Thinking before speaking

Contemplating this week the evolution of cultural products, first how the sensibilities of the time condition the kind of content that gets produced, then how the technology affects the formats that these products take, I started to consider the amount of effort that goes into creating these products and finally came to an almost philosophical realization: that any act of communication (and a book or a movie are as much an act of communication as a conversation at the bakery) unavoidably necessitates two distinct steps, starting with the formation of a mental image of all necessary in formation, followed by the formulation of the message itself. In fact, taken in its literal sense, the old recommendation to" think before you speak" is an oxymoron, since you cannot speak unless you have previously gathered the idea you want to express. Of course, the adage is implicitly saying to think about the consequences of what you say, but that is a story for another day.

But let us take another look at the two processes with the case of a simple conversation. Imagine a friend or a colleague who, right before lunch break, asks you if you would like to grab a bite together. Confronted with the question you would probably start by checking your inner sensors to see if you are hungry at all. Then you might search your memory about what you had for breakfast and even contemplate if you have plans for dinner to try to balance your food intake. Finally you might evaluate your personal history with your friend, how appealing their company is precisely today and whether they could be in a particularly vulnerable situation that requires your support or your advice. And all these considerations, which happen inside your mind in the blink of an eye, are part of the first process, which we can call ideation, and essentially ends with the arrival at a conceptual response, be it "yes", "no" or even "let's try to sneak out of this one but not too harshly".

Photo: Christian Weidinger

The second step is the formulation of the answer, turning it into a message, in this case in the shape of spoken words and, possibly, certain amount of body language. Answering in the affirmative it is not the same to show a great appreciation (e.g. "yes, it would be great" or "I was about to propose the same") that staying neutral ("sounds good") or even slightly reluctant ("I was going to skip lunch, but OK"). In all the examples you are accepting the invitation, but the choice of words tells a different stories. Notably, in an interactive situation such as a conversation, the ideation and the formulation follow one another quickly as you process the contributions of the counterpart and update your ideas. For instance, after an initial rejection your colleague might try to convince you ("come on, it has been so long since the last time") and force you to either formulate a stronger refusal or to cave in and accept.

When it comes to cultural products the interaction is mostly unidirectional, going from the author to the public, and this gives the creators much more time for both phases. If we consider a journalistic or scientific piece the ideation phase turns into research: gathering all the information relevant for the message you want to send including time sequences, relations of causality and even, if appropriate, the opinions and ideas of the people involved. For fiction pieces, the ideation phase becomes a world building exercise with a bigger or smaller scope depending on the situation: it night be enough to consider a single scene and a couple of characters for a short story, but long epics like George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" or J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" are famous for their careful and intricate lattice of people, places, slightly modified laws of physics and a long list of past interactions among them, all of which essential for a self-consistent narrative.

However, building the world (including the events that are to be told) is only half of the work: the other half is turning all these ideas into a story. This includes, for instance, details such us when to introduce each of the characters and how much depth their descriptions should have. Sometimes the particulars of a character are revealed when they interact with others ("the barkeep looked at his scarred face") or with the environment ("his muddy boots stained the floor"), and there might even be significant parts that are not described at all, but that the author has conceived and kept in mind during the development of the character.

Actions undergo a similar process: some are presented directly (perhaps not in chronological order or even multiple times from different points of view) while others are mentioned by the characters or remain untold, weighing silently on the memories and souls of our imaginary characters.The choice of precisely what to tell and in which order, and what to withhold and for how long is essential to the craft of telling a story and it can make or break a blockbuster even with a carefully designed world.

Establishing a comparison with the adage that we mentioned above, it is obvious that the "thinking" part is not only a very hard work (at least if you intend to have a decent results), but it is also inescapable: there is no way to tell a story unless you have a world in which it happens, which is why it has been historically rather common to tell again the same stories again and again, updating the narrative techniques to the sensibility of the time but not having to forge a brand new world from scratch. This is the case every time a theater crew puts together a play, with their own costumes and backgrounds, but it is not infrequent with movies either. As a very salient example "Little Women" has had several cinematographic versions of which at least four were pretty successful at the time: George Cukor's in 1933, Mervyn LeRoy's in 1949, Gillian Armstrong's in 1994 and the most recent 2019 version by Greta Gerwig.

Still, building a complex fictional world also means that many stories exceed the scope of a single narration, so modern cultural products rely more and more in the "franchise" model, where they take the world was built a long time ago and, possibly, with excruciating level of detail, and tell about events that were already part of the design but had never been in focus, or perhaps introduce some new elements and see how that reality would evolve without breaking its internal logic. A good story teller will be able to present the characters with enough detail that a newcomer will understand the narrative but a fan will not feel bored or insulted. One way another, it is certainly much less work "reporting" on the events that happened in an existing imaginary world than figuring one out.

Occasionally, it can happen that a fictional world has been narrated so thoroughly that almost all story lines have been dutifully closed, to the point that it is just not possible to extend the events any further or even to create a "prequel"  that explains how that reality came to be. In these situations the entertainment industry resorts to a so-called "reboot" where the world is modified in a few key points so that the the new story starts in the same way as the previous telling but ends up with a different development because of these key elements. The movies in the "Spiderman" and "Star Trek" sagas are good examples of this phenomenon. Some fans feel betrayed by such operations, but most simply welcome the chance to watch or read new adventures of their favorite characters even if they deviate from the canon or have significant overlap with previous ones.

One notable consequence of this dichotomy is that forging an interesting narrative requires in fact two different talents, which do not have to overlap necessarily. Some people might be extraordinary creators of alien life forms, designers of beautiful landscapes or forgers of carefully assembled codes of laws, but all these abilities are irrelevant unless you have a way to tell a story with them. Conversely, there are some who are able to make a captivating narration of the most mundane event that they have witnessed, but figuring a story out of the blue is something that simply eludes them. Only a few fortunate ones have been blessed with the combination of both, and the rest of us have to either find our missing half or giving up on telling stories whatsoever.

Growing up, I won some recognition with a couple of short stories I wrote and even managed to put together a 200-page novel, which was not any good but attests to my commitment to the task. However, as both the demands of the job and the family started to increase I realized that I could not devote sufficient mental space to writing new stories, so these days I limit myself to putting together these articles for your enjoyment (and my own, of course). And even if I do not have to assemble a world every time, I have to pull all the relevant ideas together, trying to prevent the cloud from growing too big and to stay on point. I hope that the result is, at least to some extent, pleasurable to read. Have a nice evening.