Reasoning Backwards
Created | Updated Feb 17, 2013
Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.
Writing Right with Dmitri: Reasoning Backwards
I am so grateful for h2g2. I learn a lot from these people, especially about writing – what works and what doesn't. Recently, Minorvogonpoet remarked on Peer Review, ''. . . if there are too many gaps, or inconsistencies, the sensible reader will decide it's altogether too improbable and give up. ' Well put.
On another thread, Vip made the suggestion that we might enjoy a UK series called Jonathan Creek. As it turns out, Jonathan Creek is available on Youtube, so we've been watching it. She was right, we got a kick out of it. What's not to like? The amiable, scruffy, and reluctant detective lives in a windmill. He has Jolly Adventures. The 'cases' he solves are so over-the-top ludicrous they make us laugh. Oh, and they seem to be bothering the National Trust again – the murders and high-end robberies usually take place in Stately Homes, so you get to look at pretty furniture while they gad about.
We're into Season Three, however, and we're beginning to get annoyed. Why we're annoyed is relevant to the subject of this article, so I'll explain.
When I first looked up Jonathan Creek on Youtube, I stumbled across a 49-second parody of the series by somebody named Alistair McGowan. McGowan captured the essence of the series in less than a minute, by standing in front of a large brick edifice, wearing a curly fright wig, and speaking into a mobile. He said, '...Philip Branch faked his own death. All it took was a little ingenuity, like a carefully-staged traffic jam, an artificially-created solar eclipse, a duck whose cough sounded like a rifle...it really was that simple, Maggie...'
After two seasons, I knew exactly what he meant. In the US, we call these things 'Rube Goldberg devices', after the man who invented farcically elaborate machines. In the UK, I believe the culprit is Heath Robinson. Either way, that's what this is. And in the long run, it's a massive insult to the intelligence if it isn't being treated as a joke.
To understand what Jonathan Creek is doing that's so annoying, we should look at the difference between telling a story forwards and backwards.
Etiology
Etiology asks, 'Where does this come from?' Ancient fiction was almost always etiological, which is why we scoff at it. It answers the question, 'Why?' "Why does the bear have a short tail?' Well, children, once upon a time, the long-tailed bear made a bet with the clever fox. This bet involved ice fishing, and the bear had no pole. . .
How did the Himalayas get there? Well, there were some giants, and some gods, and. . . You get the idea.
Etiology offers explanations, but does not provide solutions to problems. A good detective story involves etiological thinking, though. The detective's job is to answer the question, 'Why is Mrs Murgatroyd lying dead in the locked library? And where was the butler?'
Reasoning Backwards
A lot of modern thinking is finding something – an object, a system, a state of affairs – and reasoning backward to say, 'Somebody designed it that way.' Most often these days, people use this argument to 'prove' that God exists, or that a Divine Outsider designed the universe. Other people scoff at this sort of reasoning, which tends to twist facts and magnify causes, thus violating Occam's Razor, big-time.
This kind of thinking is the bane of science. If you reason backward from the conclusion, you can make up anything. Example: I observe what I believe to be a UFO in the night sky over North Carolina. I'm right, of course – it's a UFO, at least to me. It's a flying object, and I can't identify it. But am I right in concluding that this means that three-eyed people from Alpha Centauri have just paid me a visit? I am not. More likely, it's either: a plane taking off from the nearby airport, a helicopter spying a traffic problem on the interstate, or one of my lunatic neighbours with a flying lawn chair (it happens).
In fiction, of course, it might be aliens. But I need to make up a story that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence. And if I've got a hidden agenda, I'd better keep it hidden.
The Epistemology of the Detective
Every show on television, every book you read, every article in the h2g2 Post has an epistemology. Even if the writer can't spelll epistemology. An epistemology tells us how we know what we know – and what we believe constitutes evidence. This is particularly important if we want the reader to solve a puzzle. What possible solutions are really possible, at least in this particular fictional universe?
We use these epistemologies to 'solve' the mysteries of TV shows we're watching. If I'm watching, say, The Dead Zone, I accept that it is possible for John Smith to foresee future events. I try to help him interpret his visions by yelling at the screen, 'No! Don't you see? You're viewing it through the murderer's eyes! Look in the mirror, for gosh sakes!' (I have experience.)
If I'm watching Medium, I expect a recently-dead person to turn up with some clues for Alison. But if I'm watching Jonathan Creek, I know that no Dead People need apply. No UFOs will turn out to be anything but cleverly-disguised weather balloons, reconfigured as pantomime horses for some deep purpose of MI5's.
I divine this as surely as I am certain that the writer, whom I do not know from Adam's housecat, sleeps with a copy of that Richard Dawkins book under his pillow. He's a radical skeptic – or thinks he is. Have you ever heard of the expression, 'straining at gnats, and swallowing camels'? We're being treated to a meal of even-toed ungulate with every episode.
The writer has set himself a monumental task – and a laudable one, if he'd only fulfill it. He needs to set up a situation with an apparently supernatural explanation, and then debunk it by careful deconstruction. Unfortunately, in the case of Jonathan Creek, the 'rational' explanation is so improbable that it beggars belief. The plots are Swiss cheese, and we're not referring to Erik von Däniken here.
Whenever there's a locked-room murder, now, my first thought is, 'Okay, he's going to claim that this person committed suicide, but tried to make it look like murder for some nefarious reason of his/her own.' So far, that's happened at least three times. My credulity is now stretched so thin that I would welcome a good, honest ghost/Ouija board/alien from Betelgeuse. Really.
How Far Do You Go?
It's obvious that you're going to have to reason backwards to construct your story – unless you're so avant-garde that you're trying an experiment. Otherwise, you need to know what you want to have happen. And you're going to have to figure out how to make it add up.
But keep in mind: the reader will only go so far down that road with you. Common sense will eventually prevail. If you keep insisting that Philip Branch engineered an artificially-created solar eclipse and found a horse that in the distance, looked like a gun, we're going to give you the Jonathan Creek Memorial Prize for Most Exasperating Plot Development.
And that, of course, has just given you an idea for a story. I can see the evil grins light up from here. Go ahead, make my day. Put 'em down there. And we'll give out a special Post award.
I love you people. You're inspirational.
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