When you write without an emotional connection, it comes across like News.
Eighteen
people died when a train collided with a stalled bus on the tracks just outside
of Hong Kong this morning. The reported counts of injured passengers continue to rise. Last
report was over 100 and many of those are in critical condition with life threatening
injuries. Volunteers are searching the wreckage. Officials working on the scene
are handling this catastrophe with expertise, but have admitted they expect the
death toll to rise….
I am emotionally affected when I read stories like this
one, but not connected. First of all, I don’t know any of the
victims. That sounds cold, I agree, but we react stronger to
events when we personally know people who are involved.[i]I also don’t have any
names, and that is another detail we react to. People we are personally
concerned about, have names.[ii]
Details are good, but the ones in
this News blurb are just facts. I
have a visual, but not a connection. I can visualize a lot of activity and
maybe some blood, and some tears.. but again, I’m on the other side of a glass
wall. My empathy hopes that more
people won’t die, that everyone will get the help they need -- but
honestly, the pizza man showing up with
my delivery will be sufficient distraction to pull me away from the story --
and since I didn’t have a connection when I left, I’m not likely to come back
-- that’s true of a news story, and the novel that hasn’t ‘sparked my
interest’.
It was about 9:30
a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14 that 18-month-old baby Jessica McClure, playing with
four other toddlers at her Aunt Jamie Moore's home day- care center in Midland,
Texas, somehow slipped into an abandoned well shaft. Exactly how she did it may
never be known; neighbors and relatives say a flowerpot had been propped over
the well's eight-inch opening; Jessica's mother, 18-year-old Reba (Cissy)
McClure, insists that the hole had been covered with a heavy rock. Father Chip
McClure, also 18, was at work. Cissy had stepped away for a moment when she
heard the children screaming. Discovering what had happened, she says she was
''scared, panicked. I didn't know what to do. I just ran in and called the
police. They were there within three minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.''
When the call came into the
newsroom, across the emergency radio, Andrew Forrest, a local reporter, took
notes as fast as he could. Stuck in his world of hen contests, and jello-molds,
this story presented a chance to write real honest news. He wrote up a quick
story for the Wire, and sent it out.
Andrew got good grades in college and he knew how to write a news story, but
working in Midland, Tx loosened him up, so when the story flew out on the wire,
it didn’t say an 18 month old girl fell
into a well. It said:
“Baby
Jessica has fallen into an old well behind the Morales’ house. Because of the
shape of the hole and the type of ground, rescuers can’t reach her, and they
fear digging to widen the hole, as it
might break the earth and send Jessica further into the well. Rescuers report
they can hear her crying...”
The country went ballistic
It took a full 58 hours to get her
out of that hole -- and every man, woman and kid was glued to the radio and TV. We did nothing
except watch the rescuers. The monkey was cool. This guy had one of those
spider monkeys, like music grinders had? And the monkey was able to go down
with sandwiches and small cups of water.
Every hour the news interrupted
whatever was on TV, -- which was fine with us -- we weren’t interested in that show anyway
-- to give the Baby Jessica Update, with new colors, blinding logo
graphics -- the graphics becoming more red and dark blue every time -- urgent colors with light flashing along
the edges -- cleaner and more active every hour. Someone was working their ass
off on those anxiety building Baby Jessica
Rescue logos -- like we needed
animated influencing to heighten our anxiety. We were already so jacked up,
ferrets on espresso had more calm.
It was tense too. There were people
losing it! Just breaking-down and
running into the street screaming about Baby Jessica, “Fuck! Fuck! Get her out! I can’t stand it! Why can’t someone do
something!”
Let’s stop there and take a look at
what I’ve used to build this up. Are you into this story? I hope so.
Before getting into the step by step of the article above,
notice what really caused the nation to react in such a unique and urgent
manner. Lots of kids fall in holes, wander off, get lost, we hear about them
all the time, at least ten a year if you’re a News watcher. So why did this one
affect the whole nation with a compulsive urgency to know what was happening
every hour? The news was not about a child, or a little girl. The story was
about Baby Jessica.
We knew her name.
She wasn’t Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s
eighteen month old little girl, either. We knew ‘her’ name.
Now, the blow by blow look.
The first thing I did was give you
a puzzle. “Are you old enough to remember
Baby Jessica?” and then I walked
away from that question.. I walked away and went straight into “education mode,” and began talking
about the news. This does two things:
1) it teases you. I’m not answering the question. I’m not telling you why I
brought up the subject. And “Baby Jessica” sounds like it might be something
interesting. In simple terms I gave you
a puzzle.
2) going from there and into the
subject -- the news -- connects it to Baby
Jessica. We might get into this in depth later, but this is called an Implied Connection or Implied Fact. I don’t tell you there is a connection between News and Baby
Jessica, but the way the brain processes, and comprehends information, you made
that connection instantly.
It is very …[ really... I don’t use the word “very” often. It is a lazy word. However when talking to other writers I find that if I use a more purple word they don’t give it the proper weight of importance. So if I use the word “very” I’m flagging something as having a -- this will make or break a story-- level of importance. So, this is a very important aspect of writing.]
We need to recognize Implied Facts[iii]
when we write them. Hopefully we wrote them on purpose. Accidental ones
happen all the time, and they are a bitch to find and edit, because .. you wrote it, and didn’t catch it, so
it is unlikely that you’ll be able to find them later as well. And if you don’t
know what you are looking for -- How the
hell are you suppose to know what they look like?
Implied facts are often proximity connections. News and Jessica
is a “proximity” connection -- I bring up the puzzle subject and then another
subject which doesn’t have an obvious connection to anything said so far -- so
the brain makes it connect to the
puzzle automatically. As the writer, I get you interested, then set the hook by
not addressing Jessica directly -- by changing the subject and tone of the
writing -- causing a small but real feeling of need or even desperation
that i’m going to leave you hanging.
Then I talk about News.
Hook-set.
As is the implied obligation
to address this and solve for the reader… which we’ll get to in just a moment.
Focus on puzzles[iv][v][vi][vii]
has been studied .. forever. Puzzles are heavy hitters in Intrinsic Motivation[viii]. The human mind focuses
on them automatically, and will go so far as to create false memories[ix][x][xi][xii]
in order to convince us to stay focused on them until we solve them -- the
false memories contriving us with compulsory importance.
Sudoku?
Do you play that game? Ever see someone with one on the table, and you see a
solution? Drives you crazy, right? In that brief instant, your mind left
whatever subject you were thinking about
-- which was probably important and you’ll never remember it now -- latched on
to the puzzle and began to solve. That’s why you now see a solution over there.
The human mind goes into “pattern
matching” mode.[xiii]
This mode is responsible for seeing faces in clouds, or birds or dragons?
Patterns on sculpted carpet, finding
patterns in the randomness of traffic?.. all of that is the mind in pattern
matching mode[xiv][xv][xvi].
You will grab a hold of any offered stimulation at that point and attempt to
fit it to the puzzle, and find the solution[xvii]. I’ve read some studies
where this phenomena gets pretty crazy. [xviii]
So, the connection is made, whether
it makes sense or not. We are not discussing logic, we are discussing the mind.
We’ll come back to this next
statement in a bit. What is important here is that using the Implied Connection with the Puzzle,
I’ve developed a “need” in the reader[xix][xx]. Romance readers are very
open to an emotional connection, as i’ve said before, but what I didn’t add is
that they are very happy when they find one.
Let’s run quickly through it again,
looking now at the expectation. The “emotional connection” gives you the
expectation that Baby Jessica has something to do with the News. I asked if you
were “old enough” and that adds credibility to your connection and bolsters
this expectation (because it implies Baby Jessica is something that happened at
least 15 to 20 years ago, right? Maybe an old news story?
But I don’t tell you. I’m not
giving you details. And I’ve given you a puzzle. Most readers aren’t going to
stop reading at that point until they find out who the hell Baby Jessica is … at least.
When I go into the News story about
the wreck in Hong Kong, I keep it moving, and don’t slow down. What I mean by
that is -- study at the length of the sentences. The first sentence is long,
and flows from one word to another, the tone of each word is close to monotone.
The second sentence is short, and hits with high emotional energy. The third,
again long, back to the mono with growing levels of bad news. Then hit again,
then the “losing battle’ They run fast,
because I’m not using big words or a lot of description.
Why? Because I’m building up Baby
Jessica. That’s still in your head, and your brain is gathering it all and
pattern matching for the puzzle. I’m giving an example of a news story that
doesn’t make an emotional connection, while I’m pushing the emotional content
-- notice how often I use descriptive words ---
and like magic I’ve suddenly put a baby into a train wreck. And by the
time I’m done, you’re pretty sure that Baby Jessica is in that wreck somewhere,
even though I don’t say it, or even hint about that. (implied fact again)
What I say in the next paragraph,
about the details are just facts is very important. I’m shoving them in your
face at that point. I’m in full
instructor mode. But none of them are the facts you want to know about.
Now -- push urgency.
Tempo creates urgency at this
point. Breaking up the sentence lengths,
going from ‘blow by blow’ to commentary to description, humor – keeping the reader from
being able to foresee or guess what is coming next, creates interest, and thus is building a sense of urgency.
Except, you still have an
expectation. You expect that Baby Jessica has something to do with a News
story.
If I don’t fulfill that expectation
soon, I’ll lose you by chapter three no matter how good my book is. -- because
you won’t trust me. If I do fulfill it, I can make the next “tension rising”
scene a little longer, because you’ll trust me more and you’ll have faith that
I’ll “solve the puzzle”
Romance requires these tension
rising scenes.
- Is she going to get him?
- Is he really that much of an ass?
- Did he mean that?
- How can she leave now?
Romance is really one tension scene
after another, building, solving a little, then building up again.
Which is why I don’t rescue Baby
Jessica at the end of the demo. I let you know it takes 58 hours, and I show
that we’re all glued to the TV and radio, but I don’t actually get her out of
the hole. She’s still down there, in the dark, crying. -- see how easy it was
to take you back there? Three sentences and I can go right back into the
tension rising.
This cycle is fairly well known --
And a very good technique to use throughout your novel -- and once you have
used it for a while, get use to the rhythms and how it works with your style,
no one will ever suggest that your novel doesn't’ have spark again.
[ii] Metzger, Scott Alan. "The Borders of Historical
Empathy: Students Encounter the Holocaust through Film." The Journal of Social Studies Research
36.4 (2012): 387-410.
[iii] Harris, Richard J et al. "Remembering implied
advertising claims as facts: Extensions to the “real world”." Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 16.4
(1980): 317-320.
[iv] Rosenzweig, Saul. "An experimental study
of'repression'with special reference to need-persistive and ego-defensive
reactions to frustration." Journal
of Experimental Psychology 32.1 (1943): 64.
[vii] Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby. "Evolutionary
psychology and the emotions." Handbook
of emotions 2 (2000): 91-115.
[viii] "What Is Intrinsic Motivation? - Psychology -
About.com." 2013. 3 Jul. 2015 <http://psychology.about.com/od/motivation/f/intrinsic-motivation.htm>
[ix] Loftus, Elizabeth F, and Jacqueline E Pickrell.
"The formation of false memories." Psychiatric annals 25.12 (1995): 720-725.
[xi] McDermott, Kathleen B, and Henry L Roediger.
"Attempting to avoid illusory memories: Robust false recognition of
associates persists under conditions of explicit warnings and immediate
testing." Journal of Memory and
Language 39.3 (1998): 508-520.
[xii] Hyman, Ira E, Troy H Husband, and F James Billings.
"False memories of childhood experiences." Applied Cognitive Psychology 9.3 (1995): 181-197.
[xiii] Pinker, Steven. "How the mind works." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
882.1 (1999): 119-127.
[xv] Foss, Donald J, and David A Harwood. "Memory for
sentences: Implications for human associative memory." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior 14.1 (1975): 1-16.
[xvi] Wilson, Margaret. "Six views of embodied
cognition." Psychonomic bulletin
& review 9.4 (2002): 625-636.
[xvii] Markman, Arthur B, and C Miguel Brendl.
"Constraining theories of embodied cognition." Psychological Science 16.1 (2005): 6-10.
[xx] Haryanto, Jony Oktavian. "Role of Promotion in
Creating Influence Power, Impulsive Buying, and Autobiographical Memory”."
Jurnal Manajemen 13.2 (2012).
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