Why Robots Get It All Wrong
Tune in to the webinar on audience-building tonight if you're free.
Facts and statistics don't change people. Emotions do.
As one of my teachers said to me, "Nobody changes their conduct because of ideas, but because of emotions."
A robot—or AI—is incapable of experiencing human emotion. (However, they are capable of acting in ways that produce emotions in humans).
So this week I thought we could look at how to show emotion in our work.
This is especially important
if you are hoping to change people with your ideas, because facts aren’t enough.
if you want your stories to be memorable.
if you want to produce an emotional response in a reader.
How to Create Emotion
How does a writer create emotion using 26 tiny symbols printed in diverse combinations on a flat white sheet of paper?
I’m going to make a list for you. If you have other ideas to add to the list, let me know.
Allow yourself to feel. Stay open to your feelings. Become a person with a high emotional intelligence.
Let yourself be moved by the situation or issue you’re writing about. If you feel emotional as you write, the reader will too. By the way, Flannery wouldn’t agree with this. She says a writer cannot create emotion with emotion, that you have to create those with a body, with “weight and extension.” But I know for a fact that a writer’s own emotion is very important in eliciting emotion in a reader.
Write in scenes and render scenes through the senses with lots of details.
Slow down your writing. This does not mean slowing down the speed at which you write. It means slowing down the speed at which the reader reads. You do this because, as I’ve heard, it takes 4 minutes to produce an emotion in a reader. A reader has a stronger emotional response to a longer scene. Therefore, when you get to an important event, slow it down. I have pasted in a list of ways to slow a scene at the bottom of this essay.
Pay attention to the layers of meaning inside the words you choose.
Robert Olen Butler and Janet Burroway's writing manual, From Where You Dream, contains fabulous information about crafting emotion. They say that emotions reside in the senses, and senses originate in the body, exactly what Flannery O'Connor said. Butler and Burroway work through a few ways in which emotions are experienced and thus utilized in writing. Include sensual reactions from inside the body. These are invisible to another person. Your heart speeds up, a muscle begins to tic in your throat.
Include sensual responses that send signals outside the body. These are visible—gestures, body language, facial expressions, face-flushing, tone of voice. You cross your arms, you lift one eyebrow.
Include flashes of the past, or, as Butler and Burrow say, "little vivid bursts of waking dreams." These are in the form of images.
Include flashes of the future, what you suspect or know to be coming at you. These are also in the form of images.
Boom. You hit the reader when they don't expect it. You strike to the heart. Your own heart has been struck. Your meaning is clear.
This is how you change hearts and souls and minds.
How Do You Slow Down a Scene?
By slowing yourself down.
By paying more attention.
By noting more details.
By checking in with your body.
By writing longer sentences.
By using Latinate words. (These are more poetic, flowing, mellifluous.)
By using longer words.
By reflecting.
By relying on elegance, meaning lyricism.
Update on Kickstarter
The Kickstarter (KS) right now has 405 backers who have pledged $18,764. Not having done a KS for this purpose before, I had no idea what to expect.
Three days are left in the campaign, counting today, so we’ll see how far this goes.
I’m still of two minds about KS as a book launcher.
On one hand, KS’s launch period acts as a splash that takes the place of the ways we would traditionally put a new book into the world. 2) Maybe KS expands the audience for the book. And 3) KS brings in a flush of cash at the beginning of the book’s life, and this money helps cover
designers.
apps needed (web hosting, Canva, BookFunnel, Zoom, etc.).
printing costs. (I had to go to the U.K. to get the special clothbound edition with a gold-embossed title and a ribbon. Shipping is not cheap.)
a video for KS, although that’s optional.
postcard printing + postage.
On the other hand, Kickstarter is still a retailer—it takes 5% of the total pledge amount plus another 5% goes to Stripe. My goal is to steer as clear of the big retailers as possible and to be as direct as I can be. I’m still not sure if KS brought people to me or if I brought people to KS. Plus most of the products KS launches put more crap in the world, which makes me unhappy.
I’m not sure, of course, if I will launch like this again. We’ll see.
If the KS gets to $20K, then $2 will go to KS itself. I’ll need about $8K to pay for the actual costs of shipping and printing books. That would leave me about $10K, which sounds like a lot, but you have to remember that I’ve worked 10-hour days 7 days a week for 3 months getting all the editions of the book ready to launch. It has been a lot. If I study on that, $10K is a pittance.
I have been a writer for 30 years. Now I’m a writer-entrepreneur. Somehow we’ve got to make this work. Or else I need to commercialize my kitchen and start selling pecan pies.
Tune in Tonight If You’re Free
You are invited to attend this month’s Rhizosphere webinar tonight, Tuesday, June 11 at 7 pm Eastern US/Canada. The topic is “9 Ways to Expand Your Audience.” I have a number of practical tips but also some general practices to think about.
I’ll do a short PowerPoint, leaving at least 1/2 hour for questions and dialogue. I’m hoping that we can collaborate and come up with even more ideas for building an audience for our work.
Join us if you can.
Here’s a Zoom link.
Topic: Business End of Writing: 9 Ways to Build Your Audience
Time: Jun 11, 2024 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89476121487?pwd=9JJJiL7a2RvdT1Haa13dFSIF8Vy2Qa.1
Meeting ID: 894 7612 1487
Passcode: 174956
So many great thoughts and tips about infusing our work with emotion. Thank you!
I think I’ll print this one and tack on my wall! Thank you! Is there a recording of the meeting?