ManicDDaily

Insisting on Credibility?

One of my hardest obstacles in writing fiction is credibility.  I get completely mired in questions of believability.    (You should have seen how I suffered over the talking dog in one book, till Pearl, my bichon, assured me that it really was okay.)

I have to constantly remind myself that I’m writing a story; that, in other words, it needs drama, to re-adjust the normal daily percentages of humdrum and startling.

I am trying to get over this tendency in my current nanowrimo novel.  (Why, for example, have one of my protagonists just leave a sketchy boyfriend, if, on the way to the door, he can grab her and tie her up?)

(Sigh, It’s hard.)  In the last couple of days, however, I’ve encountered a new teacher:  Michele Bachmann!

Obama’s trip to India, she proclaims, wild- and wide-eyed, is costing taxpayers $200 million a day!  (Maybe, she goes on, he should consider videoconferencing.)

I wondered how she could believe what she was saying.  But then it occurred to me that rather than illustrating the art of fiction, Bachmann might truly be an illustration of the deterioration in practical mathematics.

Which brings me to my  father-in-law;  he is about to be 100 years old.  One of his many admirable qualities is a strong grasp of the mathematical properties of the physical world–he is an incredible judge of distances, surface areas, cubic footage, weight, density, and all the combinations of the above.  When he says 120 square feet or 13 fluid ounces, he knows exactly what he’s talking about.  Part of his skill at estimation results from growing up in a time where this kind of physical understanding was included in one’s education, part may result from a preternatural cleverness–whatever the reason, the ability to make reliable estimates seems to have declined in the modern world (and not just among contractors.)   This decline has in turn led to a gullibility about numbers.  People who don’t bother, or can’t, estimate realistically, readily accept all kinds of crazy figures.

And now we have Michele Bachmann!  Mistress of the Art of fiction?  Drama queen?  Mathematical nitwit?