Some Key Concepts for Love Stories

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My first four professionally published short stories were all love stories of one kind or another. I love good love stories. And so when the Writing Excuses team podcasted about this topic with Dave Wolverton, I was excited to hear what they had to say. Of course, they didn’t dissappoint. However, I would like to add a few things here.

1. A love story or romance is a happiness story. The problem is one of danger to, lack of, or opportunity for the happiness that comes with having a close bond with someone else. To be loved and included, to be valued by someone.

2. Love stories don’t have to be between two characters who are romantically interested in each other. They can be between two people who become friends or a person who is on the outs with a particular group as with RAINMAN, or between a father (or father figure) and son as in TREASURE PLANET, or a mother and daughter.

3. It seems to me that these social story problems can be broken down into four elements.

  1. Raising the idea
  2. Making the characters attractive
  3. Raising obstacles and conflict
  4. Showing signs of progression

RAISING THE IDEA

Just as with any story problem, we have to know there’s an issue. The idea of possibility or lack has to be presented to us. And the specific person who we hope the character bonds with has to be identified. How is this done?

Lots of ways. But I can see two big ones right off the bat. The first has to do with what a character notices about the other person. In a romantic love story, it might be some thoughts about another’s attractiveness, either looks or character. This could happen when the character sees the other person, touches them, hears them speak. And it doesn’t have to be a stranger. Perhaps they had a crush on that person when they were younger. There are all sorts of cues we use to signal romantic potential. All we have to do is raise a few of those for the reader and the idea is planted.

The second way the idea is raised is by having some other character raise it. Someone else notices the person and thinks them attractive. Or they make a suggestion that our character getting together with them is a possibility.

So when Jack sees Mary he can think about when the blankety blank she’s going to get off the commando team because all she does is distract the men. Not him, of course. Or Bill can tell Jack that Mary has been watching him. And Jack can say, she can look all she wants because she’s never going to get a piece of this.

MAKING THE CHARACTERS ATTRACTIVE

The second thing I see that’s necessary is that the other person is attractive to the reader. Or, at least, the reader could see how the character could be attracted to this person. This doesn’t always have to be physical beauty. Nor does it have to be sexual attraction. A buddy story would be about something else–about someone who we think is admirable in some way. But it has to happen for the reader to believe the story.

Of course, our hero may be duped. Jack might be falling for Cindy when she’s really just after his money. The readers know both sides and can see how Jack’s choices make sense, even while we feel great anxiety of the trouble coming down the line. 

RAISING OBSTACLES AND CONFLICT

These are key, of course. No obstacles or conflicts and there is no story. Jack sees Jill. Says I love you. They marry. The end. So we have to have obstacles. They can start immediately with the character recognizing a possiblity. For example, Jack is simply oblivious to Jill’s interest in him. And when he decides to trust his friend’s advice to pursue her, he sees her with another man. She’s not an option for him afterall.

If we think about yes-buts and no-furthermores and that usually the hero has to fail at the end of act 2 for us to feel triumph at the end of act 3, we’ll see that obstacles and conflicts progress just as they do in any other story.

There are many obstacles or points of conflict. Distance (CASTAWAY), social status, fears of rejection, a stuttering problem, another person who Jack is interested in or who Jill is interested in, something Jill does that Jack doesn’t agree with, jobs that are demanding and keep them apart or make them keep secrets (TRUE LIES). Are too closely related. It’s against your vows or values (you’re a nun or he’s a client) Etc.  Many are internal and have to do with trust, fear, competing desires, and commitment.

The key to the obstacles, I’ve found, is in making it hard to choose or fulfill commitment. It isn’t about sex or kissing. Because you can have a story where two people have sex and it doesn’t resolve any tension in the love story (what if the guy is seen that night with another woman?). It’s about two people being able to say I love or value you and meaning it.

And so anything that would keep them from commiting works. And after they’ve committed, anything that would make one recant. Or be unable to enjoy that love going forward.

SHOWING SIGNS OF PROGRESSION

The last thing is that the audience needs to know that things are moving forward. In plotting, we need a few yesses along the way or the story’s over. How do we do this? What are the signs? I can think of a few.

  1. The character’s thoughts are more and more about the other person, noticing all sorts of things, dealing more and more with inner dilemmas.
  2. The character’s actions become more and more open. The lingering looks, or glances she tries to  hide, the touching. The character’s words become more and more direct. Usually oblique at first and then more clear later.
  3. There is more validation from other characters.

Why do so many stories have the characters in a romance dance? Not because dancing is some mystical thing. No, it’s a romantic cue. We associate romance with dancing. And being in such close proximity raises the pulse. But you can put people in close proximity in many other ways–in a crate as they’re being smuggled into the country, standing smashed together in a subway, retracting a bullet from the leg, cutting and washing hair (John Travolta in PHENOMENON), etc.  The reason why we do this; however, is so that we can get a yes, a sign of progression. Of course, we could also use it to raise a devestating conflict as when Maria dances with Captain Von Trapp in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. But that’s only devestating because during the dance they had declared in subtle ways that they were interested in one another.

So we raise obstacles and show signs of progression, back and forth, the obstacles pointing more and more toward disaster until at the end of act 2 Jack loses…and we get the no-but plot turn. No, he’s failed completely. But then a desperate glimmer of hope…

In the end we need final confirmation. One thing that says, yes, they’re committed. Often in romantic love stories writers use sex as a blunt confirmation. I think it’s often the lazy way out. Here, show Jack and Jill having sex. Okay, next plot point. It’s lost most of its power for me. And such a thing should be anything but cliche. My advice is to think of many other ways that show commitment and value. A few examples off the top of my head are what Dean Koontz in his ODD THOMAS series did this for Odd and Stormy, FAR AND AWAY with Joseph and Shannon, WHAT ABOUT BOB, and SABRINA. In fact, having sex was turned on its head in this one. Lovely.

At least think about other options because romantic love stories are not about sex. Sexual tension stories are. But that’s a different problem. A different type of story. And it seems writers sometimes confuse these two. Romantic love stories are about two people finally saying, yes, I love you, I value you, and I mean it, and always will. And as an audience, we believe.

And if that doesn’t move you, then remember that one of the things we go to stories for is surprise. Something new. How wonderful would it be if something as simple and Jackbiking into Jill’s work place with a parrot on his shoulder is the ultimate moment of the story, and says everything that needs to be said? And when Jill looks up at the commotion, her heart to this point hardened or desolate, and sees the bird, the audience weeps or cheers…

Is Product Popularity Random?

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In Why Publishing is Making You Crazy—and What You Can Do About It: The Tao of Publishing, Steven Axelrod and Julie Anne Long write an interesting post that takes some findings made by Duncan Watts and attempts to explain why writers should only focus on the quality of their work because they cannot reliably affect popularity in any other way.

I agree with them that social-influence seems like a good explanation for the sometimes unexplicable successes we see in publishing and the difficulty publishers have in both predicting and producing a steady stream of hits. However, I do not find support for their main conclusion that writers can do nothing but write.  In fact, I suggest that Watts’ findings show quite the opposite.

Axelrod and Long base much of their argument on an experiment conducted by Duncan Watts that tested the power of social-influence on music selection in some controlled music websites. Watts summarizes his findings in the excellent Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?.

In his part of the post, Axelrod points out that the Watts findings indicate “50% of the factors affecting your career could be totally outside of your control—totally random” and that “unless we can separate out those random factors which contributed to an author’s past success [and we can’t, Axelrod suggests], anything we can say or predict about why she succeeded will invariably be way off-the-mark.” And therefore “what’s interesting—and chilling, as well—is that there’s evidence that the harder a person works to make sense of a random event, the farther they’ll end up from the truth.”

In other words, the only thing an author can reliably do to improve the popularity of his stories is focus on their instrinsic quality. And get more stories out so he has more shots in the fickle social-influence game.

I agree that having more product in the market increases your odds. I also agree that focusing on the intrinsic quality of the writing can do the same. I even agree that this is where authors should spend most of their time. However, Watts’ studies do not indicate other efforts are wasted. In fact, they suggest the opposite.

Watts does not controvert anything we now know about marketing. What he does is clarify the power of social-influence in our decision making and the dynamics of ONE type of endorsement system. What Watts shows is:

  1. A perceived non-bias endorsement of your product can have a huge effect in the product’s popularity.
  2. The intrinsic quality of the product has an effect on popularity, but social-influence plays as large or larger role.
  3. Popularity in the system set up in the test websites depended on the decisions of a few early-arriving potential endorsers, i.e. good early reviews (downloads in this case) are amplified and lead to an effect he calls “the richer getting richer.”
  4. In this one endorsement system, neither a future endorsement nor the identity of the early endorser can be predicted.

These findings, however, need to be put in context. From cars, to camcorders, to recipes, the popularity of a product depends on three main factors. These aren’t new ideas and publishing is no different than any other industry. The factors come from long-standing marketing practice:

  1. Visibility (people know about it)
  2. Endorsement (recommendation from an attractive person, trusted authority or friend, or trusted system like the perceived unbiased reviews on Amazon or “most downloads” stats)
  3. Attractiveness (intrinsic to the product, the perceived value offered the target market, and the social effect as pointed out by Watts)

Each of these three affects the other two. Visibility makes endorsements and initial attractiveness possible. Endorsements make a product more attractive and more likely to be visible. Attractiveness makes something more visible and more likely to be endorsed. And round and round we go.

It’s true that Watts shows 50% of the effect is due to endorsement. But nowhere does Watts suggest an author cannot increase the probability of visibility and endorsement.

In the study, the endorsement method used was a counter showing the number of times the song had been downloaded. It was random, anonymous, and perceived as unbiased. That was a controlled environment. However, what if a singer had been able to ask all those he knew who loved his song to download it from the site? Or what if someone organized such a campaign independent of the singer? Both actions would immediately affect the probability of the song increasing in visiblity and endorsement and, hence, popularity.

It’s too bad Watts didn’t test this in one of his sites to see if he could make a winner. As it was, all Watts was doing was seeing if he could predict a success by quality alone. He was passively observing, not actively taking measures to increase visibility and endorsement.

Furthermore, the counter is just one type of endorsement system. There are a number of others. We’ve all seen how an Oprah endorsement can move the market. The identity of that endorser is NOT random and has great predictive value. Her decision to endorse is still random. But what if you have a way to make your book visible to her? Would it be a waste of time to do so?

Robert Sawyer loves to tell of one action he took with someone with much less endorsement power than Oprah and the effect it had on his sales. Was Sawyer guaranteed visibility and endorsement from that action? No. However, he DID increase the probability, and it resulted in sales. Here’s his account.

Watts confirms that endorsements have a mighty effect on popularity. Even something as simple as a “most downloads” counter can easily overwhelm a listener’s own reactions. But the logical conclusion is not to do nothing. The logical conclusion is that if authors want to increase their popularity, they must not rely only on the intrinsic value of their product, but they must also search for ways to increase visibility and endorsement.

Axelrod is correct that it’s sometimes difficult to see the effect of any given marketing campaign or tactic. This is because marketing efforts are probabilistic, not deterministic. However, probabilistic does not mean random. Furthermore, it does not indicate you cannot increase the probability of success. While publishers may not be able to produce best sellers every time, I’m confident if they decided to stop marketing altogether, sales would drop.

Will all efforts succeed? No. Any marketing progam needs to consider the effect of diminishing returns. The effectiveness of some actions may be difficult to test. Furthermore, authors may not have the budget to run a campaign large enough to increase their probabilities, although there are strategies to become a big fish in a small pond (see Geoffery Moore’s Crossing the Chasm).

Despite all these issues, we know, in general, getting endorsements helps. In general, the right placement in book stores increases visibility. Author visits to schools, if done right for middle age readers, can also increase visibility. Radio interviews, if done right, do the same. There are many things that DO improve an author’s odds. We can increase the probability of visibility and endorsement by taking intelligence, consistent action.

And that’s good news. We might not be able to guarantee a hit, but one thing IS certain—we’ll have no direct influence on visibility and endorsement if we do nothing.

(BTW, for those interested, here’s a great presentation on a related idea:Six Degrees: The Science of the Connected Age a presentation by Duncan J. Watts.)

Hornswoggle & Happiness

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Since we now know that happiness is contagious and that a happy friend is worth $20,000, I figured I’d provide a practical means of infecting you with some mild levels of joy so you could increase your value. Hey, who needs stinking bionics to become the million-dollar man?

Have you ever noticed that using some words elevates your mood?

No?

Trust me. Words do have power. And I am sure researchers could prove that if you used a certain number of words like “schlub,” “smithereens,” and “diddly” each day, you could raise your happiness level by some statistically significant amount.  And even if they couldn’t demonstrate this, that would only prove that some scientists are made of styrofoam. But we knew that already. The point is that there are some words that are so delicious, goofy, or beautiful they must be preserved at all costs. If only for their happy-making ability. And in that light, I present to you “hornswoggle.”

(HORN-swog-uhl)
MEANING: verb tr.: To cheat, hoax, or deceive someone.

Hornswoggle.

USAGE: “Now, however, some special interests are out to hornswoggle residents, and they’re stooping low to do it.” Lauren Ritchie; But Doctor, Your Name is on the Mailer; The Orlando Sentinel (Florida); Oct 4, 2006.

Aaaah, I’m feeling better already.

You can use this too. See: “Son, don’t try to hornswoggle me,” “That dude’s a hornswoggler,” “Joe’s auto-body is a hornswoggling den of mechanical iniquity.”

Now add to that skedaddle, discombobulate, and flummadiddle. (If you want definitions, just visit this list from wordsmith.org.)

Take them home with you. Use them. Spread the happiness around.

A happy friend is worth about $20,000

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This is based on research, folks.

But we didn’t need scientists to tell us this. The old Frank Kapra films like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE that have been demonstrating this for years.  I think we need a new government measurement. We’d call it the GDH, the gross domestic happiness index. And then we can see who really is rich, e.g. my five bunko buddies cancel out your Lexus any day.

Joking aside, this shows how much social interaction is built into our genes. And why we tend to tire of congenital whiners, complainers, and sadsacks. Not to say that people who are sad shouldn’t be. But that a happy friend or family member, who listens with kindness, can be a great boon to someone who is suffering.

People with the most social connections — friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives — were also the happiest, the data showed. “Each additional happy person makes you happier,” Christakis said.

“Imagine that I am connected to you and you are connected to others and others are connected to still others. It is this fabric of humanity, like an American patch quilt.”

Each person sits on a different-colored patch. “Imagine that these patches are happy and unhappy patches. Your happiness depends on what is going on in the patch around you,” Christakis said.

“It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on.”

And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered.

“If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent,” Fowler said. “A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent,” he added.

A happy third-degree friend — the friend or a friend of a friend — increases a person’s chances of being happy by 6 percent.

“But every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you’ll be unhappy by 7 percent,” Fowler said.

The finding is interesting but it is useful, too Fowler said.

“Among other benefits, happiness has been shown to have an important effect on reduced mortality, pain reduction, and improved cardiac function. So better understanding of how happiness spreads can help us learn how to promote a healthier society,” he said.

The study also fits in with other data that suggested — in 1984 — that having $5,000 extra increased a person’s chances of becoming happier by about 2 percent.

“A happy friend is worth about $20,000,” Christakis said.

Here’s the full article.

NPR’s Intelligence Squared

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Sometimes I love NPR, and sometimes those folks drive me nuts. But with Intelligence Squared they’ve come up with wonderful programming. I accidentally tuned in one night and found I couldn’t turn the radio off.

What they do is bring together articulate experts, half who argue for a motion such as “Guns reduce crime?” or “Is the government responsible for health care?” and half who argue against it. The nice thing is that they make enough TIME to allow full statements. These aren’t roundtables of knucklehead pundits spouting sound bites. These are long discussions.

Of course, so much depends on the presentation skills of the various experts. But being able to listen to both sides of an issue, at the very least, gives much to think about.

In this debate they argue for and against the motion “The US is winning the war in Iraq”.

They convinced me (I won’t say which side, however). Take some time and listen to this while you do monkey work for the day job.