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Confirmation Bias in Storytelling.

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
I read an article recently that included the following lines:
“Good rhetoric typically draws on things that people already have in their mind as part of the way the world is,” says <person>.

And we are, perhaps, drawn to ideas that help us interpret events as part of a clear, meaningful story.

“In these difficult things that have gray to them, like what causes <badness>—the presence of a magic bullet, the answer to it, the thing that makes it black and white, I think has an innate appeal,” says <person>.
The article itself was very political so I've modified the quote to bypass that bit.

The quotes are interesting from a storytelling perspective though.
We like to hear things that support what we already believe: the good guys win in the end.
We also like a simple solution to a complicated problem: the hero defeats the villain and saves the day.

Sure, it's a bit crude and inelegant, and there are plenty of exceptions, but I still think there's a lot of truth in the above. I also think it's something that can be put to good use in storytelling.

Later, the article says this:
Once a person starts to believe the stories, confirmation bias takes over, and they’ll remember facts that seem to support what they already believe, while ignoring information that doesn’t fit. These biases shape everyone’s actions, [...]

This is also something that can be put to use in storytelling. There was a thread about foreshadowing here recently. Perhaps this is why we needn't worry too much about giving away too much information?

Let's say that in your story event A is going to happen, but it's meant to be a surprise. You don't want it to come out of the blue like some deus ex machina, but you also don't want to ruin the surprise and you're worried about foreshadowing.
What if you add in a possible event B, that your characters expect will happen? You might be able to influence the reader into also expecting that event B will occur. Then you can still include the foreshadowing for event A without worrying about spoiling the surprise. The reader will see the hints, but as they don't fit with their expectations they'll ignore them.

What are your thoughts on this?
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I think in fiction, you have the karmic outcome and the logical outcome. Karmic means that the audience feels that's how it should work while the logical is how the audience knows it should work. Both a susceptible to confirmation bias. The audience wants the outcome to both feel right and make sense.

If we want to throw the audience a curve ball, you need to have the karmic and logical outcome be two different things. This is how tragedy tends to work: the audience expects the nice karmic outcome but instead they get the cruel logical outcome (or vice-versa).

Or, you can add a third option: what the audience wants. If the audience likes the anti-villain protagonists and wants him to win but know that karma won't let him win but logically it could go either way. That's how you mess with the audience's expectations.

Unfortunately, while the writer is completely in control of the story's karma and mostly in control of its logic, the writer has very little control over the audience's want. Writers can only suggest what the writer should want. So that's tricky.

So there's my thoughts.

Oh, one more thing: foreshadowing tends to fall under the karmic. So, if you foreshadow something, foreshadow the karmic outcome rather than the logical. The audience can figure-out the logical outcome without your help.
 
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Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
Nice. That's a really good way of putting it - and it makes great sense. Thanks. :)
 
Oh, one more thing: foreshadowing tends to fall under the karmic. So, if you foreshadow something, foreshadow the karmic outcome rather than the logical. The audience can figure-out the logical outcome without your help.

I'm not sure about this. I recently watched every episode of every season of Inspector Lewis, and of all those episodes I guessed the guilty party early, with certainty, in only one or two of the episodes. I did suspect various people in each episode because certain logical reasons for their potential guilt were given–one of the brilliant features of the show. I think that maybe the "karmic" consideration might be thrown off in murder mysteries, because the good karmic outcome is entirely independent of a consideration of individual people. I.e., regardless of who is guilty, the karmic outcome will be fulfilled when he/she is caught. So stringing people along with logical false flags is the name of the game.
 
I'm not overly worried about what people may or may not "see" in my writing. I know what things symbolize and what deeper meaning they have. It's my creation afterall.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
I think that maybe the "karmic" consideration might be thrown off in murder mysteries, because the good karmic outcome is entirely independent of a consideration of individual people. I.e., regardless of who is guilty, the karmic outcome will be fulfilled when he/she is caught. So stringing people along with logical false flags is the name of the game.

I think this may be an issue with the term "foreshadowing". Red herring and false flags weren't what I was talking about with foreshadowing.

The karmic outcome of a murder mystery is that the murderer will be caught while the logical outcome is the detectives convicting someone based on evidence. Usually, the two outcomes are the same but not always. If the real murderer gets away because they convict the wrong person or the killer gets off some other way, that's a case where the logical outcome overcomes the karmic.
I can't think of how the karmic would overcome the logical. Maybe the lead detective had a gut feeling that one suspect was the true murderer, ignored evidence and leads, then convicted the guy. But that would make for an awful crime story.

I can't really speak to how this relates to you watching the show because I don't know if your initial guess was based on in-universe logic, meta-logic (you knowing how stories work) or intuition.

I'm not overly worried about what people may or may not "see" in my writing. I know what things symbolize and what deeper meaning they have. It's my creation afterall.

That's how you do it. From there you just have to hope that you and the reader are on the same page. As a writer, you want smart readers.
 
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vaiyt

Scribe
If we want to throw the audience a curve ball, you need to have the karmic and logical outcome be two different things. This is how tragedy tends to work: the audience expects the nice karmic outcome but instead they get the cruel logical outcome (or vice-versa).
Classic Greek tragedy is strictly logical: the characters' flaws and dispositions are set up in such a way that it makes the bad ending all but inevitable, much like a train collision.
 
Hi,

I have all of Lewis myself, and like Morse before it and Endeavor the whodunnit's are complex. Also there is a certain bitter sweetness to all three shows that makes you sometimes wish that the killer was not the killer after all. They aren't always tragedies, but they often run close.

Cheers, Greg.
 
I think this may be an issue with the term "foreshadowing". Red herring and false flags weren't what I was talking about with foreshadowing.

This may be a slight difference between us, because I view those red herrings and false flags in murder mysteries as a type of foreshadowing—albeit, a type that misleads.

The karmic outcome of a murder mystery is that the murderer will be caught while the logical outcome is the detectives convicting someone based on evidence. Usually, the two outcomes are the same but not always. If the real murderer gets away because they convict the wrong person or the killer gets off some other way, that's a case where the logical outcome overcomes the karmic.
I can't think of how the karmic would overcome the logical. Maybe the lead detective had a gut feeling that one suspect was the true murderer, ignored evidence and leads, then convicted the guy. But that would make for an awful crime story.

Inspector Lewis is a classical sort of murder mystery. Court cases don't enter into the picture at all, nor the onus of collecting enough evidence for a prosecution. Lewis does have gut feelings, which might sometimes be inexact, and lament having no evidence to back up his suspicions, but the show isn't the sort of Law & Order variety involving courts, and his suspicions might lead to discovery of more evidence but prove false about any given suspect. The show is pretty much a whodunnit: Who is committing these murders? Each episode comes to a conclusion when the murderer is discovered.


I can't really speak to how this relates to you watching the show because I don't know if your initial guess was based on in-universe logic, meta-logic (you knowing how stories work) or intuition.

Very good thoughts. There are actual clues within each episode, but also a lot of clues for the viewer beyond what Lewis and his partner discover, like character clues. So after the detectives leave a suspect after questioning him, we might see the suspect hastily calling some mystery person; or, before being a suspect of the detectives, we'll see the person peering suspiciously out of a window watching those detectives. These are types of clues for the viewer.

But there is meta-logic too—especially when watching multiple episodes, or doing a marathon, because there are clues in the habitual structure that writers/directors use. For instance, if one of the potential suspects seems obviously suspicious, with crazy behavior aligning so well with potential guilt, he's probably not going to end up being the killer.

One of the things I particularly like about the show is how the ultimate reveal of killer often also reveals a motivation for the killing that has been well hidden during the episode. (Whereas all the other potential killers have already had a variety of valid motivations made either explicit or strongly hinted.)
 
Hi,

I have all of Lewis myself, and like Morse before it and Endeavor the whodunnit's are complex. Also there is a certain bitter sweetness to all three shows that makes you sometimes wish that the killer was not the killer after all. They aren't always tragedies, but they often run close.

Cheers, Greg.

Endeavor's another of my favorites. I have not watched Morse, but did discover recently that I can't watch it free on any of the streaming services I already use; bother!

Some extremely good writing on Lewis and Endeavor.
 
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WooHooMan

Auror
This may be a slight difference between us, because I view those red herrings and false flags in murder mysteries as a type of foreshadowing–albeit, a type that misleads.

Sure, those could be counted as foreshadowing. But that wasn't what I was talking about in that specific post. In that post, I was talking about foreshadowing to the definite ending.

Inspector Lewis is a classical sort of murder mystery. Court cases don't enter into the picture at all, nor the onus of collecting enough evidence for a prosecution. Lewis does have gut feelings, which might sometimes be inexact, and lament having no evidence to back up his suspicions, but the show isn't the sort of Law & Order variety involving courts, and his suspicions might lead to discovery of more evidence but prove false about any given suspect. The show is pretty much a whodunnit: Who is committing these murders? Each episode comes to a conclusion when the murderer is discovered.

Maybe I should have said "arrested" or "catch" instead of "convict".
But ok, so it sounds like the episode end with both the karmic outcome and the logical outcome. The actual process of the story doesn't really matter. It's karmic because the real murderers are caught (I assume) and there is a logical series of events where the inspectors hunches are proven or disproven which allows him to catch the true murderer.

Classic Greek tragedy is strictly logical: the characters' flaws and dispositions are set up in such a way that it makes the bad ending all but inevitable, much like a train collision.

Ok, that's true. I was thinking more like modern tragedies but I suppose in this case the Greeks were being both logical and karmic with their outcomes.
Really, I guess the best way to impart inevitability would be if the logical and karmic outcomes are the same and clearly foreshadowed.
 

Necroben

Dreamer
As writers we can use confirmation bias to our advantage. Immersing the reader in your world (that has rules, and those rules are followed) can make them biased to certain events in your story. We can engender empathy for a character and draw the reader into the world at the same time.
 
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