I still remember the moment I realized people could write stories — that they didn't spring fully formed into the universe, birthed by bookcases like cheese growing mold. My grandmother bought me a typewriter when I was in 2nd grade. She was determined that I gain the skills necessary to support myself absent a husband, and in her world that meant clerical skills — the sorts of skills that would set me apart when I went to interview as a secretary or stenographer. To my grandmother's mind, these were good, respectable, white-collar jobs for a young woman — and easier on the body than seamstress work. These were the days before computers entered middle-class American homes, and having a typewriter at home did indeed set me apart. A girl in my third grade class was poised to take advantage. She asked me to type up a story she'd written out, longhand, in big bubbly print letters I can still recall nearly 30 years later. Next, I tried my hand at adaptation, turning _The Wizard of Oz_ from storybook to screenplay for reasons I no longer recall, but burned the story into my mind forever. Writing became the lens through which I processed the world. I wrote hundreds of terrible poems in my teens, hardly unique, followed by more script adaptations as I involved myself in competitive theater through the Destination Imagination program (formerly Odyssey of the Mind). It wasn't until college that I realized the true value of writing fiction, though. College planted the seeds of my identity. ## Illuminating Ethics via Fantasy Fiction The college I attended required graduates to complete a large capstone project in their senior year. It was meant to be a more flexible version of a master's thesis: > ... may be a research project or a creative expression in the arts. It may include collaborative work and build upon components of internships, study-abroad programs, and other experiential formats, as well as reflect traditional research skills. I was a philosophy major who loved speculative fiction; that year I also had an independent study where I analyzed _Firefly_ from the perspective of ancient & modern religions. "Firefly & Religion: Shepherds & Prostitutes" was the name of my final paper, and I wish I still had a copy. Told to combine the skills and methodologies I'd learned as a student of philosophy with "creative expression," I did just that; I wrote five short stories that leveraged fantasy to make a moral _point_. I was 20 years old and had never taken an English class in college; I won't say they were good. But debating my professors about whether a vampire really _was_ a good metaphor for tolerance ("vampires really _do_ prey on humans, though!" one professor said, as though people never have "real" reasons to fear immigrants or people of another race or gender — as though threats to culture and wealth and privilege aren't perceived as _real threats_ to people inclined to be intolerant of "other groups") was an incredibly useful exercise for making me comprehend not only "how to write a story with a theme" but _why fantasy stories really do illuminate ethical conundrums_. Empaths capable of pursuing perfectly healthy, perfectly safe, perfectly "inauthentic" happiness — and weaponizing it against oppressive manipulators — illustrate important questions about how a philosophy that views "[the greatest happiness of the greatest number being the measure of right and wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham)" doesn't necessarily scale, without [the complicating factor of drug use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World). ## Motivations for Gaining Knowledge I did well on the assignment, although the paper wound up being 25,000 words instead of the 100,000 I'd initially projected; I discovered that writing _thoughtful_ stories took much longer than writing papers or writing collaborative stories where the only audience was my writing partner. I graduated from college, went to law school, and without a looming deadline, went back to writing novels. Novels were where the prestige was, after all, and the money — in 2008, self-publishing was a fledgling industry, and even with the creative freedom it provided authors, even fewer people make a living from short stories compared to novels. Andy Matuschak says that [people who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z6GNVv6RyFDewy11ZgXzce8agWxSLwJ6Ub5Rw?stackedNotes=zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv). I try very hard to avoid being like those people; and historically speaking I have not taken very many notes while reading; I certainly don't take "good" notes in the "everything is paraphrased and written about in depth so I can internalize" it sense. My context of use is that I discovered that it mattered to me that my stories be well-researched. I no longer had to justify my ethics by citing prominent philosophers, but it mattered to me that if I described the environmental impact of magically destroying an upstream dam that I actually _understand the environmental impact of dams_. If you had asked me before I sat down to write a story involving destroying a large highland dam, I would have told you that I understood it. It seemed straightforward enough. It was only once I got into the nitty-gritty details of actually attempting to describe the process, explain the impact, have characters deal with the consequences, that I realized all the things I didn't, actually, understand. The impact of damming rivers is actually [remarkably controversial](https://www.internationalrivers.org/), even now. It's [very political](https://www.americanrivers.org/2022/02/new-report-alert-free-rivers-the-state-of-dam-removal-in-the-u-s/) and there's a lot of tension between, for example, civil engineers and environmentalists. But before I started writing stories involving dams, I didn't realize that the Nile River has no fish that, like salmon, return upriver to spawn. If I hadn't started writing a story that involved a pastoralist group of archers — who evolved into [herders of giant, vegetarian spiders](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/spidersilk/) %% ( [[2020-12-28 Spidersilk (DRAFT)]] ) %% as I did more and more research — I never would have learned about the world's most vegetarian spider, _Bagheera kiplingi_, named for Rudyard Kipling. They mostly eat acacia nubs and were important to figuring out how pastoralists could maintain huge spider herds because, as it turns out, the reason it's harder to harvest spidersilk than silkworm silk is because most spiders turn violently cannibalistic if their population density gets too high. ## Methods for Integrating Knowledge I like to think that I'm an effective reader and thinker... and over the last ten years what I've learned about myself is that I remember neat information when I have _context to integrate it into_ and for me, since I like learning off-the-wall stuff like how [reindeer pee is a popular Siberian hallucinogenic](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/fungus/) %% ( [[2021-06-21 Fungus]] ) %%, the context is mostly "I can use that for a neat fantasy story!" I touched on this in the [wayfinding edition](https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/wayfinding/) %% ( [[2022-01-24 Wayfinding (DRAFT)]] ) %% of my other newsletter, the Iceberg, but early sailors used myths, legends, stories and vivid names to help them navigate. Telling stories about distinctive geographical features helped landmarks stay memorable — which is critically important when traveling across vast landscapes with no opportunity to ask for directions. Sailors still do this. When my uncle taught me to navigate the Chesapeake Bay based on landmarks, he always called [the local lighthouse](https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=415) "Rocket." It was even programmed into his GPS that way, although that's not its name. [Stories are a unique method of learning](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Stories-have-the-power-to-save-us%3A-A-neurological-Hunte-Golembiewski/b9977a5bc2f0c0331d9f07fa1c812e46fe9071e6) for humans that is not replicated in other species. In fact, it's even [more useful than leveraging location connections for memory](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251710) as with the Memory Palace technique. Narratives combine capacity for event comprehension, memory, imagination, language, with the capacity to invent. This is a [really efficient form of learning](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-evolution-of-stories%3A-from-mimesis-to-language%2C-Boyd/56566fc336a3b84fff05895c117dec62fc61df25). For example, [story-based e-learning tools](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Design-and-Development-of-a-Sample-%22Computer-Course-Kose-Ko%C3%A7/e4f1a2e21d5713fbefac1c2334bfc39dd5745269) help students learn more effectively. They provide context for experiences because of the _events_ in designed stories; it's similar to how I learned a ton about [economics playing Neopets as a teen](https://www.theringer.com/features/2021/3/1/22301181/neopets-stock-market-gamestop-social-network-future). Storytelling isn't just valuable for learning, of course. In hunter-gatherer societies, [good storytellers help encourage cooperation](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8). Storytelling isn't just about telegraphing moral behavior and teaching people how to act; it's key for ensuring shared context. It allows for the broadcasting of social and cooperative norms to coordinate group behavior. Group ethics really are conveyed by stories, and I wish [this study proving it](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8) had been available when I wrote my capstone project. But more than that, stories allow us to _understand_ things, not just "know" them. ## Methods for Gaining Knowledge Reading fiction is also one of my favorite ways to learn. Most of what I know about the Zulu Wars — particularly the [Battle of Rorke's Drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift) — is something I learned because I read _[Valor's Choice](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/772606.Valor_s_Choice)_ [by Tanya Huff](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/772606.Valor_s_Choice). It's a military scifi involving a mixed-species platoon of soldiers on an "honor guard" mission to help bring a reptilian species into the intergalactic federation that's busy fighting a war against an implacable, inexplicable intergalactic enemy — so the enemy doesn't ally with them first. The protagonist and her platoon wind up trapped in a swampy region under brutal attack by a seemingly-endless horde of "hormonally hopped up teenaged lizards," and in the end, the protagonist meets the reptilian race on their own terms and is critical to integrating them into the broader allied military. The broader plot is very different from what happened during the Anglo-Zulu Wars, which were definitely a colonialist invasion and not an alliance-test-gone-wrong, but the battle tactics were explicitly based on the Battle of Rorke's Drift — which I had never heard of. Reading _Valor's Choice_ inspired me to learn so much more about the Anglo-Zulu Wars than I ever would have otherwise, because it evoked a hunger in me to learn what the differences were. I experienced something similar with the _[Honor Harrington](https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Honorverse_novels)_ [series by David Weber](https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Honorverse_novels), a series that makes no bones about being "Horatio Nelson in Space," but learning-from-fantasy isn't limited to these sorts of "retold history events" stories. [L. E. Modesitt, Jr.](https://www.lemodesittjr.com/) writes novels deeply informed by his experiences as a pilot for the US Navy, Congressional legislative assistant, and EPA director. His perspectives on fairness, decency, enacting effective change, infrastructure, education, and what it means to be brave have impacted my intellectual and philosophical development since childhood. ## Methods for Conveying Understanding The first nonfiction article I ever sold was literally about [five scifi & fantasy stories that shed light on obscure history](https://www.tor.com/2021/03/31/five-sff-stories-that-shed-light-on-obscure-history/) not because they directly respin old history but because they make it _understandable_ on an emotional level. I genuinely believe that reading a hundred newspaper articles and academic texts about the impacts of Vietnam on the American populace is less effective than sitting down and reading Glen Cook's _[Black Company](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/140671.The_Black_Company)_ followed by _[The Forever War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21611.The_Forever_War)_ by Joe Haldeman. One's a fantasy novel. One's science fiction. Both of them encapsulate the _feel_ of being conscripted to fight a brutal, pointless war in a foreign land better than any nonfiction text could, because nonfiction isn't supposed to distort, decontextualize, and exaggerate — and sometimes, those are the most effective ways to convey a clear point. Contrast them with books written by folks who came of age during [the World Wars](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17214.Starship_Troopers) and [the Gulf War](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765348272/oldmanswar), and it's a surprisingly comprehensive look at generational differences in the American understanding of war. Most of the time when people read one of my stories, they are more interested in the accompanying afterword than the content of the story itself, but the stories allow me to succinctly convey a discrete chunk of information and more importantly _bound_ the conversation. The story provides guide rails and an emotional connection to the otherwise dry knowledge I am trying to convey. It's one of the reasons that educator and essayist David Perell encourages a straightforward formula for nonfiction writers: hook, personal anecdote, elaboration with actionable tips. But the personal anecdote is key, for the same reason that novelists are encouraged to prioritize a sympathetic (not necessarily likeable) character over a spiffy plot or exciting worldbuilding. A common idiom in school is that "students don't care what you know until they know that you care." Readers need a reason to care before they will bother to engage. Even I don't care what I know until I can _use_ it for something. ## Further Reading - [Anyone Can Be Trained To Be Creative](https://neurosciencenews.com/creativity-training-20191/) claims creativity is one of the most useful things one can be taught, because it leads to new solutions to problems. Teaching people to invent stories is presented as a key way to train it. - I'm hardly the only author who starts from such a perspective, by the way. For the thoughts of someone far more famous and influential than I, check out George Orwell's essay [Why I Write](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/).