The reason I’m showing all this is to show that the reason it’s possible to apply these and have others empirically share the observations is that the scenes and the character arcs all play out these premises. It’s not to say that other premises are not possible for any one of these films; but for it to be a moral premise, the situational elements would have to accurately reflect those statements at each point.

Can you please spell the moral premises out?

These might actually be good exercises for anyone/everyone to try. Titanic in particular is interesting in that it focuses on class differences and social constraints. These are mirrored in the constraints of the ship and the options available to those fleeing it; thus you also have a focus between the difference with man and machine. (The machine will equalize all class and social elements.) It’s also interesting in that film is really a story within a story. There’s also the notion of duty and sacrifice inherent in much of the film. It’s a thematically rich film. Taking all those elements, contrast that film with Pearl Harbor. Certainly you have notions there of honor and duty. Are those played out in all the characters, however? What corresponding vice acted as a counterpoint? War is a thematic element (of course) but what’s the focal element for war as played out in the main characters?

[katz]

Fiction isn’t about the “real” world and thus the fact that world is more complex doesn’t have to factor in to that extent. Fictional people use focused dialogue that people in real life don’t use. Geography shrinks or expands based on need. Fiction deals with a facsimilie of the world in order to focus on more specific aspects. No one expects fiction to mirror the real world. That’s, in fact, one reason why people enjoy fiction: because it isn’t as complex as the real world in all cases.

Escape fiction is used as, obviously, an escape from the complexities of real life, but serious fiction emulates the complexity. That’s one reason why the French Romantics were so good. Stories that distill life too much end up feeling artificial (for instance, if the main character’s friends all seem to only be friends with the main character and to not have their own independent lives). Simplification of moral issues is particularly questionable, since glossing over real complexities can result in conclusions that have have no application to the real world.

For instance, there’s the common question of whether it’s acceptable to lie to save someone’s life or prevent some other bad result. Someone who holds the “no” view might write a story where, whenever someone tells the truth, the situation ends up working itself out. Conversely, writers often try to shoehorn their characters into tragic moral choice situations when, in real life, there might be dozens of other available options.

Certainly, I would consider the two examples you gave to be major flaws, particularly the latter.

[katz]

I still think that a story that can actually be encapsulated in such an equation is inferior to one that acknowledges the limitations of the equation.

Compare V For Vendetta the movie with V For Vendetta the graphic novel.

In the movie, we have a clear theme of:
Too much government leads to horrible tyranny.
Resisting tyranny leads to freedom.

And that’s why, despite being compelling, aesthetically beautiful, and making thousands of women fall in love with Hugo Weaving (it helps when you can’t see his face), it was thematically trite.

In the comic, the formula is different:
Too much government leads to horrible tyranny.
Too little government leads to horrible anarchy.

So the story is the same, but the ending is drastically different and better, because it acknowledges that there isn’t one correct principle you can cling to that will inevitably lead to a positive result.

[Laroquod]

I agree with katz — in fact I think James Joyce (and his contemporaries) pretty conclusively killed the moral premise as a respectable form of storytelling, and it’s never been the same since.

To a certain extent, too much formulising over the story’s message will lead IF down a very well-travelled and now-deprecated ‘O. Henry’ type road (O. Henry’s moral premises are almost perfectly constructed little turns that would suit IF perfectly and which are now almost universally considered to be trite and/or facile).

But as I pointed out earlier, it’s possible that this will turn out to be a necessary phase for IF. After all you can’t figure out how to step light until you’ve already learned all the ways you can step too heavy — by stepping too heavy. It wouldn’t be terrible if this were the case, but it wouldn’t be ideal either, and personally I prefer a simple quest narrative, if the alternative is an O. Henry-style moral twist, because that isn’t interesting or even respectible in literary circles in this day and age. And if you’re not going for the real gold (true moral intrigue — not a one-linerable premise — of the complexity expected by the modern sophisticated reader) then why even bother leaving the land of the thinly disguised quest?

Quest narratives work and they’re proven. The simple moral premise is deprecated in literature. It would be a shame to trade the former for the latter — what I wish for IF is to leapfrog the middle part, the part that is no longer really popular nor interesting.

Pass directly through modernism and go to postmodernism — do not collect $200 in exchange for breaking your character’s principles. 8)

Paul.

P.S. Write something with all the moral complexity and indeterminacy of any single story in James Joyce’s Dubliners; this is what it’d take, at minimum, to truly impress a modern literary type, I believe. I don’t think we’re going to get there by hyperfocusing on moral premise. James Joyce’s work is a progressive rejection (to the eventual point of absurdity) of that exact trend in literature and to a large extent the entire literary world has followed him into that territory and left the moral premise behind as a measuring stick for anything, quite a long time ago. Why should IF be pounding on that old, decrepit door? Except if it is a necessary inescapable evil; that’s the only reason I can see to go there: to run our seedy little experiments and abscond with the data into more interesting realms. I definitely do not see achieving a working moral premise as a worthy goal; quite the opposite. It’s more like a training environment for how to achieve moral intrigue; how to involve and provoke the reader’s moral senses without provoking them to clamp down into certainty or conclusiveness.

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

Another question: What might the moral premise of the Cherry Orchard be? Is there anyway to fit it into a moral premise analysis such that Semyonov-Pishchik’s plot makes sense?

If I were to give it the moral premise analysis, it’d be something like: Denying reality leads to a rude awakening; crushing people’s dreams alienates you from society. But Semyonov-Pishchik is even deeper into denial than the Ranevskayas, and he’s saved by a last-minute miracle. However we analyze it, the whole point of Semyonov-Pishchik’s plot seems to be that he epitomizes the main characters’ vices even more than the main characters do, yet he escapes the consequences.

The whole idea of the moral premise analysis of literature seems to be that characters control their fates through their actions (otherwise you wouldn’t have the virtue -> reward; vice -> punishment equation), but that seems simplistic.

[Reading Laroquod on Joyce: Well, Joyce was influenced by Chekhov, I think? I wouldn’t say the modernists killed off the moral premise, but maybe they opened up an alternative. If I wanted to be really obnoxious I’d ask what the moral premise of Waiting for Godot was.]

OTOH, it does seem like a useful paradigm for IF, because in IF we want the player’s actions to have consequences. It’s generally unsatisfying otherwise. I still have to respond some to the IF-related ideas that we’ve been discussing. Short preview: When we talk about The Godfather, giving Michael the chance to go straight would’ve undermined the story Puzo/Coppola wanted to tell – but maybe that’s why it’s a novel/movie rather than a game. (And the games make you into a supporting character, or so says Wikipedia.)

[katz]

OTOH, it does seem like a useful paradigm for IF, because in IF we want the player’s actions to have consequences. It’s generally unsatisfying otherwise.

Of course, but not with simplistic good action=good result algorithms. It’s much more interesting to have the results cascade in unpredictable ways: Good actions with bad results, bad actions with good results, actions that don’t influence anything, events not caused by the player that cause results for the player, and so on.

[Harry_Giles]

@matt w

Another question: What might the moral premise of the Cherry Orchard be? Is there anyway to fit it into a moral premise analysis such that Semyonov-Pishchik’s plot makes sense?

I reckon you’ll be onto a loser if you try and fit Chekhov into the structures of the moral premise. Chekhov was in a constant struggle to do in his plays what he did much more successfully in his stories: to remove the constraining artificiality of plot and narrative structures, and instead to show life as it is, in its complexity. He belongs somewhere in a whole tradition of realist theatre and literature that did so – which was, yes, an influence on Joyce. Realism itself grew in part out of a naturalist tradition in theatre and literature, which, relevantly to your points, was explicitly inspired by deterministic philosophy and the idea that characters had no real agency.

That said . . .

Pass directly through modernism and go to postmodernism — do not collect $200 in exchange for breaking your character’s principles. 8)

OK, this is nicely put, and I’m glad others are wading in eloquently on the points I was trying to make, but I’m going to wave something from the sidelines: there’s a risk here of getting all liberal-deterministic and society-and-art-are-a-march-of-progress about all this. I don’t really see the development of art as in any sense a natural progress from one state to another more sophisticated or complex state. Art evolves, but evolution is not linear progress.

I’m in danger of derailing the conversation entirely, but what the hell, let’s give it a shot: As I wrote in the other thread, mythology and storytelling in the period before the 18th century novel were far more morally ambiguous and complex than they are throughout mass enterainment of the last couple of centuries. If I were going out on a limb, I’d argue that simplistic moral narratives evolved through the demands of mass entertainment, and also through the concentration of the means of artistic production in the hands of a few. What I’m saying is: folk art is often more complex and interesting than state-sponsored or commercial art. Which is relevant to IF, of course, which, while wildly and deliciously various in its forms and aims, is often a form of internet folk art.

[Jeff_Nyman]

@Laroquod

Write something with all the moral complexity and indeterminacy of any single story in James Joyce’s Dubliners; this is what it’d take, at minimum, to truly impress a modern literary type, I believe.

Possibly. But for myself I’m not trying to impress a literary type necessarily. I’m trying to work with a modern audience that is more likely to actually play and engage in textual IF. I’m not saying this for commercial purposes. I’m simply saying that I’m going where the audience is. Textual IF, while it’s made lots of technical strides and has brought in newcomers, has actually done nothing to really appeal to a wider audience, despite a long amount of time in which to do so.

I think modern books and the film industry have proven that you can tell very effective stories that do appeal to a wide audience. The game industry has shown the same thing. My hope is that textual IF may at least try to learn from some of those successes. (And where they didn’t succeed, why not.) I do think that if textual IF tries to stay within the realm that would appeal to the “literary type”, it will stay in the same relatively lackluster place it has been for many years. That may be okay. For myself, I’d really like to broaden the audience.

Why should IF be pounding on that old, decrepit door? Except if it is a necessary inescapable evil; that’s the only reason I can see to go there: to run our seedy little experiments and abscond with the data into more interesting realms. I definitely do not see achieving a working moral premise as a worthy goal; quite the opposite.

It’s certainly a valid viewpoint. Obviously it’s one with which I would disagree, but I certainly recognize its validity. My goal here was more to present a technique — the moral premise. Like all techniques, it can be ineffective in some cases simply because of the realm in which it’s being imposed. In other cases, it can be misapplied. But it is a valid technique and it is one that works for three industries that textual IF has at least some structural and mechanistic similiarites to. As such dismissing it was not something I was prepared to do without actual experimentation, both in terms of myself applying it and then seeing some effects on various audiences.

That being said, the goal of this thread was to encourage discussion about the idea, regardless of whether people liked it or disliked it. If nothing else, people coming down on one side or the other is expected and I’ve learned a lot by reading contrary responses, for which I’m appreciative.

[Harry_Giles]

Good fiction leaves the reader with a sense of inevitability.

This was said a page or so ago, but I wanted to highlight it because it encapsulates so well what some of us are railing against. That sense of inevitability is exactly what some of us find simplified or trite about basing stories on narrative structures like the moral premise! I absolutely agree that doing so leads to well-constructed, compelling and rhetorically effective stories. But whether or not they’re “good” depends, crucially, on what you want the story to achieve. How “good” art is could be said to be determined by how effectively it achieves its goals, although many of us on different sides on this thread have made arguments for goodness based on what we think those goals ought to be.

(Etymological sidebar: I really like the word “crucial”: its literally etymological meaning is “as of a cross” (cf. “crucific”), but it came to mean “critical” more recently in reference, it seems, to a logical term referring to making a decision at a crossroads. So something is crucial when a decision about it determines in which direction we go.)

It’s certainly a valid viewpoint. Obviously it’s one with which I would disagree, but I certainly recognize its validity. My goal here was more to present a technique — the moral premise. Like all techniques, it can be ineffective in some cases simply because of the realm in which it’s being imposed. In other cases, it can be misapplied. But it is a valid technique and it is one that works for three industries that textual IF has at least some structural and mechanistic similiarites to. As such dismissing it was not something I was prepared to do without actual experimentation, both in terms of myself applying it and then seeing some effects on various audiences.

That being said, the goal of this thread was to encourage discussion about the idea, regardless of whether people liked it or disliked it. If nothing else, people coming down on one side or the other is expected and I’ve learned a lot by reading contrary responses, for which I’m appreciative.

I think this is well put. (By the way, you’re bloody good at the whole “well I recognise the validity of your viewpoint but here’s what I think” argumentative respect and politeness thing, for which thanks; I tend to get carried away by rhetorical flourishes, for which apologies.) I think part of the problem for some of us comes when narrative structures like the moral premise are prescribed as a cure-all for weak stories, when in fact what they do is help us to create particular kinds of stories for particular audiences. I hope you won’t mind if I quote you putting this well in the other Moral Premise thread:

I think (for me) that storytelling ability would depend on what audiences can (and want) to relate to. My ability to connect with audiences may be compromised were I to go certain routes. In which case my ability to “tell a story” doesn’t necessarily translate into effective storytelling. That being said, storytelling evolves. The nature of what people do and don’t like change.

What we want our art to do, and what methods we use to achieve those goals, should depend very much on what audiences we want for our art, how we understand those audiences, and what effect we want to have on them. I’ve maybe come down a little hard on Hollywood-style well-structured narratives (in theatre we have the technical term “well-made play”, which describes much the same kind of thing, and the development and theory of which contributed extensively to the development of the Hollywood narrative); I’m actually not as snobbish as all that, and think there is an important role for such storytelling. But I also think there’s a vital role, which IF can also play, for art which, through its formal structures and through its content, productively disrupts, disturbs, upsets and confuses.