Category: Fiction philosophy

How to control people’s thoughts with words

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Photo by David O'Driscoll

Photo by David O’Driscoll

I’m almost afraid to publish this post.

It feels like passing out a loaded gun to every random stranger that passes by.

In the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

But when I think about it, it’s already in the wrong hands. The hands of con artists and cult leaders and politicians. And there is no way to take that power from them except to make everyone else aware of it.

Have you ever thought—I mean really thought—about the power of language? Most of us take it for granted. Not only as a tool to tell our families we love them, or to ask where the bathroom is, or to get anything done at all, but as the only way to transmit complex ideas.

It can take a whole book to explain one concept, but assign a name to that concept within the book, and you create a shortcut. Then, if a person has read that book, you can speak one word that conjures up an entire world in their mind.

Quixotic is a simpler example; in Don Quixote, Cervantes (albeit unintentionally) created a word which combined two previously separate ideas: chivalrous and foolish.

Back in 1948, “big brother” meant nothing but “older male sibling.” Then Orwell came out with 1984 and more than 60 years later, we still use the phrase to mean an all-seeing, all-powerful totalitarian government.

Or take the word hnau from C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, used to differentiate between animals and intelligent lifeforms in a universe where humans are not the only intelligent lifeforms. That’s an inadequate explanation, because the distinction involves far more than intelligence, or even spirit or soul—you’ll have to read the book to understand it.

Point: words are more than labels. Words are the means of wrapping big ideas in small packages, so we can hand them off to each other almost effortlessly.Collapsible concepts. Portable philosophy.

This is possibly one of the most powerful things on earth. Why?

Because you can use it to change the way people think.

Take a simple example. Consider the difference between the synonyms said and claimed. “Bob said he saw Linda at the store,” is neutral. But change it to “Bob claimed he saw Linda at the store,” and suddenly you doubt Bob’s honesty.

Or go the opposite direction and put “Bob confirmed he saw Linda at the store,” and suddenly the statement is fact.

Now apply it to one of our portable philosophies. Say there’s been a break-in at your condominium and the homeowners’ association votes to put up security cameras in all the corridors, so they can monitor who goes in and out of every condo. The cameras go up and everyone feels a lot safer. Then somebody graffitis “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” on the wall beneath one camera. Suddenly you’re conjuring up images of emotionless masses in jumpsuits being presided over by a giant television screen that never shuts off. Suddenly you’re worried a little less about security and a little more about privacy. And the next time someone proposes a measure “for added security,” you’re a little slower to agree. You might flat-out oppose it.

Why does it take a whole book to explain?

It only took me six words to define Big Brother at the beginning of this post. So why aren’t we creating collapsible concepts left and right? Because it has to be more than a label. If we’re going to remember it later, it needs to strike a chord with us. It takes the emotional journey of Winston Smith to solidify Big Brother in our minds. That’s the power of stories.

Of course, chances are, you knew what Big Brother meant even if you haven’t read 1984—even if it never “struck a chord” with you. That’s because it struck a chord with so many other people that it became iconic. That’s the power of storieson a world-changing scale.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen every time anybody writes a book.

But it can happen.

Remember that next time you’re reading a dystopian novel, or watching the news, or starting a new paragraph in your WIP. Listen carefully—and write even more carefully.

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Learn about something even more dangerous: the death of words.

 Read more about mind control here.

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How to kill your hero

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SPOILER ALERT: The following includes spoilers for City ofAngels(Sparks), Message in a Bottle (Sparks), A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), The Brothers Bloom (movie), and Stranger Than Fiction (movie).

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I’ve blogged about sadism, I’ve blogged about happy vs. sad endings, but this recent InMon piece from LoveTheBadGuy made me want to hit on a more specific topic:

When—and how—to kill a main character. Because sometimes you have to.

But here’s the thing: if you find yourself choosing between preserving the integrity of the story, and pleasing your readers—you are doing something wrong. Readers (the only ones you care about, anyway) will only be pleased if you preserve the integrity of the story.

Or maybe you just want to avoid the clichéd happy ending. But if the ending is that predictable, the ending isn’t the problem; the rest of the book is. Killing the hero because letting him live is cliché is like painting your daughter’s nursery black because pink is cliché. It’s a stunt. Controversy for its own sake, instead of what’s good for the story.

What you’re really looking for is surprise—a twist the readers weren’t expecting. But ask yourself what kind of surprise you’re giving them—good or bad?

Nicholas Sparks’s Unfailing Examples:

  • An angel falls in love with a human, eventually decides to become human himself, so they are finally free to be together when suddenly she gets hit by a car.
  • A reporter finds a heartbreakingly romantic message in a bottle and goes on a search to find its writer, who turns out to be a rugged sailor in the throes of depression over the death of his wife. As he finally opens himself up to love again, he suddenly dies in a shipwreck.

We’re on the edge of our seats rooting for these people to get together, and then—whammo! Sorry, kids, here comes the rainy funeral scene!

Two Reasons This Sucks:

1. While many people like sad endings, nobody likes rude surprises.

2. It’s the same as the pot-bellied uncle who begs “gimme five,” and pulls his hand back at the instant you go to slap it. It’s not clever. It’s just mean.

The Surprise Death

If the death must be a surprise, then it must be meaningful, and the whole story should lead up to it.

When Sydney Carton dies in A Tale of Two Cities, we look back and see that his resemblance to Charles Darnay, his love for Darnay’s wife, and his regret that he has wasted his life, all lead him to give his life for Darnay, so Darnay and wife can live happily ever after.

The Brothers Bloom appears to be a charming heist movie—we aren’t expecting any good guys to die. Bloom, who has wanted out of the crime business for a long time, reluctantly follows his big brother, Stephen, into yet another con. Bloom doesn’t discover until the end that the con involved Stephen sacrificing himself to get Bloom out of the business for good—with a pretty girl, to boot.

“You don’t understand what my brother does. He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels, with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and s****. And he wrote me as the vulnerable anti-hero. And that’s why you think you want to kiss me. It’s a con.”

 – Bloom in The Brothers Bloom

The Expected Death

“The woman I loved is…dead.”

–         Christian narrating the beginning of Moulin Rouge

Like all of Sparks’s books, Moulin Rouge tells the story of two unlikely lovers who overcome multiple obstacles to be together—until one of them up and dies at the end, for no apparent reason. The difference? Moulin Rouge warns us at the very beginning. Do I miss the thrill of not knowing? No, because instead of holding out for a last-minute victory and then being sorely disappointed, I’m free to enjoy the story for what it is—a beautiful tragedy.

The Surprise Survival!

Or you can turn it around and hint—even state outright—that you are going to kill your hero, and then up and save him. Happy surprise! But be careful; the same rule for the surprise death applies for the surprise survival: it must make sense. In Stranger Than Fiction, for instance, Eiffel saved Harold Crick with his wrist watch, which had itself been a character since the beginning.

 

Hilbert: Why did you change the book?
Eiffel: Lots of reasons. I realized I just couldn’t do it.

Hilbert: Because he’s real? 
Eiffel: Because it’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die. And then dies. But if a man does know he’s about to die and dies anyway. Dies- dies willingly, knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn’t that the type of man who you want to keep alive? 

–         from the final scene of Stranger Than Fiction

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Agree? Disagree? Tell me why in the comments!

Voice Week: why it totally rocked

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You guys are awesome.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such a wide variety of such high quality work that fascinated and thrilled me as much as the work the Voice Writers did last week. We heard the voices of animals, trees, supernatural beings, a park bench, and dozens of unique humans. We watched a bride prepare for her wedding, and a man on death row prepare for his execution. We questioned and pondered and loved and hated—and learned.

Here’s a few of the cool things that came out of it / that I learned:

Everyone interpreted the project a little differently. The variety of ways people’s pieces fit together made the project fascinating—some used different viewpoints to progressively tell more of the same story or more about the same character, some showed how different personalities would react to the same situation, some were linked only by prompt or by setting and showed the subtle contrasts between personalities. It made me glad I wasn’t too specific about what I thought I wanted for this project–it allowed the participants to be much more brilliant than narrower parameters would have allowed–creative minds need structure, yes, but they also need the freedom to be unique; that’s the same reason Inspiration Monday works as well as it does. (InMon is returning one week from today, by the way!)

He said, she said. Many pieces throughout the week had us guessing whether the narrator was male or female. We inferred gender by deciphering situation and analyzing word choice, and simply by how the character struck us. Sometimes we were right, sometimes wrong. A bit of a debate started over my first piece; in the comments, “female” currently leads the vote eight to three—and the majority is correct! With that in mind, here are some things to consider:

  1. Keeping the main character’s gender vague can be interesting, even profitable in a short story where gender doesn’t matter; readers of either gender can easily place themselves in the head of the narrator.
  2. Keeping the gender of a main character vague for too long, however—such as several paragraphs into a full-length novel—can also throw a reader off if they guessed wrong to begin with.

We can use bias to fight bias. I found myself relating to characters I normally wouldn’t like. I found myself disliking characters I’d normally relate to. I was irritated by the responsible bookstore manager, but I loved the nonchalant killer. I formed opinions, read others’ comments, read the rest of the week’s pieces—and second-guessed myself. I stopped to think about why I felt certain things toward certain characters—and whether that was justified by truth or clouded by bias. A well-crafted voice in a well-crafted story can show your reader the humanity in his enemy—the vulnerability and even the likability.

The mystery of the other side of the story. Possibly the most fun was the switching of views within the same story, a method several of the Voice Writers used to create suspense. In each character, we got a limited perspective—each one saw things the others didn’t; each one told us something new about the story. We got to piece together the clues to reveal a bigger truth than any one character could see.

Actions speak louder than words. One of the finer points of “Show Don’t Tell” hit home for me last week, too. When all was said and done, one of the most powerful illustrations of character was not the words they chose but the actions they used to respond to others. Giving a hot drink to a homeless man, or ignoring him. Locking a door and drowning out what’s on the other side, or taking a deep breath and opening it.

The Internet is the greatest invention since before sliced bread! Twenty years ago we couldn’t do this. Most of us, lacking the support of a writing community (not just here at BeKindRewrite, but all over the social media sphere) probably would’ve died out as writers by now. We would’ve given it up as a silly hobby nobody else cared about. And something precious and beautiful and potentially world-changing would have been thrown away. The Internet connects us across continents and oceans and helps us learn, inspire, and grow together.

So I want to thank each and every one of you for making this week so incredible. I may have gotten it started–but it was you guys who made it happen. Again and again I was blown away by your talent. I don’t think most of you realize just how talented you are. Every one of you contributed something unique and worthwhile. Every comment was encouraging, useful, insightful or all three.

I wish I could send you all books in the mail, but two’s the limit for now! The first random number is 12 – which is R.L.W. over at SnippetsAndScraps. I’ve sent you an email to get your mailing address and choice of prize!

What was your favorite part of Voice Week? Shall we do it again next year?

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How to handle discouragement, rejection, and bad reviews

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Image by Binu Kumar

Image by Binu Kumar

You write something brilliant at three in the morning, but by the next afternoon you want to burn it. You query a dozen agents and no one asks for pages. Your agent has submitted to 50 publishers and no one is interested. Your novel is getting awful reviews left and right.

At every stage of your writing career, no matter how successful you are, you are going to get discouraged. There will always be better writers, who got published earlier, made more money, and got better reviews. So take a second and wallow in your self-pity. Go ahead and get a Kleenex. I’ll wait.

You all done? Ready for my next piece of advice? Here it is.

Suck it up and keep writing.

J.K. Rowling was rejected by 12 publishing houses before getting published. Now? If you don’t know who she is, you must be from Mars.

John Grisham was rejected by 28 publishers before being picked up by a relative unknown for a measly 5,000-copy first printing. Now he has over 250 million books in print, in 29 languages. Nine of his novels have been made into major motion pictures.

Agatha Christie waited four years for her first book to be published. She went on to become one of the best-selling authors of all time; And Then There Were None alone has sold more than 100 million copies.

A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Rabbit, The Wizard of Oz, and even The Diary of Anne Frank were all rejected multiple times before some publisher took a chance on them and they became unforgettable classics. The list goes on. Don’t believe me? Google it!

Or try searching for a favorite book on Amazon and reading the one-star reviews. No matter how awesome the book is, somebody hated it. Here are things people said about The Book Thief, one of my absolute favorites:

“This book is all hype.”

“From its overwrought beginning to its sloppily tragic ending, this book trots out just about every hackneyed trick imaginable.”

“Most books have a least some redeeming value but the only one I can find for this book is the credit I will get at the used book store.”

See? It doesn’t matter what one person thinks, or what a dozen people think, or even what 90% of the people think. We all know that “most popular” rarely equals “best.” Now, we could take the other extreme and say it only matters that you think your work is good, but that kind of relativism is a sissy way to look at things.

But you wouldn’t be reading this post if you didn’t already care about being a better writer. So today, I’m not going to lecture you about studying more. I’m not going to preach that you need to work harder.

I’m just going to slap you upside the head and tell you to believe in yourself.

Don’t let failure be your excuse for giving up. Everybody fails. The only difference between people who succeed and people who keep failing is that the successful people don’t give up, no matter what anybody says.

So the next time you’re feeling discouraged, rejected, beaten down, remember: you’re in good company.

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Show, don’t tell: on hiding morals in stories

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If you’re like me, you believe that fiction – more precisely, the story – is one of the most powerful forces on earth. And if we don’t use that power to try to make the world a better place, we are wasting a gift.

Trouble is, if you have an agenda – whether political, religious, or moral – your readers will smell it from a mile away, and it will make them mad. Not in the “oh, this is controversial” kind of mad, but the “quit trying to sell me something” kind of mad. Because, no matter how worthy the cause, you are selling something; a point of view.

As a copywriter for an advertising agency, I have a full time job selling things through writing – before you get out your pitchforks, hear me out; I’m a novelist first and foremost  – and I’ve learned the difference between good advertising and bad, and how the same difference can make your novel a powerful message instead of a soapbox sermon. That difference is simple: a poorly-moralized novel just says “believe me” in the same way a bad advertisement just says “buy me.” It touts its own benefits, insults the competition, and ultimately cares for nothing but the message. Much like that closeout furniture salesman who waves his arms and yells “lowest prices ever!” at the camera.

On the other side, the message-in-a-novel done well cares about the story. That story is driven by the characters, not by an agenda. Take the eBay commercial above (click through if you’re reading in RSS or email). eBay didn’t just say “buy stuff from us!” – in fact, they didn’t say it once. Instead, they created a character and a story we could relate to. It’s simple, but it’s moving, and the message (buy stuff on eBay) is an organic part of that story, not just tacked on at the end. It is, in fact, a prime example of show-don’t-tell.

Do not, then, simply construct a story to serve your agenda. Instead, when you  write your novel, put aside your agenda for a moment. Focus on your characters and the story they create with their personalities, desires, and actions. Write as honestly as possible, and if you are truly pouring your soul into it, a deeper meaning will grow naturally out of the story.

Remember to make your villain – the character with the opposing viewpoint – as realistic as possible. Don’t become bigoted in your passion, making the villain stupid, heartless, or insane. Make them as smart, as human, as grounded as you are. Argue both sides of the question, and do it with conviction. Otherwise, your novel will be nothing but a 300-page commercial.

So the moral of this story is, focus on the story, not the moral.

What books that you’ve read seemed to be selling a certain point of view? Which ones delivered a message that seemed to spring forth naturally?

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