Recently I finished David Berlinski's wonderful little book Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World.
I like to read physical books because I like to write in the margins. On page 3, I wrote this at the top of the page:
Berlinski quotes Newton's biographer, William Stukeley, who in 1662 after dinner with Newton, retired with Newton to the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees. Berlinski quotes Stukeley:
Amidst other discourse, he told me he was in the same situation [sitting in the garden under the shade of the apple trees] when the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple as he sat in a contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's center?
Berlinski then writes:
I have always understood the apple to have fallen on Newton's head with an invigorating boink; but I may have been misinformed. Stukeley clearly has Newton looking at the apple as it fell; but the charming thing about the story...is that like all good stories, it seems to contain a mystery at the core of its narrative marrow, the falling apple followed by a thought-inducing boink still retaining all of its old and troubling suggestiveness. An apple? Falling? Yes, but why downward?
Why did the apple fall down and not sideways or up? Such a question is the mystery at the core of all good narratives. It's the story question. In Newton's case the answer changed the world of science, mathematics, philosophy, and industry.
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The answer to the mystery at the core of your story must also change the world...not just for your protagonist, who has changed most dramatically, but also for your audience.
Can a farm boy from a desolate planet save the galactic rebels from an evil empire?
How can a young man save his mermaid girlfriend from the murderous government?
Can a devoutly religious, conscientious objector serve in Hitler's army?
Can a spider save a pig from slaughter?
Of course, these are all known too as story hooks...and the answer should be enlightening as well as ironic and intriguing.
This reminds me of Gerry Mooney's Gravity poster, which I've cited before.
Just as Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity cannot be ignored without negative consequences, so a storyteller cannot ignore the law of an intriguing and ironic story hook with a reasonable answer that changes the world of the protagonist and audience.
Finally, as an apple passes before us, Newton's gravitational FORCE that causes two material objects to attract each other, and which keeps the moon in orbit about the earth, and the earth in orbit about the sun, et al...that FORCE, which is an intrinsic characteristic of all material objects, is not material itself. As Berlinski reminds us,
Newtonian forces cannot be grasped at all. They act invisibly; they act at a distance; and they act at once. It is only their trace in matter than can be detected...we cannot directly observe or measure the force that controls them. That remains a real but inaccessible feature of the world.
The same is true of the emotional forces (moral values) in a story that motivate people (your characters) to say and act as they must do to create drama. Characters do not really battle against other human beings or even against the physical forces of nature. Oh, they do in an explicit way, but what causes them to move and act are not material forces, but the forces of moral values that cannot be grasped at all. Moral values act invisibly; they act at a distance; and they act at once. It is only their trace in matter (the lives of others, for instance) that can be detected. That remains a real feature of the world of narratives, and is what makes stories connect with audiences.
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