Posted on by Abe Austin

That’s So Cliché

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Let’s Make a Bad Guy)

Most stories have a villain, which is a character who embodies the opposition to the protagonist. The protagonist must overcome this opposition, which means the villain must be destroyed, in most stories violently so. As such, the villain needs to be painted in a very negative light. So negative that the audience won’t have any qualms about them meeting an untimely end.

And such a common problem has a very common solution: make the villain do something so reprehensible that everyone will deem them unfit to live. The most obvious choice is to have them kill someone else early on, an innocent bystander who doesn’t deserve to die and who therefore must be avenged. Perhaps the bystander makes a small mistake and incurs the villain’s disproportionate wrath, or maybe the villain just kills them for the fun of it. Once that happens no more arguments have to be made. The audience hates the villain and will cheer their downfall!

Well…unless the audience feels absolutely nothing at all because this is the six-hundredth time they’ve seen this sort of scene play out. Every year there comes a deluge of films, television series, and novels that overuse this formula until it has lost any meaning whatsoever. Each of these scenes come and go like all the rest and we just can’t feel anything about them anymore.

Let’s Make a Good Guy)

Of course things are hardly any better in the hero department. Want to make the main character likable? How about we see them do an act of charity to someone pitiable? Perhaps share a loaf of bread with a beggar, or cheer up a crying child, or help an animal that is hurt. There, now the audience knows that our protagonist’s heart is true and they love them for it!

Well…unless the audience feels absolutely nothing at all. It just gets so hard for us to assign any feelings to a hero like this because they feel exactly like what they are: a contrived formula, not an actual person.

But what’s interesting is that each of these clichés usually have their root in a story that was actually impactful once upon a time. Take the example of the hero helping an animal that is hurt. Perhaps the earliest instance of this is in the tale of Androcles, where a runaway slave takes refuge in the den of a fearsome lion! The lion is in no condition to chase Androcles, though, it is suffering from a large thorn stuck in its paw! Androcles takes the thorn out and the lion is intelligent enough to feel immense gratitude for it. The two become fast friends, which friendship eventually leads them to a life of freedom.

Once upon a time that was a moving tale. But it’s been stolen from so many times that it becomes formulaic and incapable of eliciting emotion. Ironically, by the time someone first hears the story of Androcles today they will likely have heard so many other rip-offs that they won’t be able to appreciate the weight this original used to carry.

Shortcuts in Communication)

The main culprit in all this derivative work is good, old human efficiency. We are a species that ever endeavor to optimize and simplify. And while this is an excellent practice in many cases, it neuters the emotions behind any humanizing experience.

Consider the example of how we strive to communicate ourselves in more and more succinct terms. I must say, I find it very amusing how older generations will decry the vowel-missing lingo of modern text messaging, utterly failing to realize that this is only the natural progression of a trend that they themselves pushed forward. Far before the advent of cellphones prior generations were already greatly abbreviating our style of communication. First formalities were dropped, then grammatically complete sentences, and now vowels. Is that really so surprising?

Obviously increased efficiency is desirable in many walks of life and even in communication it has its uses. Knowing the right combination of gesture and tone can allow us to convey a complex meaning in a fraction of a second. But It can be taken too far and render the whole experience redundant.

Brian Christian makes note of this fact in his book The Most Human Human. Here he points out that we now have entire conversations that are nothing but short clichés in which no actual substance is ever communicated.

“Hey, good morning.”

“Good morning. How are you?”

“Doing well. And you and your family?”

“All doing well, thanks for asking.”

“Nice weather, today, isn’t?”

“Yes it is. Oh, you know what, I’m afraid I’ve got to run!”

“Oh, me too. We should catch up later.”

“Definitely. Well, see ya!”

There is literally nothing communicated in exchanges such as these. The entire give and take is performed on pure autopilot. Half the time we’ve already got our default response loaded in before we even hear the what the other person says to the last robotic statement we made.

Stories Should Say Something)

And I’ve read and watched entire stories that were exactly the same way. A synopsis of these tales could very accurately be given as “it begins, the usual stuff happens, and then it ends about how’d you expect.”

To be fair, I get it. Originality is hard. I myself feel the temptation to take a trusty cliché rather than invent a new way to express what I want in a story. I ran into this exact problem during the last section of The Favored Son. Here I wanted to show that a leader was really a tyrant, and I kept slipping into the tired, old routine of him losing his temper at some innocent peasant and brutalizing them.

Fortunately I fought down that temptation. I stuck with it until I felt I had something a little more original to say. This more original scene was also far more complex. In it I introduce a group of slaves who are dragging a massive stone behind the tyrant, for a reason that is never explained. It is clear that they are a broken people, though, paying a penance of some sort. Then the members of a resistance ride onto the scene and urge a few of the slaves to escape with them! One of them does, to which the other slaves seem quite distressed. The reason for this is made clear when the royal guards chase off the resistance riders and the tyrant makes the remaining slaves atone for their missing fellow by slaying one of them.

The final outcome of this scene was the same as the cliché: the tyrant kills an innocent waif. But the path to this was far more intricate and involved. One gets a sense of political struggles, of victims being manipulated by competing powers. It is different, it is original, it took effort, and it is therefore far more likely to make an impression.

I will endeavor to keep fighting down the pull towards cliché, and instead imbue my stories with something more thoughtful. Come back on Thursday when I post the next section of my story and pay special attention to how I incorporate original ideas instead of settling for something more trite.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Shades of Me, Shades of You

man walking
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Revealed Through Story)

I once told a friend about my outlet of writing stories. He smiled and knowingly said “the thing about writing is that you couldn’t hide yourself, the work reveals you.” I’ve found that there is a lot of truth to that statement. There are times when I have tried to write about things that didn’t matter to me, and it was torture. Every word had to be dragged out slowly, and it made for some of my worst work ever. Things can only ever flow when I find the themes that match with my heart.

In short, you either write about your authentic self, or you quickly burn out and do not write at all.

Every now and then I pause, look back at what I have recently written, nod my head, and say “yeah…that really is what I’ve been feeling for these past couple months, isn’t it?” Sometimes a theme only lasts for a single story or two, representing a very minor infatuation of my life. Other times the themes will permeate through entire months of work, signifying a much more significant obsession.

Recently I took a look back at the work of this current series, and the consistent thread through them all caught me off guard. Each is very tense, dark, and ominous. The Soldier’s Last Sleep is about a Private in the army trying to hold onto his life through one crushing wave of the enemy after another. The Cruelty of King Bal’Tath introduces a king trying to punish his subjects in a way that redefines the very meaning of cruelty. Washed Down the River follows two detectives solving the case of a man so miserable that he tries to fake his own suicide, but then inadvertently succeeds in it. Slow and Easy, Then Sudden features a protagonist who begins warm and kind, but by the end reveals himself to be a cold-blooded killer. And to top it all off, my latest story, Raise the Black Sun, has been about a doomed voyage that will ultimately culminate in the end of a world.

I honestly had no conscious intention of weaving such a somber tapestry when I set out on this series, it is just the way that my natural expressions pushed me. As I considered all of these facts I couldn’t help but nod my head in understanding, because frankly it reflects my mental state all too well. The fact is that I have been in a dark and depressed state lately, and I think it was inevitable that that this was going to bleed through into my writing.

 

A Written Dialogue)

Of course this depression is hardly too surprising. It is at least somewhat due to the sense of isolation brought on by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the self-isolation that we all have been working through. Obviously I am not the only one that has been feeling pretty down, in fact there are many who I am sure are feeling much lower than I.

I do wonder if any of my readers have found that this more heavy material has reflected their own feelings at all? Perhaps this way that I have been expressing myself can be a vehicle for a mutual commiserating of our shared situation.

Or…maybe it is irresponsibly fanning the flames and creating a deepened sense of despair in others?

At this point we’re not just observing story-telling as a mode of self-expression, but also as a mode of conversation. I am telling you about myself, and you are having a personal reaction to that. Is it a healthy reaction, or an unhealthy one?

Well that’s a tricky line to walk, even under more traditional forms of dialogue. There’s no doubt that a lot of good can come about by being able to share our feelings with like-minded others. Support groups are based around the idea that you finally have found a safe place to express the shame and darkness within you to others who really “get it.” Being able to talk through traumatic experiences together can help heal them together. Ever since we were small children, one of the best ways to get past a bad day is to tell someone how sincerely miserable you are feeling.

But there are other types of conversation, too. Where support groups provide an opportunity to share a burden and feel lifted, self-pity groups tend to only stack more weight on top of each other. They do not spread the original weight out for all to help bear, they clone the weight, and now everyone has to carry the whole of it in on their own.

 

Responsible Communication)

I believe the difference between these two types of communication has to do with the intent of the speaker and the hearer. In a healthy dialogue the speaker states “I felt sad,” and the takeaway is an understanding of the person. In an unhealthy dialogue the speaker states “I felt sad,” and the takeaway is the emotion only.

It is less important that we understand what was felt, than that we understand the person who felt it.

And that has what has brought me to making this post today. My hope is that by calling out explicitly what is going on I will spark a certain level of self-awareness in us both. I do not wish that when you read my latest stories that you will take my sadness onto yourself. Rather I wish that if you have been feeling lonely you will read my stories and know that I felt lonely, too. I know how that is. I understand that part of you.

And I’m sorry.

Posted on by Abe Austin · 2 Comments

Universal Languages

close up of globe
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In a prior blog post I shared an experience I had while teaching in University. I was saying all the words to correctly describe the concepts I was supposed to be teaching, but I could tell that none of it was being comprehended. The students could understand every word that I was speaking, just not any of what was actually being said. In that moment I felt that the English language had failed me.

I’ve been on the other end of that experience as well. In my career I’ve received all manner of technical training, and I’ve certainly been guilty of just nodding my head while all of the information goes in one ear and out the other.

As a reader you’ve probably experienced this, too, moments where you read and reread the author’s prose, but just can’t seem to get what it is they are trying to say. In fact, for a writer to communicate their ideas effectively is probably more difficult than with any other communication medium. These efforts to paint worlds with words often requires pushing the boundaries of written languages to their very limits.

For one thing all visuals have been removed from the communication, everything has to be imagined. For another each language has its own blind spots where they lack the words to convey certain thoughts. Then, of course, there is also a strict limitation on the number of words that can be put in a sentence before it falls apart under its own weight.

Finally there is another limitation of words, one which I want to focus on particularly. Words tend to only be useful down to a certain level of detail. They are good at communicating complex associations, but fall apart at the very simple things. As an example, it is easy to describe the wavelength characteristics of light, how they excite photoreceptors in the eye, the electrical signals that are then sent to the brain, and how all of this results in the sensation we call “the color blue.” But now can you tell me what it is actually like to see “the color blue?” Someone that is blind from birth can understand all of the technical details, firing the neurons necessary to stow the data in their brain. But they will never find the words that will fire the other neurons necessary to artificially reproduce the sensation of seeing color.

And yet…sometimes when I read words I do experience a physical sensation. When I read a menu I might salivate over the food being described and seem to taste them already in my mouth. Why is that? It turns out that this occurs when words are used as triggers to access memories in my mind. It’s not that any of the words “grilled shrimp slathered in garlic and butter” are inherently delicious in their composition. Rather it is the the memories those words call up that are delicious.

Think of it this way: the words on the page are the address on the envelope, leading you to the residence of your own memories. In this way any words can could be used to call up any experience, there just has to be an association between them. When my wife and I speak to each other we are able to use a shorthand because we know so well the memories one another holds and the words that will access them. Communication becomes less about what is being said, and more about the experiences that have been shared.

There’s a few important lessons in this for all writers. Let’s take a look at them one-at-a-time.

You Need to Connect)

When Pixar released their film Up they were lauded for their powerful opening montage. In this sequence we are introduced to the main character, Carl and a young girl, Ellie. We then watch the two of them become best friends, fall in love, get married, share a life, and then separate when Ellie passes away. Not only does this provide an emotional journey, but one that is shared between the main character and all of the audience.

From this point on the viewers now share a common language with the story. Everything that follows in the plot will makes perfect sense. We understand why Carl is grumpy, why he is irritated by a young adventure-seeker, why is so reluctant to leave his home. When Carl reacts to events that are happening around him we feel a ripple of that same reaction within ourselves because we remember the same things that he is remembering in that moment. We just get it.

If you want your reader to care about the things that happen in your story, you have to share meaningful experiences with them as soon as possible so that they will relate to the character’s state-of-mind. Then your protagonist and the reader are speaking the same language.

 

Describing vs Sharing)

But of course, part of using a shared language to connect to a reader is knowing when not to use this trick. In that same film, Up, we are later introduced to the villain, Charles Muntz. From his own lips we learn how he was pushed out from society’s limelight and ridiculed until he became obsessed with a monomaniacal objective. He has his reasons for his disposition, but those reasons are only described to us, not shared first-hand as they were with Carl’s past.

This is not the story being lazy, though, it is actually very clever. This technique means we don’t feel what Charles feels and we easily reject his conclusions. His sob story is supposed to go in one ear and out the other and that’s just what happens. We hear his woes, we don’t care, and we move on.

Why doesn’t the story want us to feel sorry for Charles? Because that would only get in the way of the experience the story wants us to be having in this moment. What the story wants is for us to be sharing in Carl’s sense of betrayal at this discovery. That sensation comes through loud and clear because of how the story has prioritized its communication to us.

Describe an experience when all you need is for people to understand what your character is feeling. Share an experience when you need for people to empathize with what your character is feeling.

 

New Languages from the Universal)

Of course none of those examples from Up work if people are not first moved by the opening montage. If viewers come away feeling annoyed at Carl and Ellie’s relationship then they really won’t care about Carl’s sadness or sense of betrayal. How is it, then, that the filmmakers managed to get the opening montage to work so well?

For this I’ll go back to my problem as a teaching assistant back in University. Rather than diving straight into the new material, I ought to have first established something common and familiar, something that we all understood equally. That would have put us all on the same page, and on that shared analogy we could have incrementally added all of the new material.

The reason that that opening sequence in Up works so well is because it utilizes universal experiences that almost everyone can relate to. It introduces us to Carl as someone that feels awkward and shy, sensations we’ve all experienced at some point or another. It shows the newly married couple doing all the sorts of mundane household chores, ones that each of us do in our own homes. It explores their desire of wanting great adventure, something that is common to all of humanity. It turns somber when the two learn they cannot have any children, one of the most basic fears in all potential parents. It uses music that swings from bright and playful to slow and somber. All of these things are universally relatable, and so they build that common foundation between character and viewer. All the unique aspects of their relationship that follows extends from common places we all have been.

 

Not Everyone Will Relate)

But obviously when I say these experiences are “universally relatable,” what I really mean is “mostly universally relatable.” In my previous story post, I wanted to establish a tone that was deep, thoughtful, and introspective. I decided to open on a beach with the rolling waves gliding against the coast. I chose this because this setting generally impresses us with themes of largeness, timelessness, and purposefulness. That makes sense, seeing as waves are big, constant, and follow deliberate motions.

But now suppose there is a reader who primarily associates beaches with their partying years in college. Or they might have suffered some tragedy during a boating accident. For these readers my referencing a coast may end up throwing them far from the intended atmosphere. But then no location is ever going to be 100% effective, is it?

I’m sure there were those that watched the opening montage of Up and did not come away with the intended experience either. One such audience might be the very young who have not yet experienced the full richness of life, or those who just barely lost a spouse and are still so lost in the bitterness that they cannot taste the sweet. The fact is these miscommunications are unavoidable, and the idea is only to minimize them as much as possible.

 

In general you can achieve better communication with your readers by first using universal concepts to establish a common ground with them. While doing so, allow them to share meaningful experiences alongside of the main characters so that they can relate to their perspectives and understand their later actions. Finally use those moments of connection deliberately, so that you can steer the reader into taking the sides you want them to have.

In my next post I’d like to explore this idea of language within the context of a story itself. I’ll present a main character and two companions for him. One is familiar and seems to speak the same language, another is alien and does not share of his vocabulary. How he communicates with both of these characters will transform through the experiences they share. As such those communications will be stripped of the periphery and pleasantries of idle conversation, and come to be based upon core needs and feelings. Come back on Thursday to see the first portion of this exercise.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Hey, I’m Talking to You

marketing man person communication
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I remember a strange experience I had with communication several years ago. It was while I was at university, working as a Teaching Assistant and occasionally covering lessons for the Professor. One day while lecturing I had the distinct impression of the words emanating from my mouth, hanging in the air, and then falling to the ground, never being received by any of the class members. I didn’t blame the students for their blank expressions, I knew I was having trouble explaining the concepts in an intuitive and accessible manner. The words I was stringing together might have formed valid sentences, but to the class there was no meaning therein. All my life I had assumed the two (words and meaning) just automatically went together, now I knew they did not.

Ever since that day I have remembered that communication is composed of two halves, a giver and a receiver, and it simply does not occur when only one of those is present, or when the two are unable to meet on common ground. Similarly, though a written story may seem like a self-contained entity in-and-of itself, it is actually only a medium for communication, and therefore is forever incomplete if never opened, read, and understood. A story requires a meeting and comprehension between both a giver and a receiver, or else it is just words in a void with nowhere to go.

If you want the words of your story to go somewhere, to be picked up by an audience and internalized, then you have to know how to speak so that you can be heard. How you do that, depends first on deciding who your audience even is. There are multiple criteria by which you can filter the entire human population down to the subset your story is meant for, but there is one initial division that comes before all others. Are you writing for yourself, for one other, or for a group?

Writing for yourself is pretty straightforward, it means you are writing something that resonates with you, regardless of whether it resonates with anyone else. Perhaps you’ve thought of the book you wish you could be reading right now and, since it doesn’t exist, decided you’d create it yourself. Or maybe you’re just trying to process some personal drama, using your creativity to hash out all its possible permutations. You are speaking to your own hopes, your own fears, your own life situation.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is writing for a group. Here you identify a grouping, defined perhaps by age, language, social status, or common interest, and you compose something that you think will appeal to that crowd. Perhaps the most prevailing reason for this approach is that you wish to ensure maximum profit potential for your book as a commercial product. Thus you begin by identifying which subset of society you can best sell to, and then write in the way most likely to catch their attention.

In between, though, there is the story written for one other. The story won’t necessarily be about the author’s greatest passion, nor is it composed to be marketable to the widest possible audience. This is a story that it is written for a friend, a family member, or maybe even a nemesis. Perhaps you are writing to a member of a particular societal clique, but you are addressing that member, not the clique as a whole. As such, it is more akin to our common day-to-day communications. Me speaking to you. When one adopts this more conversational approach to storytelling there are some unique and charming results that naturally occur.

First of all, whenever you speak directly to someone on their own terms, you’re fairly likely to succeed at getting their attention. When I come up with bedtime stories for my boy, I make sure to use language that is suited to his understanding and that focuses on his own interests. As a result, he seems to be much more engaged with these stories than with most of his printed-for-the-masses storybooks. The lack of this directness in for-the-masses media is a problem for many blockbuster movies and bestselling books today. Because they are intended to make the maximum profit possible, they have to appeal to the widest audience possible, which results in them being as generic and featureless as possible. Many stories are unwilling to say anything beyond the mundane and obvious, out of fear of alienating a potential subset of society, which gives them a far shorter staying power. Going back to the verbal communication analogy, this can feel like listening to a speaker at a conference, one who is speaking both to everyone and no one at the same time, versus the experience of having someone look you in the eye and say something to you. I think most of us would prefer that second situation, even if we didn’t end up agreeing with everything that was said. We’d certainly remember what was said for longer.

Well what about when a story is written for oneself? That’s certainly writing for a very focused audience, isn’t it? It is, but the communication you give to yourself is again different from the type you give to others. Unfortunately, we can be very hard on ourselves, criticizing our every flaw, and regretting that we aren’t the successes we wanted to be. I imagine this occurs because of all the emotions we’ve ever felt, negative ones most easily bubble to the surface. While drawing from this well of disappointment can certainly be a therapeutic way to process these feelings, it can also make for some pretty bleak stories. Why should the main character get a happy ending if it feels dishonest with my own life? But things change when we speak to others. While we may be very hard on ourselves, we can be very kind to those we love. We tend to assume the best of them and wish the best for them. When we design a story from that point-of-view, all we wish to communicate is dreams coming true, love being found, adventures being shared, and good triumphing over evil.

I’m currently working on a novel that had its genesis in one of those pessimistic self-talks. The original design of it called for a family of explorers to come to a new island and, by their hard work and patience, raise a flourishing trade and community from the wilds around them. And then a monster comes and kills them all. Comically bleak, isn’t it? But that was fitting, because it was some bleak emotions that I was processing and trying to convey. It all had something to do with how our human failings can destroy all that is beautiful around us. Then I started to think about how this would be received by anyone else reading the book. I have several friends who have faced human failings in their lives, and I wouldn’t want them to read a book like this and think it was condemning them. Ultimately I felt the message wasn’t for the greater good, and the ending changed accordingly. There is still a monster, and it still seeks to destroy, but the story now suggests that it can be defeated by the very beauty it is trying to ravage, and innocence can be reclaimed.

Winnie-the-Pooh, The Hobbit, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Thomas the Tank Engine. Some of our most timeless tales and characters have come as a result of an author crafting a story for a specific individual. These stories are book-sized wishes for their readers to have lives as full of adventures and hopes as are contained within the tale. They are immortalized communications of love, given and received decades ago, yet ever fresh and new.

Of course, I do not mean to disparage the other types of audience a story can be written for, they each have their own pros and cons. I do feel, though, that this more direct and conversational form of story-communication too often gets overlooked. So if you find yourself struggling for inspiration, try asking yourself what sort of story you’d like to tell to the ones you love most. In the meantime, please come back Thursday when I continue with two more tales of Phillip the Mouse. Each of these are drawn from the bedtime stories I’ve shared with my toddler son, and each was designed based off of his personal interests and life events. They are examples of ways that I have used stories to speak to him about himself, and let him know how special he is.