Brinmanship: David Brin’s Revenge
How killing the Idiot Plot can save the American Experiment.
David Brin, 2013, The Idiot Plot:
Today’s dominant storytelling technique, in contrast, nearly always portrays one or two individuals in dire scenarios, without useful support from the societies that made them. There is no help or authority that can be effectively appealed to, because those leaders are at best distracted or foolish. More often than not society itself is the chief malignity that must be combated.
Of course these storyline scenarios mesh well with the intimate, thought-following style of Point of View storytelling. Modern fictional heroes — often talented to a degree that seems larger than life — are shown dealing with some problem or conspiracy that no one else noticed, or confronting the dire consequences of some massive cultural error, or uncovering malfeasance on the part of society’s corrupt leaders. When in doubt, it seems, a writer seems best served by assuming the worst.
In its crudest form, this phenomenon has been called the Idiot Plot.
In literary criticism, an idiot plot is “a plot which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot,” and where the story would otherwise be over if this were not the case. It is a narrative where its conflict comes from characters not recognizing, or not being told, key information that would resolve the conflict, often because of plot contrivance. The only thing that prevents the conflict’s resolution is the character’s constant avoidance or obliviousness of it throughout the plot, even if it was already obvious to the viewer, so the characters are all “idiots” in that they are too obtuse to simply resolve the conflict immediately.
Humankind evolved while bonding around campfires in small groups with a shared mission, whether gathering or hunting. They saw things the same way because they experienced the same things, as had their parents and grandparents. Like a military squad or aircrew, it would be almost unthinkable to say to a fellow warrior, “You’re wrong”.
The Improv Solution
Our learned helplessness is based on the “You’re wrong” and “Yes, but” artifacts of the Idiot Plot school of writing. Conversely, the Improv school of behavior is based on the “Yes, and” Campfire Compact of clans & tribes and aircrews: “We’re all in this together”.
When you share a campfire or a burning airplane, you don’t engage in recreational disagreement. That dysfunction can only be adopted through our post-tribal system which teaches everybody in your Biz school to compete with every other, and why so many managers’ mission is outsmarting the customers.
