Milch on Fiction

A few months ago I transcribed and tacked to my wall something Milch said in the writers’ room: “The tactics of fictive persuasion have nothing to do with reasoned discourse.”

Then a couple of days ago I reread a longer transcript of some notes Milch gave regarding an earlier episode. He was talking about the scene at the end of Episode 2 when Zippy the bird heals Shaun’s fatal injury with a kiss, but the idea applies here as well:

“The important point that I’m trying to make is that storytelling has nothing, whatsoever, to do with logic. Logic is a limping stepchild of the true processes of the spirit. It’s an illusion. It’s a defective little parlor trick. Associations are the way that we perceive. Electrical connections caused by the juxtapositions of experience. That’s the way we are really built, and storytelling takes into account that truth.”
Hawk, Steve. Inside the Episode: Episode 6 “His Visit: Day Five”. John From Cincinnati website.

Tags: fiction, john from cincinnati, logic, milch, narrative, plot

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