Huzzah! As I have posted over all my socials, the very first Worldcon Academic volume, Building Yesterday's Future for Everyone, is now out! Get it at Amazon or Springer! And I'm even happier to say that my good friend Kenneth Moorman and I have the very first article in the volume!
This paper explores the real cognitive science behind professional writing craft. The "scenes" and "sequels" recommended by writing teachers like Dwight Swain have deep roots in how people become attached to characters in stories and are transported into the narrative as the characters struggle with catastrophes and attempt to find new ways to move towards their goals. From the abstract:
The professional writing community and academic theorists of narrative have both developed rich theories of story structure, but there is comparatively little work on the cognitive validity of professional writing concepts or the practical utility of cognitive science theories. In this paper, we bridge this gap by examining the cognitive validity of “scene” and “sequel” theory from professional writing technique. Our contributions include a terminology of narrative unifying cognitive science and professional writing concepts, a cognitive science analysis of the professional writing concepts of “dramatic scene” and “dramatic sequel,” and a software library for extracting “narrative scenes” from narrative texts to facilitate further study in this area.
Please check it out!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Um, I said it.