JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #38
February 4, 2021
Today I’m thinking about the psychological framework called "Construal Level Theory" and how it relates to fiction. In broad terms, Construal Level Theory refers to the effect of the psychological distance at which we construe events and objects upon the relative abstractness and concreteness of our considerations. An example might be where we recall specific and concrete details about something that just happened to us but after many years we will only recall a summarizing, general idea of the situation because so much time has passed. The inverse seems also to obtain: if I can recall many specific details of a memory, despite how long ago it happened, that memory will feel closer to me, more immediate.
In writing fiction, we are often told to focus on specific and concrete details to better evoke a scene, and Construal Level Theory helps to explain why. According to the theory, specific details should help to make the events depicted in our fiction more immediate--they reduce the psychological distance. Meanwhile, abstractions and generalizations widen the distance between fictive depictions and the reader. This is consistent with the common craft advice that we should focus on concrete details in our rendering of a fictive situation in order to heighten its immediacy for the reader’s experience.
Although Construal Level Theory as a psychological framework has been developed much more recently than most advice about fictive craft that focuses on concrete details, it’s always encouraging when we can find scientific/psychological backing for our artistic assumptions.
For further reading, here is a paper, "Construal-level theory of psychological distance."
Next: On Reading