Key Principle
Two concepts together name how stories are built before they are written.
Phase space (borrowed from dynamics): "the notional space that contains not just the actual consequences of the present moment, but all the possible consequences." Every sentence sits surrounded by "the ghosts of the sentences I could have written at that point, but chose not to." Every choice closes some futures and opens others. (Essay: "The Writing of Stories")
Image schemas (from cognitive scientist Mark Turner): "skeletal patterns that recur in our sensory and motor experience. Motion along a path, bounded interior, balance and symmetry are typical image schemas." These are the fundamental particles of narrative — pre-linguistic, bodily, and the substrate stories actually move on.
"Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else... perhaps they're made of life." (Essay: "Poco a Poco")
We can imagine pouring-out because we have hands; binary fission is structurally meaningful because we know separation in our bodies. The schema rides under the prose.
Why This Matters
Phase space names a problem and an opportunity. The problem: if the ghosts of unwritten sentences get the upper hand, "it becomes very hard to say anything... paralysing self-consciousness." The opportunity: once you name the phase space, you can use it — every scene has more options than your first instinct, and pattern-thinking expands the search.
Image schemas name why the unconscious of fiction works. Pullman discovered after the fact that his trilogy was built on binary fission — Lyra leaving Jordan, Roger kidnapped, Asriel/Coulter split, Will's father vanishing, children severed from daemons, and finally Lyra-and-Will parted. He had been using the schema unconsciously. Recognizing it let him apply it consciously — the ending wouldn't make "formal sense — pattern sense" without Lyra and Will parting.
The deeper claim: the schemas precede the writing. Story is bodily before it is verbal. This is why "stories are made of events, not words" — and why the writer's most important compositional unit is not the sentence but the schematic event the sentence describes.
Good Examples
- Binary fission as HDM's spine (Essay: "The Writing of Stories"). Once Pullman saw it, the trilogy's ending was required by the pattern. The Lyra-and-Will parting is not arbitrary tragedy — it is the schema completing itself.
- The misdirection mechanism: "severed" primes the reader for "head" (Iris Murdoch). The reader looks elsewhere when the true horror — severance from daemon — arrives. The schema works best when it ambushes. (Essay: "The Writing of Stories")
- Phase space as compositional discipline: when Pullman cannot find the right opening for The Golden Compass, he writes a dozen drafts. The drafts are not waste — they are exploration of the phase space. The right opening emerged only when Pantalaimon appeared. (Essay: "The Writing of Stories")
- Bodily grounding made literal: "pouring out" works as a narrative particle because we have hands and have poured. The reader's body recognizes the pattern faster than the reader's mind. (Essay: "Poco a Poco")
- Recurring particles as structural rhyme: a schema repeated across scenes accumulates meaning. The trilogy's many separations each feel weightier because each rhymes with the others.
Counterpoints
- The paralysis trap: the phase space is so vast that the writer freezes. The escape: name the phase space, then push forward; van Gogh's "the canvas... is far more afraid of the painter." Writing on paper helps — "some of those sentences remain and can be resurrected from the grave of the crossings-out."
- Theme imposed first: producing argument rather than story. Theme must emerge from collision — "a spark and a stream of gas." Pullman discovered his trilogy's theme by noticing what was already in his draft (children's daemons shift, adults' don't). Phase-space exploration finds the theme; pre-decided themes shut the exploration down.
- The Chandler surprise principle as phase-space hack: "When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." The value isn't the intruder — it's that "you, the storyteller, didn't know about it in advance." Forced surprise opens phase-space regions planning cannot reach.
Key Quotes
"Every sentence I write is surrounded by the ghosts of the sentences I could have written at that point, but chose not to." (Essay: "The Writing of Stories")
"When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand." (Raymond Chandler, quoted in "The Writing of Stories")
"It just isn't true that something is in a story because the writer thought it should be there. It's there because the story needed it to be there." (Essay: "The Writing of Stories" — phase space and story-as-master converge here)
Rules of Thumb
- When stuck, expand the phase space deliberately: write three different next sentences. Pick the one that surprises you.
- Watch for image schemas in your own draft. Where you've unconsciously repeated a pattern (separation, container-breach, motion-along-a-path), make it conscious — the schema's repetition is the story's spine.
- Write on paper at least sometimes. The crossings-out are resurrectable; the screen erases history.
- Don't decide the theme first. Let it emerge from the events; name it once you see what your draft is already doing.
- If a scene feels weightless, ask whether it sits on any image schema. Add or strengthen the bodily pattern and the scene gains gravity.
Related References
- The Path Through the Wood — Story-Line Discipline — phase space is the wood, formally named
- Where Do I Put the Camera? — Narrative Stance, Distance, Selection — camera positions are a phase-space of stances
- Innocence to Experience — The Kleist Spine and Schrödinger Contraries — innocence-experience as image schema (motion-along-a-path projected onto a life)
- Voice — The Classical Tone and the Contrary-Holding Narrator — narrator as another schema-aware presence