Why I’m Ambivalent Towards “Theories” About In-Progress Works

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Theories about serial fiction are kinda lame and pointless. They are also great and I love and appreciate the people who make and discuss them!

What do you mean “theory”

I want to discuss a narrow meaning of theory here; essentially, trying to predict what will happen in a work by telling a plausible story that is supported by evidence in what has already been published. Predicting that a character in a British drama will die because they coughed blood and appealing to narrative principles like Chekhov’s gun are classic examples of this, but the Game Theory video I Already Solved The Next Garten of Banban (Chapter 8)[1] truly epitomizes the concept.

Lame

Some narratives are puzzleboxes that want to be figured out. Mysteries are a whole genre! But not every story is, or wants to be, that. At worst, predictions of future plot developments lead to you checking a mental bingo sheet instead of engaging with the work fully.[2]

That plot point totally strengthens Theory A! Theory B is dead in the water after that. Whoever thought Theory B was going to happen looks pretty dumb now.

Pointless

Imagine you’re reading The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and you’ve just finished the prologue. After reading the line “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,” you’re fairly certain that the titular twosome is not making it to the end. However, you have no reason to expect Romeo to die first.[3] It logically follows in the story,[4] but you don’t have all the information at this point.

How events happen, the choices that characters make—these are the atoms of a plot. Changing one thing affects the rest of the story,[5] so predicting what is going to happen is a crapshoot; there are more Theory Bs than Theory As because a single chapter can turn “that’ll never happen” into “there is no way that doesn’t happen.”

Great

Despite everything, I like this class of theory. Trying to predict the course of a plot makes you mull over what’s already happened; you can appreciate finer details and discuss (and debate) their significance. I love small predictions based on little more than a gut instinct, and I love theories so elaborate that they’re more fan fiction than prediction. Literary analysis is as old as literature, and casual theorizing is a fun way to engage in a time-honored tradition while more deeply enjoying a work you love.

Remember, all theories are wrong, but some are fun. Also, it’s kinda hard to predict the path of a story through hyperdimensional plotspace.

  1. No, I haven’t watched it. I honestly didn’t expect to find a video with an exactly fitting title so quickly ↩︎
  2. Not trying to moralize! The positive stuff is for later in the blog post, okay ↩︎
  3. Spoilers! You had four centuries to read/watch it ↩︎
  4. Romeo has deadly poison that he bought and he thinks that Juliet is dead (on account of the Poison That Makes It Look Like You Died that she took) ↩︎
  5. Assuming it’s my favorite kind of story: a competently-written one ↩︎