decisions, decisions

Once it had crossed my mind that the depiction of decision-making in narrative was an

Zeus, about to make a questionable decision

extraordinarily important part of pretty much every story, or at least every story I've ever been interested in reading, beginning with the Iliad, or possibly with the Epic of Gilgamesh (well, to be honest, more the Iliad), I assumed that I could not be the first person who has ever noticed this, and that there would be a large body of literature on this precise point.  There should be loads of theory on this subject, I thought cheerfully.  I can find the theory, read it, apply it to the Iliad and to Alice Oswald and see what I get (presumably something different for the two works).  And I can do this by March, before the conference. Piece of cake. So I looked around a little.

So far as I can tell, no one has ever noticed that the depiction of decision-making matters in narrative.

I've asked my friends in philosophy.  Why yes, there is a HUGE body of work on decision-making in philosophy - whole departments are built around studying this question. It all has to do with rational actors, and what such an actor would do and how they would make their decisions.  Has anyone ever met a rational actor? I asked, momentarily diverted.  Well, no, my philosopher friends admitted.  The theory is about what they would do if there were any.

I asked friends in communications theory, which seems to have a lot to do with theories of narrative.  They pointed me to the same books, plus some rather more practical stuff  that described how people actually do make decisions.  This was more entertaining, but just as irrelevant to my project.   And there is a lot of work done in the business schools on how to make good decisions, i.e. ones that will keep you making money.  This is eminently useful to some people, or it is if it works.  However.

I am still searching for anyone who has published on how people DESCRIBE the decision-making process.  Possibly there's something in psychology.

I cannot believe there's nothing out there, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.  Onward.

fine, here's the actual outline

We bow to the protestations of numerous colleagues and here post the uncensored, unadulterated outline of our paper, just as it appears in our own notes, minus the variables (for which you will wish to substitute your own).

We trust others will find this as useful as we have in the generation of creative thought.

Whedon meets Euripides, redux

Finally having some time free, after teaching, marking, submitting, seeing family, and collapsing,  my colleague and I are tackling our "Sacrificial Virgins" paper again.  For some reason this has been surprisingly difficult to finish; after 3 days' work we realised this was because we were trying to fit in every single thing either of us had ever thought about Buffy, Euripides, or Sacrificial Virgins.

On reflection, however,  it is quite possible that we will write again on tragedy, pop culture, virgins, or some combination thereof, so some of  these thoughts can surely go in the next paper.

We have therefore after long and careful thought produced an outline for the current paper, which I shall reproduce here since, as article outlines go, it is a model, a succinct template which I am sure will be useful to many others.  In the interests of serving the needs of our colleagues, as little as possible has been withheld to protect our results before publication:

Happy New Year, all.