Jules Verne and Michel Verne: “In Life Every Act is the Resultant of a Hundred Thoughts”

Photographers Unknown, Ten Black and Whites for the Evening

“Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought of dissecting their mental and moral natures. Our feelings, you must remember, are far more complex than all that. In real life every act is the resultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and these
you must study, each by itself, if you would create a living
character.”

Jules Verne and Michel Verne, In the Year 2889, Short Story, “The Forum”, February 1889

Note: First published in France’s “The Forum” under the name of Jules Verne, the short story is now recognized to be, chiefly if not entirely, the work of Jules’ son Michel Verne. The series was later published in its entirely in 1890.

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