: Re: How about a story as a series of anecdotes? I have a concept for a story I'd like to do where my purpose for writing the story is simply to explore a hypothetical society by means of anecdotes

@Heady158

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I basically agree with Tannalein (and upvoted her answer). Let me just add a couple of comments too long to fit in a comment on her answer.

There's lots of fiction where the writer has some idea he wants to explore, and so the plot is just a thin wrapper around the "big idea".

For example, I can think of several books where it's pretty obvious that the author wrote the book to present his idea of how to build a better society. Like, I once read a book called "Walden II". The story was about a man visiting a community where people had built a near-utopia. There really wasn't much plot, he visits the place and tours around and sees how their society works and has some trivial personal conflict with the founder of the place and leaves and then decides to come back and everybody is happy. The plot was clearly just a thin excuse for the writer to describe his idea of how he thought people could build a utopian society. Instead of writing an essay on, "here's how to create utopia", he writes a story where someone has already done it and then has the hero visit the place and meet people and so on. (P.S. I'm not endorsing the ideas in this book -- frankly I thought they were pretty lame -- but that's not the point. I'm discussing the literary technique.)

There's a lot of science fiction that falls in this category. The author wants to talk about his idea for building an interstellar spacecraft or what an alien civilization might be like or discuss the paradoxes of time travel, etc etc. He could write an essay, but that would be boring. So instead he wraps some thin plot around the idea and makes it a fiction story. Often the plot is as thin as, "hero meets someone who tells him about X" or "hero and his friends discuss how to do X". Of course when it's done well the writer creates an engaging story that keeps the reader interested, while pumping in the big idea on the side.

Side note: If the idea is controversial, this has a side advantage as a propaganda technique. If you write an essay on why some social change would be a good idea, the reader will naturally be thinking about the pros and cons of your idea, and will be on guard for weak arguments and simplistic solutions. But if instead you write a fiction story, you can present the idea as having been tried and worked and never mention any problems that you don't have answers for. If someone objects, you just say, "Hey, it's a fiction story, not a legislative proposal!" If you're good at it, you draw the readers into the story and they don't think about the fact that it's all made up. They get the idea in their heads that your utopia would be a really great place to live and the people who built this society are all good and honest and likable people. Like, I once posted an article on a web site where I commented that the society in Star Trek appeared to be a totalitarian military dictatorship: There is little mention of any civilian government and none that I ever caught of elections, but all decisions are made by "Star Fleet Command". There don't appear to be any institutions other than Star Fleet: no one even casually mentions a college other than Star Fleet Academy, a company where he used to work, or a church that he attends. No one ever quotes a source of news or information other than messages from Star Fleet. When there's a natural disaster it's always Star Fleet that responds, not the Red Cross or the Salvation Army or their future equivalents. Etc. Anyway, I got more hostile email about that article than about anything I ever wrote about politics or religion or other really controversial subjects (with just one exception, an article about capital punishment). All these people wrote me to say, "No, no, the Federation is a wonderful place, how dare you criticize this great nation that has done so much for the galaxy" etc. Like it was not only a real place but their own homeland. I think I could have said that George Washington was a child molestor and a cannibal and gotten less hostile response.

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