On Writing

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    Brain Nazis and Feeling Good by David D. Burns, M.D.

    ByJohn Brown

    Have You Got a Brain Nazi?

    If you’re conscious, you’re monitoring your environment. You have to. It’s how you survive. This is not something you can turn off. It’s just one of those systems that runs automatically, like your liver. You’re always appraising the situation.

    And as soon as you encounter something that’s likely to be of importance to you or yours, your monitor kicks off a physical response to prepare you to deal with or take advantage of it.

    The problem is that sometimes a Nazi propagandist worms his way into the monitoring station. And like any good Nazi, he distorts reality.

    Sometimes those distortions lead to burning resentment, sometimes to unwarranted shame or anxiety, sometimes to eating disorders, sometimes to grave depression. When I heard of the tragic suicide that occurred in our community a few months ago, my heart went out in sympathy to the girl, her family, and friends.  I’m not a doctor. I don’t know the situation. But I’m positive she was dealing with one of these villains.

    I wished I’d been able to share something that’s been a literal life saver to me. Now, it might not have changed anything. But hopefully it can change things in the future for you and others you know who may have to deal with a Nazi in the brain.

    And you will have to deal with a brain Nazi at some time.

    This is not something that affects a miniscule portion of the population. In any given year you can expect more than 15% of a population to experience some form of this [1]. That’s roughly 238 of the estimated 1,592 people 18 years and older in the little county where I live [2]. Rates for teens are similar [3]. Besides, you don’t have to have a full-blown case of a depression for distortions to affect you. How many of us haven’t made faulty comparisons with others? “Oh, she’s so thin and has such great hair; I’m so dumpy.” “Oh, he’s doing so well, and I’m not. I’ll never be a success.”

    The question is not whether you or someone important to you will have to deal with it. The question is how prepared you’ll be when you do. Everyone deals with distortions now and again.  Which means everyone can find a little more enjoyment in life by showing their brain Nazis the door.

    So how does it all work? How do you show the villain out?

    I’m going to summarize it below, but I’ll tell you right now that the book that saved my life was Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD. This isn’t positive mental attitude. It’s not neuro-linguistic programming. It’s not the mumbo jumbo of Freud and Jung. This is practical and proven. It is the most prescribed intervention for dealing with these issues in the current medical community. It’s prescribed because it works.

    Your Brilliant Appraisal-Emotion System

    To understand this, you have to understand how emotions work. As I said before, you’re always monitoring your situation. You hear a buzz and see a rattlesnake on the path two feet away. Your monitor immediately responds. Alarm, adrenaline, increased blood flow–all of that to get you ready to deal with the situation. Your monitor writes “alarm” on your face to communicate it to those around you–to warn and ask for help. This happens in less than a blink of an eye.

    But this doesn’t just happen with danger. It happens when we encounter unfamiliar things. When we encounter positive things. You see a great friend who makes you laugh all the time. Boom, your monitor responds. You smile. Feel. Focus. You do so because you not only want to avoid dangers, you also want to seek out the things that make you happy.

    Our emotions prepare us to fight, flee, seek, and pitch woo. Our little monitoring and physical response system is brilliant.

    But there’s more. We don’t rely on just the automatic subconscious monitoring. We also have a cognitive (conscious thinking) part. Let’s go back to the rattlesnake. You walk out into the garden, step on a slither, and immediately go into alarm mode. Then you look, consciously see the slithery thing is not a snake, but the garden hose. You relax. Laugh.

    The quick subconscious appraisals keep us alive, because with snakes and other things, if you’re slow, you’re dead. We don’t have time for thought. If you touch a hot stove, you want an immediate reflex. You don’t want to ponder it for a second or two. On the other hand, the cognitive appraisals help us further appraise a situation. They bring more of our resources to bear on the situation.

    How Does the Nazi Get In?

    So there are three parts of the appraisal-emotion system: the subconscious appraisal of the situation, the physical response, and the cognitive appraisal. Each of the three parts affects the other two. And when things are running smoothly, we don’t have problems. But sometimes we get a distortion mucking up the works. We make a faulty appraisal of the situation. And therefore have a faulty physical response.

    For example, you’re a mother. You’ve had a hard day. The kids make a huge mess with flour in the kitchen. You yell, freak out. When they’re cowering in their rooms and you’re cleaning up the flour, you think, “There I go again. I’m a total failure. I can’t stand it! I never do anything right! I’m a terrible mother.” These thoughts make you even sadder.

    And that’s the propaganda. That’s your brain Nazi with his all-or-nothing thinking, telling you that you either perform perfectly or you’re a failure.

    But is that true? No, it’s not. You might be a B+ mother, filling the lives of your kids with all sorts of goodness. You might have just had a great time reading with the kids not thirty minutes before. But the brain Nazi tells you to forget that. “Vatch dis film,” he says, “und see de horrors of vut you are!”    

    And the all-or-nothing thinking gambit is just one of ten common weapons he uses. Furthermore, this happens so quick that we often don’t notice it. In fact, we’ve often repeated some of these distortions so often than they’ve become almost automatic.

    Mr. Nazi, Meet Mr. Bazooka

    The good news is that you can pull the lid off the lies. You can open the door, spot the brain Nazi that slipped in, and take him out. You can do this because one of the three parts of the system is our cognitive appraisal. This means you can consciously stop the movie, pin the distortion on the wall, and uncover the truth. Once you do that, it’s like the rattlesnake scenario above—oh, it’s a hose, we realize, not a snake, and the appropriate emotions immediately follow.

    But you need to know how to stop the movie. You need to know how to spot the lies. David D. Burns, MD tells you exactly how to do this in his book Feeling Good. (By the way, DON’T get this book confused with his Feeling Good Handbook–you DON’T want the handbook; you want Feeling Good, the book.)  In the book, Burns talks about the theory, the results, and then gets right down to the practical techniques used to blow the brain Nazi to kingdom come.

    A few years ago I hit a bad patch with a brain Nazi that had taken up residence. A very bad patch. He’d been there for quite some time. This book and a good counselor saved me. I thank the Lord for that. By the time I went to see a medical doctor to assess whether chemical issues might be playing a role, I was stable. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I had opened the lid and found the villain at the controls. I used the techniques Burns gave me, and I’m happy to say that while the brain Nazi still comes round every once in a while, I can spot him. And I can take that sucker out.

    Go to the library and check out the book and take the assessment test. If you, or someone you know, scores in the mild range, maybe you’ve just experienced a very sad event. But maybe you’ve also got a villain in residence. Get the book. Read it. Be happy. Nobody needs to live with a Nazi at the controls.

    For Authors

    By the way, fiction authors should pay special attention to this stuff. Not because we’re more susceptible to brain Nazis than others, although we do have to deal with our fair share as we develop and share our stories. No, we should because the emotion process is exactly what we’re trying to tap into. Knowing the principles can be very useful indeed. Let me recommend you read the books on emotion listed on the Learning With Pros page.

    Sources

    1. 1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml
    2. 2. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/49/49033.html (find your state and county and see how many folks are likely dealing with a brain Nazi in your area)
    3. 3. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k5/youthDepression/youthDepression.htm
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    News

    ByJohn Brown

    Interview with The Man Monday night

    Dungeon Crawlers Radio interviews The Man Monday, March 8th at 10:30 PM MTN. You can listen live or to the archive they’ll post to their site. All brought to you by UtahFM. Malak and Revan are great guys. I had a blast with them.

    Cool facts on breaking in, advances, etc. for writers

    New page on writing facts & figures in the On Writing section.

    Novel update

    CURSE OF A DARK GOD is moving along. You should see the progress bar move along quite a bit this week.

    Initial Schedule for American Fork Arts Council Conference for Writers

    This is a cheap day-long writers conference and looks like it’s going to be another great one.  I’ve highlighted what I’ll be doing in red. I’ll be making adjustments to the HOW TO WRITE A STORY THAT ROCKS presentation for things learned at LTUE.

    Here’s their website. That night I’ll probably be attending the Whitney Awards Gala which is also being held down in Happy Valley, Utah.

    DATE: Saturday April 24 2010

    8-9 a.m. Registration
    9-9:10 Welcome (Plenary)

    KEYNOTES
    9:10-9:40 Keynote #1 Ginger Churchill, “What I Wish I had Known as a Beginning Writer”
    9:40-10:10 Keynote #2 Ally Condie, “My Journey to National Publication”
    10:10-10:40 John D. Brown, “Aiming for National Publication”

    INTRODUCTIONS of editors and authors
    10:40-11:05 EDITORS: Derk Koldewyn, Granite NAME
    AUTHORS: Caleb Warnock, Linda Jefferies, Shannon Guymon

    11:05-11:20 15-minute break

    11:20-noon BREAKOUT ONE
    Upstairs room “Crafting the Novel” with Shannon Guymon, John D. Brown
    Downstairs One “Finding and Working With an Agent” with Ginger Churchill, Ally Condie, Caleb Warnock
    Downstairs Two “Taking Your Questions about Publishing” with Deseret Book and Granite Publishing

    noon-1 LUNCH “Mix and Mingle with Authors and Editors”

    1-1:40 BREAKOUT TWO
    Conference One Derk Koldewyn of Deseret Book “What Deseret Book is looking for now”
    Conference Two Ginger Churchill “How to Write and Publish Picture Books”
    Upstairs room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 1: First Principles & Story Concept”
    Office room Caleb Warnock “10 Things Every Writer Should Know about Copyright”
    Downstairs One Granite Publishing “What Granite is looking for now”
    Downstairs Two Ally Condie “Writing Young Adult Fiction”

    1:40-1:50 Ten-minute break

    1:50-2:30 BREAKOUT THREE
    Upstairs Room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 2: Character”
    Conference Two Ginger Churchill “Genres of Children’s Books, from Board Books to YA Novels”
    Conference One Derk Koldewyn of Deseret Book “National Publication with Shadow Mountain”
    Office room Caleb Warnock “How to Write the Query Letter”
    Downstairs One Granite Publishing “Publishing Options with Granite”
    Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “How to Write Romance”

    2:30-2:40 Ten-minute break

    2:40-3:20 BREAKOUT FOUR
    Upstairs Room John Brown, “How to Write a Story That Rocks Part 3: Plot”
    Conference Two Ginger Churchill “How to be a Writer and a Mother Too”
    Conference One Linda Jefferies “Writing Poetry”
    Office room Caleb Warnock “Write a Synopsis? I’d Rather Gouge My Eyes Out!”
    Downstairs One Ally Condie “Succeeding as an LDS author”
    Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “Writing Nonfiction”

    3:20-3:30 Ten-minute break

    3:30-4:10 BREAKOUT FIVE
    Upstairs Room John Brown, “Writing Scenes: The Basic Units of a Novel”
    Conference Two Ginger Churchill “Querying Agents and Publishers”
    Conference One Linda Jefferies “Publishing Poetry”
    Office room Caleb Warnock “Okay, You Were Rejected – Why, and What to Do Now”
    Downstairs One “How to form a critique group that works”
    Downstairs Two Shannon Guymon “Succeeding as an LDS Author”

    4:10-4:20 PRIZE GIVEAWAYS, GOODBYE

    REVISED (MAY CHANGE)

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    “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” by J.K. Rowling

    ByJohn Brown

    This is J. K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” It’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Watch and then watch again. Read the full text here.

    Two quotes that in no way can do justice to the whole thing.

    And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

    You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

    . . . 

    Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

    One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.

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    How to Write a Story that Rocks

    ByJohn Brown

    Folks, a huge thanks goes to Stephen Nelson for putting all this together. You may kiss his hand when you see him.

    This is a recording of “How to Write a Story that Rocks,” a two-hour seminar Larry Correia and I just put on at the annual BYU’s Life, The Universe, & Everything symposium. I think we had 130-140 people attend. This symposium is focused on writing fiction. And while the panels and presentations do include things specific to the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres (both adult and young adult), a lot of time is also spent on story writing fundamentals that apply to ALL genres. So when I developed this workshop, I made sure I took the fundamental approach.

    The two-hour seminar has been broken down into 12 segments. To switch between the segments:

    • Hover your mouse pointer over the YouTube below
    • Click the forward and back arrows that appear on the right and left sides to move to the next or previous segment, OR 
    • Scroll through all 12 segments and select the one you want using the playlist control at the bottom

    If you prefer, you can watch all 12 on the How to Write a Story that Rocks YouTube playlist page.

    I’ve found whenever I develop any presentation or training that it takes a few iterations and revisions before it’s the best it can be. This is the first iteration of this seminar. And so below this video I’ve provided additional comments on each segment explaining key concepts, principles, and techniques that we might have failed to discuss or convey as clearly as we’d hoped. Enjoy!

    Handout

    How to Write a Story That Rocks – Handout

    Segment 1

    It’s documented–right-wing gun nut Larry Correia sang “Kumbaya.” What’s next? The hugging of small trees? Oh, Larry, the disilluion. The disillusion.

    The reason why I had Larry sing was not for his mellifluous performance, but to demonstrate the difference in reactions between him and our happy volunteer (“Country Road” by John Denver–this really was a love fest). The volunteer balked because he hadn’t taken any thought to know what to sing before he was commanded to do so. On the other hand, Larry and I had spoken before the seminar. So Larry had something to sing BEFORE he sang it. It’s a simple demonstration, but it illustrates a principle a lot of new writers forget. Writing is a performance. It helps to know what it is you’re going to perform before you perform it.

    It’s one thing for you to tell yourself to write. It’s much easier to tell yourself to write the scene where the rancher finds out one of his illegal ranch hands has been kidnapped.

    Now this doesn’t mean that you have to know everything. Or that you can’t write exploratory drafts to figure out what it is you want to write. But it does illustrate that whatever techniques you use, you’ll be a lot more effective in your writing when you have something to say first.

    But what do you develop? What are the things that bring the story to life? How do you go about getting those things to say? That’s precisely what I wanted to address in the seminar. In the segments that follow, I try to:

    1. Explain what I’ve found are the most important things to develop, the things that define the essence of story, that make the story come alive in the writer’s mind–the things that really matter
    2. Demonstrate techniques to develop those things so you have something to say

    Segment 2

    I think this segment went fairly well. What rocks will different from person to person, even though there will often be a huge overlap between people. So it’s important for authors to seek to develop the kinds of stories that rouse their passion. Watch this interview with best seller Debbie Macomber to see what I mean. So I can’t tell you what to write about. Or if whath you think rocks will resonate with a large number of people. However, what I can do is share the techniques I use that have been most productive in helping me develop initial ideas into something that has much more power.

    You can use the techniques to juice up any of the four parts of story. However, I will say that I find that the most productive, the most important parts, are character and problem. Plot and setting are important. I love them and work to juice them up. But when I get a good character and problem, that’s when the writing seems to flow the easiest.

    And no, I don’t list theme as a part of story. Everyone talks about theme, but when I read what they have to say or press them for examples, it seems that it always either boils down to (1) a story element or topic that’s repeated, (2) a story problem/issue stated in an abstract manner, or (3) some moral situation. Les Miserables is about the “theme” of mercy versus justice. But saying justice versus mercy is just an abstraction of the story problem and dilemmas the story deals with. So, no theme. 

    Segment 3

    Loved this bit about scenes from David Mamet: http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/03/23/a-letter-from-david-mamet-to-the-writers-of-the-unit/ 

    Segment 4

    I’ll be adding my comments to the rest of these segments over the next few days.

    Segment 5

    Segment 6

    Segment 7

    Segment 8

    Segment 9

    Segment 10

    Segment 11

    Segment 12

    Dan Wells on Story Structure

    Check it out: Dan Wells on How to Build a Story (story structure). I find Dan’s “start with the ending” technique helpful as well as thinking about a worst fears realized moment. Watch the videos and see if there isn’t something there that can help you develop your story idea.

    You can get the PowerPoint of How to Build a Story on Dan’s site.

    If you find this approach useful, you might want to check out what novelist Larry Brooks has written about the same material on StoryFix.com.