TheNextBigWriter Premium → fate/destiny in fiction
I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about the use of fate/destiny in your writing. I have two characters, both of whom are told it is their destiny to save the human race from the Apocalypse, although they use different, even conflicting, methods in the attempt to do so.
Can someone fail to achieve one's destiny? The very word suggests otherwise. If it's fate, how dumb do you have to be to screw it up? Can you walk away from fate?
Thanks.
Dirk
I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about the use of fate/destiny in your writing. I have two characters, both of whom are told it is their destiny to save the human race from the Apocalypse, although they use different, even conflicting, methods in the attempt to do so.
Can someone fail to achieve one's destiny? The very word suggests otherwise. If it's fate, how dumb do you have to be to screw it up? Can you walk away from fate?
Thanks.
Dirk
My book Remembrances and Reconciliation is about that. I don't explicitly deny determinism (not meaning only causality, which is axiomatic) but I do think it is a delusion, even so is classical physics, we accept to distil some happiness from: Shit happens and then you die. {Is life a meaningless struggle toward an inevitable nothingness?} Fate/destiny is a lie one tells oneself, or, of course, given to him by society.
In the sequel, Maximilian's Achilles and Patroclus, I put the fate/destiny to the test in a different context fairly well the same as in Homer's Iliad and the premise of your story.
Ancient Greeks believed it was impossible to escape from your fate. Attempts to do so only ended on the fate being fulfilled (Oedipus, for example). My suggestion is that the combined efforts of your characters save the world, however unlike--and even contradictory--their methods might be. The reader will be expecting that only one succeed, but you'll give the reader an extra bonus when both of them do.
Kiss,
Gacela
Of course anyone/everyone will always live up to their destiny/fate. I mean, by definition, whatever they do or happens to them, it is inevitably their destiny/fate. So no, you can't escape it because it is simply what you end up doing or experiencing and the only way to escape that is to not exist. It in no way means things are preordained or such, it merely means that no matter what happens then that is/was your destiny/fate. So my destiny was to answer this question, yours will be however you respond to it or not. The same logic is true for your characters; no matter how you write them, it is their destiny/fate emanating from yours. Take care. Vern
Vern, surely there was never any doubt that I would respond. :-)
I need to adjust the wording I use in the book's next draft. I think it's more correct to say they're destined to lead the quest, without knowing if they'll succeed. Even that isn't quite right, since one of them is given the option to walk away even before he begins.
The prophecy in which their presumed destiny was revealed might well be wrong. Whether destiny can be changed by actions in the present depends on the rules of the world your characters live in.
Thanks, Karin. The idea of the prophecy being wrong is a good fit. I hadn't considered it since both boys are told about their destinies by God, or at least a voice that claims to be Him. The prophecy is only as real as the deity (as opposed to mental illness). I need to dedicate some time to making that connection more obvious.
Vern, surely there was never any doubt that I would respond. :-)
I need to adjust the wording I use in the book's next draft. I think it's more correct to say they're destined to lead the quest, without knowing if they'll succeed. Even that isn't quite right, since one of them is given the option to walk away even before he begins.
Ahh, but if he walks away, then that is his destiny and always was. If he changes his mind again, then that is and always was his destiny (and yours for writing it thus), and so on and so on. You can never escape, lol. Take care. Vern
I think fate/destiny is a staple of sci-fi and fantasy. So are prophecies and quests.
I believe once your fate is known then it is possible to change it for better or worse. If you do not know your fate then how can you change it? For example, if I knew that someone would steal my car tomorrow, I could take action to prevent it from happening. If I had never been told, I would not take action and my car could be stolen. Knowledge of your fate to me is the only way to change it.
Ancient Greeks believed it was impossible to escape from your fate.
That is not true, or a gross simplification, for post-Homeric Achaean and derived cultures. Neither Plato or Aristotle could have come from such a culture Maybe you should stay in and read more.
I believe once your fate is known.
How? I think that such a thing put into fiction automatically puts that fiction into fantasy/magic genre.
I think fate/destiny is a staple of sci-fi and fantasy. So are prophecies and quests.
Fantasy, yes; sci-fi, no. Those who are not scientists or are not familiar enough with science will confuse the two.
I don't believe in fate or destiny being preordained. I think you can only know you destiny/fate looking back over your life when approaching the end of it.
But doesn't make a good story and so I think this is your fictional tale and you are God in that regard and can create the world in whatever way that pleases you.
As most of you know I approach life from by belief in God though his Son Christ. Having said that, fate and predestined life is purely perspective. As Dags says, we can only know our fate by following our heart (conscience) and then looking back. If I had made different choices in life, I would physically be in a different place now. For instance I was destined to be very wealthy, I missed that only by a million or so. We have free will to do as we please. God would have us be guided by his Word and his Spirit. When we finally face him He will say "I knew that."
Mike
I don't believe in fate or destiny being preordained. I think you can only know you destiny/fate looking back over your life when approaching the end of it.
But doesn't make a good story and so I think this is your fictional tale and you are God in that regard and can create the world in whatever way that pleases you.
Oooo! Let's define destiny and fate in Orwellian Newspeak!
I know my destiny in that I can see that I will have placed a period at the end of a sentence I did write.
As most of you know I approach life from by belief in God though his Son Christ. Having said that, fate and predestined life is purely perspective. As Dags says, we can only know our fate by following our heart (conscience) and then looking back. If I had made different choices in life, I would physically be in a different place now. For instance I was destined to be very wealthy, I missed that only by a million or so. We have free will to do as we please. God would have us be guided by his Word and his Spirit. When we finally face him He will say "I knew that."
Mike
Mike,
I think that's what I'm trying to say. You have choices, and each choice changes your destiny/fate. It's a work in progress.
But, as I mentioned before, that doesn't make the best fantasy/syfy story. In fact in fiction your character's fate/destiny IS preordained by YOU. In my soon to be published novel, Ronan Island, in the original plot, Skip was supposed to die of a broken heart, lending credence to his wife's insistence that she was an Irish seal fairy. THEN the character Nichole came along and pleaded with me to let him live, she'd loved him since tenth grade. I held Skip's destiny in my hands, and chose to let him live.
Fantasy, yes; sci-fi, no. Those who are not scientists or are not familiar enough with science will confuse the two.
You gotta love someone who can so confidently be utterly wrong.
Fantasy, yes; sci-fi, no. Those who are not scientists or are not familiar enough with science will confuse the two.
You gotta love someone who can so confidently be utterly wrong.
Your self-love will be seen as anti-social by the liberal thought police, so watch out!
I just finished reading fate/destiny in fiction and thoroughly enjoyed it.
If it happened, it was destined. If it didn't happen that, too, was destined. Somebody's prediction isn't your destiny, unless you're writing fiction, and lucky for us, you are. A prediction is like a weather forecast: sometimes right, other times, not so much. So then, if whatever happens happens because it was destined, then no, you can't escape your destiny. If you are destined to save the world, then no matter what you do, your actions will save the world.
You are destined to have a nice day.
There's an old story about the interpretation of preordination. Two soldiers are using a brief respite during combat to wax philosophically. One of them comments that surviving a war is purely chance; one can't control it. The other says he's not worried, because he believes in predestiny - that his fate has already been decided. Suddenly, shells starty exploding around them and they both dive into a fox hole. The first soldier turns to the other and says, I thought you believed that your fate was preordained. So why did you jump into this fox hole with me?" The other replies, "I believe that fox hole was preordained to be there to save me."
As writers, we create the DESTINATION of our characters and we spin their FATES. The DESTINATION is the denouncement and the magic of the writing is prompting the reader to believe certain fates we've given to characters. And, as thinking beings we believe the concept of logical sequences towards final actions or non-actions to define... well, existence.
Destiny is a man-made idea, a philosophy of the seemingly absolute, and yet because we've created it, we can play with it, question it. And that is the fun, the adventure of writing in a nutshell. Fiction writing is the fabrication of destinies, fate is the true or false determinism of the fabrication net cast... Ah, the plot thickens!
That final destination of ideas, characters, scenarios is a quantum of choices. We label them fate, as things that are predetermined, but perhaps not in reality, since our minds look for patterns in everything, always seeking ways to outsmart or avoid painful or threatening patterns, a.k.a., our destiny. Destiny is a yearning for a pattern, for an secure, reaffirming and all-encompassing idea derived or prompted from a fear of no pattern or DESTINATION to human life and existence.
When questioning our destiny/ our fate, I think we are questioning, seeking survival choices in the vast realms of our internal neural nets dealing with luck & chance. These neural net ideas are the culmination of our knowledge and experiences in the realms of luck & chance.... to avoid or embrace perceived destinies.
I wrote this knowing full-well that Charles Bell would take umbrage to this and therefore I used my realm of predeterminism to elicit a true destiny or a false destiny (destination), only fate will prove me right. Right, Charles? lol.
If it happened, it was destined. If it didn't happen that, too, was destined. Somebody's prediction isn't your destiny, unless you're writing fiction, and lucky for us, you are. A prediction is like a weather forecast: sometimes right, other times, not so much. So then, if whatever happens happens because it was destined, then no, you can't escape your destiny. If you are destined to save the world, then no matter what you do, your actions will save the world.
You are destined to have a nice day.
And the example of such a phenomenon as weather (and CLIMATE, by the way) is good example, but not by itself convincing to everyone, that fate and destiny do not exist in reality but rather function as convenient lies.
Homer's Achilles, we suppose he added to the existing ancient legend, is a turning point in Western civilization in that Achilles is given a destiny but he also has a choice through his own action or inaction between two outcomes, so even in a culture of intervening-meddling gods, Man has effective freewill. My willing suspension of disbelief ends when the author conjures "destiny" without freewill.
When questioning our destiny/ our fate, I think we are questioning, seeking survival choices in the vast realms of our internal neural nets dealing with luck & chance. These neural net ideas are the culmination of our knowledge and experiences in the realms of luck & chance.... to avoid or embrace perceived destinies.
I wrote this knowing full-well that Charles Bell would take umbrage to this and therefore I used my realm of predeterminism to elicit a true destiny or a false destiny (destination), only fate will prove me right. Right, Charles? lol.
The problem here is that the topic is tilted toward what an author may/ought to/want to do and that is itself creating a fictional world of a predestined universe with the author as God. However, in the big picture that says nothing whatsoever about reality. My philosophy for writing is anti-naturalism in that what I write is real (big picture) even if nothing of the particulars is; whereas, the naturalist writer writes what is real (in the particulars) but in reality nothing of what he writes (big picture) is.
The fact is I agree with your first paragraph above but add that morality rather than amoral utilitarianism guides the individual through a universe that has Chance as an operand and there is no such thing as determinism.
TheNextBigWriter Premium → fate/destiny in fiction
