Overall Story Problem -- Deduction

writing
#1

Now and then, I like to come up with a storyform and see if I can fit a story into it. Normally, I don’t have too much of a problem with that, but this one seems to be stymieing me a bit. How exactly do you depict Deduction as the Overall Problem, especially so that it doesn’t get confused with Certainty or Probability or whatever? Here’s the storyform: Steadfast-Stop-Doer-Intuitive–Decision-Timelock-Success-Bad–Situation-Present-Work-Deduction.

Here’s what I’m imagining so far: a young woman lives in the city, doing a job which she doesn’t particularly like, but which she’s determined is the most likely to give her success. (For her MC Problem of Probability.) She’s housing… someone in her apartment, which would be her Impact Character. I’m waffling on who that someone would be; it really would depend on what Deduction looks like. Maybe it’s an old friend of hers from high school, or her father… or a robot emperor ousted from his dimension? (Sorry, I’m a sucker for magical realism.) Anyway, this character’s presence, the way they throw off her balanced life, would be the focus of the story, being an OS Domain of Situation and all. Ultimately, she morphs this invader from Deduction to Induction, solving this imbalance but revealing the void she’d been ignoring, leaving her empty inside. I’m tempted to go for the, “You could have had adventure, but you chose boring safety” cliche, but I’m still thinking of other options.

Anyway, the big question is, what does Deduction look like as the Overall Problem? There are no examples of it in the analysis (and only one example of Induction as the Problem instead), and the examples in the program, while illuminating, aren’t particularly helpful when the character personifying that trait isn’t driving the plot significantly.

#2

I know you have a story going, but hopefully these unrelated examples will job something for you:

Parents sometimes solve the problems of their kids for them – deduction – which leads to unhappiness, because they rob the kids of independence.

A stand-up comedian (so, OS Situation: poverty) who spends too much time analyzing why his jokes fail creates problems he could solve by just trying out different approaches.

A group of lovelorn friends reject potential mates after nitpicking them for problems.

With a serial murderer loose, the cops are determined to arrest the right guy, but a lack of clues – meaning an inability to deduce – holds them back.

1 Like
#3

LOL! That’s just too funny.

#4

That… makes sense. Where Induction looks for patterns and things that “make sense,” Deduction is about finding the facts necessary to reveal the truth. Induction is extrapolation, Deduction is interpolation.

Hmm… I’m starting to get something. Maybe something like convincing her visitor to take on the same job she does? Anyways, yeah, that’s a lot of help. :slight_smile:

#5

Convincing her to take the same job sounds more like Induction – it works for me, so it should work for you.

Deduction would be more like “determining what the visitor is good at”. (This can be a problem – if you are a really good sniper, but don’t want to kill people, for instance. Or, in Golden Boy, a violinist is a very good boxer, and pursues it, but ruins his ability to make music.)

If it’s “We’ve looked around for other jobs and determined that this is the only job out there” then that would be more like Deduction.

[Caveat: these terms are slippery and I may be making a mistake somewhere.]

#6

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. It’s actually giving me some great ideas. “What do you mean, you want to carefully study the facts and piece together what you’ll enjoy? You’re my twin sister, so you probably like the same things I do!” And that final moment, when the sister gives up and takes on the job with her, maybe the Main Character realizes what she’s done but knows it’s too late now.

When in doubt, bounce your ideas off of someone else! :smiley: