An Introduction to Fictivity

Fictivity - the understanding of all things relating to fiction - is a huge subject, but it has a simple aim which involves you, if you are or want to be a writer: a life in which writing fiction is as easy as possible, provides a commercial exchange as lucrative as possible, and results in your own essential message or theme being appreciated by others.

For thousands of years, writers have used words to express innermost thoughts and feelings in fictive forms, but have known almost nothing about their most important weapon or possession, the imagination. As far as they were concerned, the process of ‘telling a story’ consisted of approaching a kind of interface between their conscious selves and an inner world and, to some degree, entering into a trance-like state through which more or less cohesive images, ideas and forms would emerge to be captured and constrained in the form of words. Sometimes what came through was not very cohesive at all; sometimes a degree of insanity was endured. But the most successful writers managed to corral whatever it was that made the transition, and to put together stories which then worked with readers or audiences.

The scope of Fictivity includes everything pertaining to this process. It’s not an overly complex or academic subject, because it is meant to be accessible to writers of all kinds. It has to be fairly effortless to live up to its aims.

It’s probably true to say that no writer can sustain the production of stories nor ‘make it’ to any degree as a commercial entity, without certain and sure command of knowledge such as that contained in Fictivity. That command of knowledge might not be totally conscious, but it must be present. The principles of Fictivity, skillfully used, can prevent or alleviate barriers arising between the individual and his or her imagination; it can mould and shape true works of art; and it can lay the foundations for successful careers. It can improve the management of writers’ lives to a point where being a writer is no longer a struggle.

Fictivity is the basic ‘science’ of human creativity as far as writing fiction is concerned. It embraces writing as an artistic act and arranges a body of hitherto uncoordinated knowledge. Fictivity is a system for the analysis, control and development of the imagination evolved from a set of coordinated principles which also provide techniques for the management of a wide variety of factors to do with the ‘business’ aspect of being a writer. An understanding of human creativity and its ramifications is made possible by Fictivity.

With it the behavior of fiction can be estimated and predicted with exactness. Portions of Fictivity have of course been known for thousands of years, but the hope here is that this data can be organised into a body of precision knowledge, in such a way as to be easily understood by the intelligent individual.

Stay tuned for more.