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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1460 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

Is it devalued? Maybe. But it's hard to write a novel that takes the reader's time and intelligence seriously if you don't do some research. At the very least a wiki lookup or asking an LLM doesn't hurt.

The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.

Absolute nonsense of the "sounds deep, makes no sense if you think twice about it" variety. If your work is "pure" invention, then I struggle to see how it can be autobiographical. I expect most objections to be quibbling about what counts as pure invention.

I interpreted the bit about autobiographical fiction as mostly a joke.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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