I gave a talk to a writers' group this morning and one of the things that came up is the mindset that writers and artists often have. My graphic representation is:
I call it the supplicant mindset. Because writers and artists get a lot of rejection, it's easy to slip into the notion that somebody is doing us a favor if they buy our product or service.
However, the fact is that if somebody wants what we have, it becomes a straightforward business transaction. It's not about doing us a favor or liking us, it's about their perception that they will gain something in the process.
If we approach that transaction with a supplicant mindset, which has whiffs of desperation and feelings of inferiority, we're doing ourselves an injustice.
Also, desperation is never a good look. As you've probably noticed, the time that people are most inclined to give you something is when you least need it, or at least when you project that you're going to be just fine whether or not they give it to you.
Is willpower something you just have or don't have, or it is something that we have in a certain quantity that diminishes over the course of a day, as we use it?
Today I read an account of a study that has been interpreted as suggesting the latter, but reading about how the study was conducted makes me wonder whether there could have been something else at play.
There were two groups of participants. One was given chocolate treats. The other could see the treats but was allowed to eat only radishes.
Afterward, they were both given what was represented as a puzzle that measures intelligence, but the point was actually to measure how long they stuck with it before giving up.
The chocolate group worked on the puzzle for an average of 20 minutes.
The group that had radishes worked on it for an average of 8 minutes.
The conclusion of the study: "Thus, those people who had to resist the confectionary and eat the plain vegetables could not engage in a second demanding task. Their willpower was already drained and they were too tired."
Wait a minute. The article says:
Many of the people who were left to eat radishes “exhibit[ed] clear interest in the chocolates, to the point of looking longingly at the chocolate display and in a few cases even picking up the cookies to sniff at them,” the scientists wrote in their Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper.
I have an alternate explanation. You make me watch other people eat chocolate treats, you even let me sniff the cookies, but you give me only radishes and then you want me to solve your damn puzzle? Forget it, I'm outta here at the first opportunity.
I'm not fatigued or lacking willpower. In fact, it takes all the willpower I have to stay for even eight minutes.
My scientific conclusion:
If you annoy people, they won't put much effort into doing what you ask them to do.
Sometimes a scene in a screenplay or novel just sits there, not doing what it's supposed to. It's an experience I've had more than once, and here are three things that I've found helpful.
iMAGINE CUTTING THE SCENE
If you cut this scene, would it affect the progression of the story? If not, it should go.
If you cut this scene, what essential elements would be missing?
Is there a different way to cover those essential elements? One option might be to incorporate them into different scenes.
CHANGE YOUR POV
Usually you're writing the scene implicitly or explicitly from the point of view of one of the characters. Take a few minutes to step into the shoes of each of the other characters in the scene. For each one, ask yourself:
what do they want in this scene?
how does that relate to what they want in general in the story?
is their behavior in this scene consistent with the above two?
what else might they do in this scene to try to get what they want? How would that change the scene?
Often changing viewpoints gives you new ideas that bring the scene alive.
INTRODUCE AN ADDITIONAL ELEMENT
What would make this scene more dramatic? Brainstorm whether you could add:
a new emotion (justified by something that happens in the scene, of course)
a new action (again, justified)
another character whose presence would cause some kind of tension or conflict (make sure they have their own reason to be in the scene)
Give one or more of these a try when you feel stuck, I hope you find them helpful.
Here's a quote from an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"People who take long-acting opioids for chronic pain are much more likely to die than those taking other medications, according to a study published ..."
And here I thought we all have a 100% probability of dying.
FARTHER OR FURTHER?
One thing that throws a lot of us is when to use farther and when to us further. It turns out that there's a difference between the US and the UK in this regard, according to grammarist.com:
"Farther andfurtherboth mean at a greater distance, and they are used interchangeably in this sense. In the United States, though, farther is more often used to refer to physical distances, and further more often refers to figurative and nonphysical distances. For example, we might say that one mountain is farther away than another, while we might say the price of a stock (a nonphysical thing) fell further today than yesterday. This is not a rule, however, and further is often used for physical distances. The distinction does not exist in the U.K. and elsewhere in the (British) Commonwealth of Nations, where further is preferred for all senses of the word and farther is rare.
Further has senses it does not share with farther. It works as an adjective meaning additional—e.g., “I have no further questions.”It works as an adverb meaning additionally—e.g., “He said he did not spend the money, and stated further that he had never even received it.” And it works as a verb meaning to advance (something)—e.g., “This website is meant to further understanding of 21st-century English.” Farther is not commonly used these ways."
Normally brainstorming is all about generating ideas as fast as you can, not judging them as they come up (write them all down), and later assessing which ones are worth pursuing.
A different approach is catching on, according to an article at Fastdesign.com: generating questions.
Let's say you want to come up with ideas for how to overcome your habit of procrastinating.
In the usual brainstorming approach you'd come up with a lot of possible solutions:
setting up rewards for when I do my work on time
setting up punishments for when I procrastinate
getting an app that keeps me off social media for specific period of time
chunking down my tasks into smaller pieces
GENERATING QUESTIONS
In the questioning approach, you'd come up with lots of related questions:
what do I get from procrastinating?
when did I start procrastinating?
when don't I procrastinate?
what's different about those times from the times I do?
who is a good role model for not procrastinating?
what motivates people who don't procrastinate?
what kinds of tasks do I procrastinate on?
As with ideas, don't judge the questions, write them all down.
HARVEST THE MOST USEFUL QUESTIONS
The let some time go by, at least a couple of hours, and move to a different location than the one where you generated the questions (even if it's just across the room).
Go through and mark the questions that you feel are most useful--that is, the ones that would help you most if you could answer them.
At this stage, don't worry if you don't know the answers. Go with your gut as much as with your brain.
ANSWER THE MOST USEFUL QUESTIONS
With your list of the potentially most useful questions, write down the answers that come to mind. These may lead to additional questions (and answers).
If you don't know, consider who might help you. For example, if you're not sure what you procrastinate about the most, I'm guessing your spouse, partner, or work colleague will be only too glad to help.
If all else fails, guess. Your intuition often is your best guide.
APPLY THE ANSWERS
It's likely that the answers to the questions will lead to some specific ideas for dealing with the challenge.
Try them out, one by one. If one doesn't work, before you give up on it try another question session with queries like these:
Why isn't this working?
What could make it more powerful?
Is any part of it working?
What does the failure of this method reveal to me about myself?
Even if you find brainstorming the usual way to be productive (as I do), it's worth trying this alternative.
Let's look at a few word mix-ups to avoid. First, here's part of the text for an ad for a speech to text program:
Are you looking for dictation software with maximum versatility and functionality? Look no further than the all-new addition of Dragon 5 for Mac.
It was added to their product line but they meant an all-new edition.
Another mix-up was in a headline about the drug that apparently killed Prince, which was described as "More powerful than heroine."
Although we do have many strong female role models these days, the headline writer meant heroin.
Finally, a headline said that a certain development would "endanger the area's cache."
The right word is cachet (ka-shay), the state of being admired or respected.
A cache (pronounced like cash) is a collection of similar items hidden away--these days we see it most often applying to information stored on a computer so it can be found quickly.
There's no shame in making errors like this, I'm sure I do it all the time, but when headline writers and journalists do it and editors don't catch it, it spreads the errors.
Here's a good strategy for making it less likely that hackers will be able to access your password by guessing the answers to your security questions: lie.
I read that the hacker who got into Hilary Clinton's account had a strategy for figuring out people's security questions (which are designed to show that a request to change an account's password is really coming from the person who owns it).
For the question, "What was the name of the street where you lived as a child?" he went on Facebook to find out where the person went to school, went to a map, and tried out all the names of streets in the vicinity of that school.
Often the question is, "What was the name of your first pet?" and sometimes people post childhood pictures on Facebook or other social sites ("Me at 10, with Fluffy").
The solution is to lie on your security questions.
The name of your first pet? Kim Kardashian
The street where you lived as a child? ScrewYouHackers Avenue
Your favorite vegetable? Donald Trump
You get the idea.
PASSWORDS
Of course you shouldn't use the same password for more than one site, and it's wise to change the passwords occasionally.
I'm trying out a password app at the moment, the simplest one I've found, and if it works well, I'll report back here.
SAFE HOSTING
As you may have read in one of my previous posts, all my sites were hacked recently.
The hackers didn't use passwords, they gained backdoor access to the server on Hostgator.
Most of the sites are now back up, but it has been very disruptive. As I result, I've done some research on the best ways to help you avoid falling prey to this kind of attack. I've moved to a different hosting company and a different approach. I'm still testing those at the moment, but I'll report on those here, too, in case you may find the information useful.
There are lots of things you can ask yourself when creating three-dimensional characters for your novel or screenplay, but one of the best was suggested in a New York Times essay on marriage:
We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”
The article, titled, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, by Alain de Botton, is well worth a read, but I mention it here because "How is your character crazy?" is an excellent question that will help you create a character who comes alive on the page.
What kind of craziness? Botton gives these examples:
Perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us or can relax only when we are working; perhaps we’re tricky about intimacy after sex or clam up in response to humiliation. Nobody’s perfect.
The number of possible imperfections is almost infinite, as you may have noticed in observing your family and friends (certainly not yourself, of course).
You can warm up by thinking about how the people in your personal life are crazy--what imperfections set them apart? And how are those imperfections occasionally beneficial rather than harmful?
If you like living dangerously, ask a couple of people to whom you are close how YOU are crazy...but only if you're sure the relationship will survive their obviously mistaken impressions of you.
If you click on the individual images you'll see a title or description by Besson and comments from visitors to the site. As of this writing, he's on day 87.
