The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.
On our last podcast and post, we talked about the character misbelief, which is basically what the character in your story believes that isn’t real or true.The big component of this is that your character believes this big lie about life or about themselves because of something that hurt them in the past.
The thing that hurt them in the past that causes that big untruth that dictates their lives is often called a wound.
Whew. So much lingo.
False belief/big lie
Wound/thing that hurt them in the past
So, the cool thing is that you can use these false beliefs to make a better story. We talked about those false beliefs in our last podcast, but it could be that they aren’t lovable, they are unworthy, that might always makes right.
The wound makes this a logical thing for them to think even though it’s super wrong. The big trick is that you want to show this to the reader rather than tell them.
You can’t just write:
Carrie cried because she was unlovable, which she knew because Steve Sills told her so at the seventh grade dance.
And you can’t just write,
“I’m only doing this,” Carrie said, “because of what Steven Sills told me at that seventh grade dance.”
You want to show these beliefs rather than tell them. Instead, you want to show the reader by how the main character reacts to something BECAUSE of their false belief.
It’s all about our character’s mind tricking them into lies. That’s called a cognitive distortion in real life, right?
There’s a great post by Jami Gold that talks about 15 ways to show false beliefs in our characters. And honestly, they are so much like real life that it kind of hurts. She talks a lot in that post about Michael Hauge who talks a lot about this and is kind of the guru of false belief.
Here we go:
15 Ways to Show False Beliefs in Our Characters
(Note that these cognitive distortions are not exclusive. We can use multiple methods to show characters’ false beliefs throughout a story, so we don’t have to choose just one.)
If characters believe X about themselves (e.g., they’re unlovable), they might react in one or more of the following ways:
Filtering: Magnifying the negative and ignoring the positive They’ll dwell on plot events that prove their belief right and they’ll gloss over those that prove them wrong.
Polarized Thinking: Seeing things in black-or-white They’ll deem any attempt to overcome that flaw a failure if it doesn’t turn out perfectly.
Overgeneralization: Basing conclusions on single piece of evidence They’ll pick out a single word, act, or event to reinforce their belief.
Jumping to Conclusions: Assuming others’ feelings or motivations They’ll assume others’ actions are driven by their flaw.
Catastrophizing: Expecting disaster to strike They’ll worry a minor mistake due to their flaw will cause great tragedy.
Personalization: Taking everything as a direct reaction to them They’ll see themselves and their flaw as the cause for everything others do or say.
Control Fallacies: Seeing themselves as a victim They’ll either think fate forces them to be a victim of their flaw, or they’ll make themselves into victims by accepting blame for everything because of their flaw.
Fallacy of Fairness: Judging life by “fairness” They’ll expect things to turn out positively to make up for the pain “life” inflicted with their Wound.
Blaming: Blaming others for troubles They’ll think others are responsible for the pain of their Wound.
Shoulds: Prioritizing “rules” They’ll set up rules for how to deal with situations caused by their belief and feel guilty when they violate those rules.
Emotional Reasoning: Believing feelings automatically true They’ll trust their feelings about their belief above all other evidence.
Fallacy of Change: Expecting others to change They’ll expect others to change to accommodate their belief and think their happiness depends on meeting that goal.
Global Labeling: Extreme and emotional mislabeling They’ll exaggerate and overgeneralize their flaw to the point of creating unhealthy emotions.
Always Being Right: Being right is most important trait They’ll argue about their belief with the insistence that they’re right—no matter the costs (including to others’ emotions).
Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: Expecting actions to “pay off” They’ll expect life to reward their sacrifice in the name of their belief.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Sometimes a misbelief can be helpful. Pogie thinks she’s a bad ass. She is not.
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
We’re doing a hybrid writing tip and podcast this week.
All the important stuff is written down here. All the fun stuff and Shaun aka The Talent is in the podcast where we talk about this important writing stuff and other things.
So, let’s get started.
The big lie or the character’s misbelief in your story is a major key to your character’s story arc, which is basically the emotional change and development of who you character is.
The lie drives the stupid or wonderful things that they do in the story.
It’s what motivates them in a way.
Sometimes the protagonist or main character or hero of your story doesn’t believe THE BIG LIE, but everyone else does. That’s super cool, too.
The lie can be a small deal—I am going to win the Little Miss New Hampshire Song and Dance Contest though I can’t move my hips and I am ancient and the contest is for 8 year olds and under. (I now want to write this story)
The lie can be a big deal on a societal and personal level—Might always makes right, so I’ll beat everyone up to get my way.
On Writers Helping Writers they say that the big thing is this: Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story’s theme.
They also break it down to inner and outer lies (which are a bit like character-driven lie and plot-driven lie, right?).
They write:
“Plot-driven stories often focus primarily on an outer-world Lie such as Hunger Games‘ Lie that “oppressive government is necessary” or Jurassic Park‘s Lie that “science should always be advanced.” Character-driven stories usually focus on an inner Lie, such as “men and women can’t be friends” in When Harry Met Sally or “money is the measure of worth” in A Christmas Carol.
“An inner-world Lie will affect the character’s outer world, sometimes even to the point of becoming the outer world’s Lie. And vice versa, an outer-world Lie will likely become crucial to the character’s inner conflict and self-estimation.
“The distinction is important not so much because of how the Lie manifests in the story as it is because of where the Lie originated. Where did this Lie come from? Who (or what) gave this Lie to the character? And what do the answers mean for the character’s motivations and ultimate arc within this story?”
Carrie is going to be talking more about this in the upcoming weeks, but we want for you to think about those questions for your own life too.
Is there something you believe that might not be quite right? Sometimes it might be that you’re bad at art or sports or school. Sometimes it might be that you can only be loved if you are perfect. Sometimes it might be that if you just work hard enough you can be Bill Gates rich.
Just like for your characters, your lie can be destructive to your own life.
On Writers Helping Writers, Angela Ackerman writes,
“We are often our own biggest critics, aren’t we? Whenever something goes wrong, we feel disappointed, frustrated, upset, or hurt. The fallout might cause others around us to suffer too, causing further anguish and guilt. When this happens, unless the situation was in no way tied to us, we tend to blame ourselves:
“When the character’s thoughts circle disempowering beliefs (that they are incompetent, naïve, defective, or they lack value) as a reason for their failure, it eats away at their self-worth. This, combined with a need to identify the pain’s cause will lead to a specific effect: an internal lie will form. This Lie (also called a False Belief or Misbelief) is a conclusion reached through flawed logic. Caught in a vulnerable state, the character tries to understand or rationalize his painful experience, only to falsely conclude that fault somehow lies within.”
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Pogie’s big lie is that she’s a super toughie. She is not. Do you have this lie?
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Think about your character’s lie. What is it that they wrongly believe?
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
The snippet of our intro and outro music is only a snippet of this guy’s awesome talent. Many thanks to Kaustubh Pandav. You can check out a bit of his work at the links below.
In our random thought we talk all about the Ig Nobles. We don’t transcribe that, so you’ll have to listen. Sorry!
But now, let’s talk about logic.
When you are writing a novel and something doesn’t make sense—let’s say someone has brown eyes on page 2 and blue eyes on page 1—your editor if you have one is going to call you on that. If they don’t call you on that, the readers’ brain will hitch when they are reading.
Editors are awesome.
And what I’m saying is that we need editors for real life. That’s because a lot of time people don’t seem to listen to facts. Reason is what helps us justify our beliefs. But someties that means that we aren’t awesome at seeing the truth. We like to cherry pick facts that support our own ideas and then we get biased. We start looking and seeing information that holds with what we already believe rather than information that goes counter to how we believe.
These two cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber believe that reasoning is to help us function as a social group rather than as people who seek truth.
A Psychology Today article by Jessica Schrader writes:
“A number of studies document the many ways in which our political party distorts our reasoning. One study found that people who had strong math skills were only good at solving a math problem if the solution to the problem conformed to their political beliefs. Liberals were only good at solving a math problem, for instance, if the answer to that problem showed that gun control reduced crime. Conservatives were only good at solving this problem if the solution showed that gun control increased crime. Another study found that the higher an individual’s IQ, the better they are at coming up with reasons to support a position—but only a position that they agree with.
“Belonging to a particular political party can also shape our perception. In one study, researchers were asked to watch a video of protestors. Half of the participants were told the people in the video were protesting the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The other half were told that the people were protesting an abortion clinic. Liberals reported saying the protestors were more violent and disruptive if they were told they were watching abortion clinic protestors, and the opposite was true for conservatives—even though everyone was watching the same video.”
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Hoarding all your toys on the couch isn’t the best idea.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
GHOSTED
It was like one of those self-help blogs
That only talk in abstractions
About the power of self-love
Or how to end a toxic relationship.
That’s when I realized
That the person not showing up
Was me. All that bemoaning
About not putting in the effort,
Not taking the time to make sure
Sentences weren’t orders
And feelings were considered,
To temper my tone with kindness,
It was just me being the bully to myself
Before ghosting off to do other things
For people, with people, to people
without even saying goodbye.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
I tell the story about one of my grandmother’s a lot. She was born in 1896, which means she’d be 127 now if she was still alive, which is kind of staggering. She died in 2001, which if my math is right, means she made it to 104, which is pretty staggering, too. My dad was her youngest child and I was his youngest child by a lot, which is why I’m not 80 right now.
Anyway, my grandmother was about 4-foot-10 and she loved art and books and music and deep thought. She wasn’t a positive person. This was not a woman who would give you a pep talk. Ever. I mean, if you think about it, she’d lived through two world wars and a depression.
She painted. She was embarrassed by her creations and would hide if her sons bragged about them.
She wrote poems. She said they were swill.
But she had this appreciation—this state of awe—for so many things.
She’d see a perfectly formed tomato and tears would come to her eyes. She’d touch her grandchild’s (or great grandchild’s) arm or cheek and marvel at the softness, the texture, the youth of their skin, the clarity of their eyes. She greatly appreciated things—small things and refined things.
A painting by me.
Because she fed a family during the Great Depression in Staten Island, she would wax poetic, in total awe, over butchering a piece of meat and bemoan the state of meat in grocery stores in the 1990s (and probably before that).
According to the Greater Good Magazine, “Awe is the feeling we get in the presence of something vast that challenges our understanding of the world, like looking up at millions of stars in the night sky or marveling at the birth of a child. When people feel awe, they may use other words to describe the experience, such as wonder, amazement, surprise, or transcendence.”
Every time I put something out (art, a news story, a blog post, a book, even something as simple as a Facebook post), I think of my grammy and how cool it would have been if she could have been okay with not being perfect and with sharing things she might want to share. I remember my little kid self looking at her paintings with awe and reading her poems and trying to understand the mystery in the enjambments and in the lines. I had fierce grandmothers, too. But Grammy Barnard? She was the one who fell in love with the world, one skin touch, one tomato, at a time.
May you feel awe today. May you be brave enough and open enough to let a tomato’s perfection bring you to tears. May you marvel in beauty of skin. May you inhale the world around you and embrace those things that make your understanding a tiny bit bigger.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
TOURIST LOVE
At dusk as I tiptoed along the Shore Path,
Between tourists grumbling about fog and the price of lobster,
Listening to the sound of whaler motors humming
out existence, I fell in love with a rose bush.
Not the cultivated kind, but the stubborn ones that cling to sea walls,
Bees fluttering about, wild and limby, stabbing at passersby,
Bright pink and white blooms, calling you in
Without asking for anything back. Just existing. No worries.
It knows it has survived drought and hurricane winds.
It knows it will survive those things again.
It knows it might be noticed or not.
It doesn’t matter.
In the bright morning light, the fog eventually cleared,
And I feel in love with two kids who wandered off the path
To push at a precociously balanced rock, thinking somehow
They’d knock that giant boulder into the sea
Even though a zillion others had tried before, hands flat
Against granite, legs braced, putting all their weight into it.
This is the sweetest kind of belief, of love, that love of self,
Not worried about what others think as you push and push and push.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
