This Is A Creative Title (Something Witty In Parentheses)

Question: Should we consider the non-immediate reactions when discussing the severity of emotional reaction to fiction?

I do think that this is a very important aspect of our emotional reaction to fiction. Consider, for a moment, the grown adult who, after seeing a horror movie, is constantly looking back when he walks and is turning on all of the lights in his house. Though, he is fully aware that what he has just watched was fiction, he cannot help but to consider the possibility of something happening to him. Simply, the idea of something startling is great, he associates whatever that feeling is to the subject of startling in the fiction. These emotions associated with the initial fright carries into the future. People identify with characters and remember that connection for quite sometime thereafter.

In and Through

Question: why do we choose to incorporate elements of reality into fiction?

I think we choose to do so because we cannot really do anything else. We cannot actually escape the fact that we are humans limited to our own empirical observations and our imaginations. If one of us can imagine something, and properly communicate that idea, other humans will be able to understand it to. The fact that we are starting with a human mind, we cannot communicate anything in any medium, we can only communicate through mediums; nothing we every create will be outside of human nature of understanding.

In addition to all that, the purpose of these mediums is usually to convey a meaning. Incorporating reality into a work of fiction makes it easier for people to connect with. It is easier to understand the problems of someone/thing you understand compared to completely surreal ideas.

Importance of Categorization

In response to Krystal - full post here

Categorization is extremely important to evolution, I would say. Most animals, to my knowledge, instinctual categorize things. Most animals have to recognize and categorize accordingly, the poisonous foods from the non-poisonous foods. It was important for our evolutionary ancestors in the Lower Paleolithic period, for example, to categorize gardening tools (a stone spade) from close combat weapons (handaxes) and long-range weapons (arrows).

You could go to a book store and ask for a thing (without category), or you could ask for paper, or a book, or a science fiction novel. The last one is the most direct it says what you want. Imagine going to a book store with no method of organization/categorization trying to find a book that we recognize as science fiction.

It would be a terrible world where there was nobody bothered to distinguish a piece of iron from pure sodium (which explodes when it contacts water) or a world where people fill oxygen tanks with carbon dioxide.

Emotions and Message

In response to Kelsey - full post here

Emotionally driven arguments can be incredible powerful; characters are written to novels and attain some degree of likability.

People sometimes change their actions and so on based on how well they connected with certain characters. People who read Ethan Frome, for example, may feel bad for Ethan to the point where they make a commitment to not make the same mistakes as he does. In addition to thinking that his story is sad, Edith Wharton relays it in a way that causes you to believe that he got something that he deserved, he put himself through that.

In this example, I imagine that it would be nearly impossible to divorce emotion from the work. And if you could, hypothetically, I'd imagine that the message would be lost.