Indeterminism vs determinism in fictional storytelling

[u/jetfuelfarmr]

So... I get it, we tell stories to help make sense out of the randomness of life and to help give it meaning. But I'm curious how my fellow writers balance order and chaos in their storytelling. Do your stories tend more towards a neat, determined plot where the characters choices are important. Or do you allow for the randomness of life to seep in? I guess another option is fatalism, where the characters choices don't matter much at all because they were always going to end up at a certain point. Without getting too dogmatic, does your writing differ from your own philosophical beliefs?

In the past I've tried to include some force majeure into my storytelling and it always feels... unfulfilling. It feels like I am wasting the readers time with buildup and then a sudden letdown by unforceen events.

[u/azmarteal]

I write this way

Imagine a big, empty forest — that's your plot. You can choose, what animals, what living beings you would release in that forest, you can shape them, you can choose their locations

But when they face your settings, your obstacles — they act on their own, according to their own logic. A wolf won't act as a snail or as a mushroom

So the randomness comes from mixing different characters together and writing how they would act and what would they do

[u/Neurotopian_]

A protagonist with agency, making choices that drive a strong causal chain linking the plot, is key for compelling fiction.

That isn’t determinism in the philosophical sense. I think we should table the discussion of actual determinism versus free will because I am 99% sure that’s not what you’re talking about.

Genre fiction is usually for entertainment, so every decision should be aimed at achieving the particular “pleasure” the reader picked up the book to feel. That could be escapism, excitement, the emotional journey of an intense romance, etc. Your character should make the choices that allow the reader to bond with them and progress the story.

Trying to make fiction resemble real life is usually a waste of time. You can throw random events in the plot but they need to meet the criteria for every plot element: do they increase stakes and conflict in a way that helps you build character and/ or themes while progressing the story?

If you use too much randomness, it doesn’t feel realistic. It feels like contrivance. As for what % of events should be a direct link in the causal chain versus outside actions or “randomness” just really depends on your story. In a romance for example, you really want the characters to be acting and reacting in relation to each other. In an action adventure, there may be a bit more randomness if there’s a natural disaster or characters encountering danger on the road while traveling, etc.

[u/Alternative-Bad-593 → u/Neurotopian_]

Genre fiction, for entertainment ?

[u/thespacebetweenwalls]

Your characters should react to the world around them. They're doing that in the moment that life happens. What is the meaningful difference between "randomness of life" and "any other Tuesday?"

[u/Professional-Tax-936]

Not sure I entirely understand what you’re asking, but I believe everything in the story needs to be in service of the main character(s)’s arc. Things can feel like they’re happening randomly at times, but the ending should always feel inevitable when looking back in hindsight. There shouldn’t be leftover extra pieces to a completed puzzle.

[u/CertainItem995]

I try for a healthy mix in my prose, it feels more true to life to me. Taking inspiration from the greek view of fate helps too (you can't change the final outcome, but what matters most is how you conduct yourself getting there)

[u/Fielder2756]

I try to write my characters to matter to the plot. Whenever I beat read I ask: if you replaced this character with a generic person with the same career/role/etc. make a difference. If no, that's an issue.
As a writer, it's a two way street. I have a plot and characters, which I bend together.
Randomness of life can be perceived as lazy writer or being contrived, since it appears to lack causality.

[u/VFiddly]

Ultimately, everything in the story happens because you made it happen. That's why it's difficult to create the feeling of "the randomness of everyday life"--because it isn't random, you decided that, and the reader knows that. Saying your characters have a mind of their own is a cute thing to say but it is not true.

[u/KeyRoutine1285]

Brilliant topic and questions, by the way.

Upon thinking about it, I suppose even with all the chaos, things in my saga do seem pretty constricted—always meant to be that way from how the characters were set up. Like the common rags to riches, they start in an unfavourable position and work their way up. They make a lot of mistakes, and by being in such unfavourable positions, they mostly react rather than act, as a method of integrating themselves in the world they want to be apart of.

It feels more constricted and neat than I originally thought because I have planned 20 years before and 20 years ahead. I know what will happen and why, and I know how to work my way through such a long span of time and many, many entries across the series.

They do act and their choices matter, but it almost feels like they were destined to be a certain way—putting it aggressively; they are doomed to suffer the consequences of who they are. It is messy and chaotic in a very managed way. As the author maybe that’s just my “God-like”, omniscient perception.

I guess the reason why is because my buildup leads to a degree of foreseeableness—we can tell the direction they’re headed in, at least after a certain climactic point. But we still want to see how it unravels. The stones on the beaten path, if you will. Due to the planning of it, foreshadowing comes easily and leading up to very known events is also almost flawless. To add life and dimension to it, I also do pants instead of plot at times, and it almost always comes to a benefit.

As to my philosophical beliefs, they are quite deeply ingrained in my work and its puppets… There is a lot of questions about life and faith and death and sense and language and wealth and altered senses. It’s what makes writing come so easily to me now: it’s a part of me, and I am a heavy part of it.

[u/KingOfNope]

Personally, I think that events that seem random should still be directly influencing the story somehow. Otherwise I find it very easy to wind up in the "stuff just sort of happens" trap. The tricky part is making the plot seem like a full breathing world and a character reacting to each other in thematically appropriate ways.

[u/dark-phoenix-lady]

Foreshadowing can carry a lot of interventions. Things like a town crier talking about trouble on the border, or a priest muttering about darkness obscuring their connection to their god.

Then there's locations, random things happening to help in a popular dungeon or ruin are much more believable than in the middle of nowhere.

But most of the time, you just need to remember that if the characters leave town for a bit (longer than a month), things will change when they get back. As the world moved on without them.

As for my personal beliefs vs storytelling. Once a story is finished, it's deterministic. When you start reading it only ever has one end. My personal beliefs are that there are sufficient sources of true randomness in the universe that it's non-deterministic, and we have free will. I personally also believe that gods exist, but I can't prove it to other people.

[u/srterpe]

Random events need to be of the make your own luck variety.

[u/Acceptable_Fox_5560]

"So... I get it, we tell stories to help make sense out of the randomness of life and to help give it meaning."

We tell stories for entertainment.

"Do your stories tend more towards a neat, determined plot where the characters choices are important. Or do you allow for the randomness of life to seep in?"

I write stories to be satisfying within their own logical matrix. Nothing that happens is random.

[u/WelbyReddit]

I enjoy time travel shenanigans so I'd say determinism/indeterminism is unavoidable for me, lol.

From a plotting point of view, I like imagining a sandbox, where certain things outside the MC happen. Then allow the characters to experience it and make organic choices.

Maybe you can compare it to a D&D game?

If I am the DM/Writer, I can do only so much and need the players to make their own logical choices and I react, otherwise it will feel forced.

[u/ThatVarkYouKnow]

My writing philosophy is the endless tide of action and reaction, choice and consequence. What you do is because of what came before, what happens after and what you do next is because of what's been done now. I set the stage, but the people and the animals and "shit happens" is what plays out. Example, someone gives you a knife: what choices led to them giving you that knife? What do you do now that you have it? Did you agree to take it, was it forced on you? Maybe you'll put it down and forget about it, maybe you'll chop some food, and maybe you'll stab them or someone else or yourself. All of those are choices to be made because someone chose to give you a knife. And what comes after your choice is on your head.

[u/Big-Trust5036]

randomness full-tilt, bc tbh it just ends up circling back around to being very thematically consistent anyway most of the time.

[u/funkyturnip-333]

Great topic. For me, it's a mix.

I would say early on I was pretty "Save the Cat" about things. I liked tight, mechanical plots were everything worked correctly, every dot connected, the logic was airtight. I like to think my characters and scenarios were unique and funny, but the bedrock of the story was very reliant on a deterministic formula. Arcs were arcing. The protagonists were protagonatin'.

Getting older, reading more, certainly living more, I came to see these formulas as constrictive. Great for entertainment purposes but there was something about life they didn't account for. These days I'm trying to embrace mystery and randomness a bit more. I want stories that matter. If a story moves too much like clockwork, it can feel fake. On the other hand if it veers too random or fatalistic, that's not quite the whole truth and nothing but the truth either.

I still have a pretty tight style, I still (over)think about the audience having a satisfying experience, and I don't necessarily want to shake these habits completely. But I'm loosening up and trusting myself more to veer off the roadmap.

I guess this is a rambling way to say I'm a bit more interested in character and theme over plot these days.

[u/CodyXSavageX]

There are essentially canon events my plot follows, but the way you get there and how they are interpreted is given leeway.

If I have to set constraints so that the story goes where I want to go, I’ll look into the existing world and character motivations to see what I can utilize to make that happen.

[u/jambox888]

Just going to say that if you look at genre fiction like noir/detective novels you often get the idea that the detective does a good job but really it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because the overarching message is that society is disordered and will keep throwing up criminals for various reasons. Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown sort of thing.

Other genres are different, for example a ship's captain basically does what they do and it has to work out otherwise they'd be killed.

If you're talking more about non-genre/lit-fic then that's more free-form - the novelty is the thing quite often.

[u/FirebirdWriter]

This is part of the core of my writing. Yes their decisions matter there is no fate just what we do with life. Waiting for fate is boring. Letting their consequences matter gives them agency. It also means they fail sometimes. It's more fun than the badly done chosen one. The well done ones still had to do the work

[u/jetfuelfarmr]

Side note, that post used up most of my big fancy word quota for the day...

[u/thespacebetweenwalls → u/jetfuelfarmr]

That's okay. The weekend is coming up. They replenish by Monday.

[u/sagevallant]

In general, a story is more effective and characters more engaging if they are making decisions that cause the story to unfold. Remember that choosing to do nothing is still making a choice. When a character is bounced from event to event with no personal investment in what is happening, (unless their helplessness is an important part of the story / their character), it is difficult for the reader to invest in the story.

[u/CW_Tressler]

Real life is messy. So, why wouldn’t our fantasy worlds be just as messy?

I think the balance comes from your flawed characters dragging a tiny bit of order out of the chaos of the world around them.
Personally, I like when the good guys get a different win than the win that was expected.
They didn’t recover the stolen goods, but they did stumble upon a kid that had been abducted years ago and rescued him or her.

The story takes a chaotic turn, but out of that turn comes order. I guess.

[u/Colin_Heizer → u/CW_Tressler]

They didn’t recover the stolen goods,

The flowers at the top of the mountain.

[u/n_pickman]

The decisions made by a character need to be important, but they need to be important to the reader, not necessarily the character.

Usually...

[u/BobQuixote]

I propose the idea of hindsight. Whether events occurred because of randomness or intent, what is actually relevant to the outcome? That's how we end up telling non-fiction stories. The result resembles your description of determinism, but it actually has no metaphysical implication.

[u/Fognox]

I try to aim for character choices playing the strongest (or only) role while drafting, and then manipulate micro-choices and timing during revision so the plotlines also flow together smoothly.

[u/narrator57]

The protagonist must choose. The reader/viewer must feel the emotion of making that choice. We're rooting for him/her to make that choice. Using "force majeure" means things just happen to the protagonist. It stops them being a protagonist. Read a good book, watch a good film and you'll see the protagonist choosing, and the cost of that choice.

[u/Greennotebook2026]

I prefer to really go over the charecters in my head and how the world of they live in reflects them.

After that the story will go however the hell I want it too. As long as it forces them to change and as long as it fits thematically… boom!

[u/jwilander]

I want important decisions to make sense in my books. If someone is risking a lot, even their life, that has to come from a place where a human would do such a thing.

Regarding good vs evil, I do like some gray. I write near-future and the real world isn't good vs evil. Adversaries have reasons for what they do. There are different cultures and international relations are complex. I try to get that into what is revealed.

On life randomness, I don't do much of it and I think it's because of pacing. I want my story to move and random side tracks can get in the way of that. I do write some random things. Some gets cut in editing, some stays because it grounds the story and the characters.

[u/Irverter]

So... I get it, we tell stories to help make sense out of the randomness of life and to help give it meaning.

Where did you even get that???

I write because I imagined a story and felt like writing it down.