Richard asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

I tear up when I read the last line of Cryoburn. (Before the Aftermaths.) But I always cry while reading the aftermaths. How can a man I never met make me cry? How can a man who never lived except on paper move me to cry? You are an artist.

Lois McMaster Bujold Thank you!

It's something I wonder about, when I'm in a bio-evolutionary mood -- why do people's brains even do fiction? Storytelling is something done in every culture, and generally anything so universal has to have a biological root. Story-making certainly ties in with language -- even the most utilitarian uses of speech, like describing where that good berry patch or fresh carcass may be found, involve using sounds to make pictures appear in other people's brains/minds. From there to mistakes, making pictures that aren't true, to lies to stories is no step at all; they all use the same program. (Teaching, too.) I suspect empathy, mirroring as recent psychology dubs it, came before speech, but speech taps into that as well.

Emotional responses to fiction may be induced by immersion, giving the reader as close to the characters' experiences as possible, teaching as it goes. They may also, much more succinctly, be induced by evocation, drawing up (presumably) shared experiences from the readers' minds, which is very powerful when it works but can fall flat if the reader doesn't have any analogue to the experience, or knowledge of the reference. (The bifurcation of responses to the end of Cryoburn, to judge from some readerly discussion, sometimes seems to depend on what real-life bereavements the reader has suffered, in a sort of resonance. Or not, as the case may be.)

"I loved that character" is often assumed, when it happens across gender boundaries, to be the reader positing the character as an imaginary heartthrob, but I think it is way more often identification, strong empathy. (Not that it can't be some of both.) It's certainly identification for me, sometimes in the most oblique ways, when I attach to a fictional character. (Confusing the two forms of attachment has led to some rather mis-aimed readers recs, both to me and by me.)

Any of the above paragraphs could be a 10k-word essay, but there isn't enough space. Or tea. Consider them the boiled-down takeaway, tl;dnr without the r.

Happy New Year to all, this snowy morning --

Ta, L.

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