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Punoxysm comments on What are you learning? - Less Wrong
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Writing
I'm writing a novel about metafiction: Some of the characters are aware that they are fictional, or rather that they live within a simulation where the laws of physics seem to follow a narrative. Unlike other metafiction stories, however, this isn't a comedy and the ontological and practical implications are treated seriously. Also, the main character is basically following timeless decision theory, but since it operates on very different timescales than humans, this has quite strange implications.
I find working on the background, the setting, characters and plot quite easy and captivating, but I hit a writer's block whenever I want to transform my notes into complete chapters. This has reached the point where I have far more notes than actual story.
Outlining is fun, but you just have to sit down and write at a certain point. Accept that the ideas won't be expressed perfectly the first few times. It's just like baking brownies; the best recipe in the world won't make you a tray of chocolaty goodness.
I know, but writing is hard :-( Also, I have made it way too hard for myself. It's easy to write notes about the personality of a completely non-human character, as long as you can intellectually understand its reasoning. But once I am forced to actually write its dialog, my head just hits a brick wall. The being is very intelligent and I want this to be rationalist fiction, so I have to think for a very long time just to find out in what exact way it would phrase its requests to maximize the probability of compliance. Writing the voices of the narrators/the administrator AIs of the simulation as they are slowly going insane is not easy, either.
Maybe I'm too perfectionist here. Do you think it's better to write something trashy first and rewrite it later, or is it more efficient to do it right the first time?
You can't write your characters more intelligent than you in fact are
Why? Your characters can have better memory than you, since you are writing things down; this also applies to keeping in memory several steps of something that you personally can't keep in memory. Your characters can take less time to make decisions than you do (since your fiction is not written in realtime). Your characters can notice things that you would miss if you saw them (because since you have defined their world, you already know what things are important to notice without having to notice them yourself). Your characters can have more skills than you have. How does this not ultimately add up to "your characters can be more intelligent than you"?
Of course, you could also cheat and have your character deduce something that he couldn't possibly have really deduced, but that doesn't mean all intelligent characters are examples of such cheating.
Damn I didn't talk about running or sky-jumping, only what intelligence covers. I meant that your characters can't have wider worldview and broader mindmap, and although consider WYSIATI (what-you-see-is-all-there-is) principle, applies also to all that you know.
I know, and that is part of what makes this so hard. Thankfully, I have several ways too cheat:
-I can take days thinking of the perfect path of action for what takes seconds in the story.
-The character is a humanoid avatar of a very smart and powerful entity. While it was created with much specialized knowledge, it is still human-like at its core.
But most importantly:
-It's a story about stories and there is an actual narrator-like entity changing the laws of nature. Sometimes, 'because this would make for a better story' is a perfectly valid criterion for choosing actions. The super-human characters are all aware of this and exploit it heavily.
Oh it's sounds promising, i like some kind of metametainfinite leveling stuff
It seems like picking this nonhuman metafictional stuff is a tough way to start writing. Maybe pick something easier just so that you succeed without getting so much writers' block.
I 100% support "write something then rewrite" over "do it right the first time" (which is essentially impossible in fiction writing of any length).
Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo?
It's a 'contest' where competitors try to write a 50K word novel in a month.
That's an insane pace, and only a very few of the most prolific and experienced authors can write 50K QUALITY words.
The idea is it forces you to write something, to 'turn off your inner editor', and just write. The experience of writing without anxiety, just with a target, is really nice for most people and results in a creative torrent far exceeding what they'd do in a typical month, even if it's rough around the edges.
I heard of NaNoWriMo before. Unfortunately that would be too much for me to handle. I am not a professional writer. I am just doing this in my free time and I just don't have that kind of time, although I think this would definitely be worth checking out if it was during a holiday.
Here's the thing: 50,000/30 is 1,666 words a day. 1,666 words a day is a lot, but if you're a good typist you should be able to manage it in about an hour IF you focus on typing no matter what, and not trying to edit as you go. Do you spend an hour on the train commuting? Or watching TV?
Give it a shot, and see how far you get!
If you really don't want to though, turning off your inner editor and pushing yourself to get some words down is still important.