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What to call this principle? Spice-note?
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Replying to @vgr
This is nifty and needs a name, like “spice note” or something: the fun flavor element which does a lot of the story work Star Wars: spaceship design Superheroes: costume design aSoIaF: house banners & words Agatha Christie: etiquette Wuxia: special weapons & attacks twitter.com/vgr/status/133…
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Secret sauce is perhaps too broad. 🤔 This is a narrower animating thing.
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Tolkien’s secret sauce which he began doing even before he conceived of Middle Earth in 1917 while recovering from the Somme twitter.com/vgr/status/133…
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Big mood? Generator? Flywheel? Root chakra? Idiopathy? Principle needs a clear statement too: “every successful genre story has an unnecessarily overbuilt world id-element.”
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The Rick and Morty example suggests an aspect. Every instance of the id-element suggests the gestalt of entire universe. All other world-elements have to vibe with that gestalt. You can get at this by asking: what is a nominally correct non-element if the set of id-elements?
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What’s a ship-name that does NOT fit the Culture universe? Maybe USS Enterprise? What’s a language that does NOT fit Middle Earth? Minion language What’s a universe that does NOT fit R&M multiverse? A non-satirical universe maybe? This one is hard
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The flywheel aspect is important. One instance of the set should catalyze more instances. It should snowball into a gun game readers want to join in even if they lack the skill. Like ship names. Everybody has fun making up their own. Compound interest. Narrative network effect.
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Based on fiction I’ve written so far and enjoyed writing, I think my thing is “philosophy gadgets” — devices that embody an abstraction. Like my strategometer: a watch that indicates when you’re thinking strategically. I have such things in all my stories.
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More examples: Psych: 80s references Monk: OCD behaviors Burn Notice: “When you’re a spy...” tips
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Replying to
Reminds me of _The Name of the Wind_ which was a pageturner I really enjoyed. It was the first of three books with the third book coming out any decade now (a lot of fans are mad about the wait--I'm not but I do find that level of writer's block kind of odd).
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