Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

So far we’ve talked (and written) twice about character misbeliefs. Then we took a baby break because we’re like that, but we’re back on it now, my friends.

Those earlier posts are linked below.

First off to recap, the big lie or character misbelief in your story is what motivates them or causes them to act in a certain way. If your character grows in a positive way, during the story, they usually realize by the end that the lie was a big ole lie and not a glorious simple truth and voila—life is better.

Your lie has to move the plot forward and it has to relate to your story’s theme.

According to LitCharts, theme is just “a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature.”

So a character lie is something like “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT” because your character believes this with all their mighty heart. The theme might be love is more powerful than might. Often, the theme disproves the lie, right?

Cool.

Now, when you’re building characters for your novel and building the plot around them, you want to use that theme and that lie to make your story resonate, to make your readers or audience feel for the characters involved and root for them to stop lying to themselves and get some wisdom (in the form of the story’s theme).

So basically, you find the theme and the opposite (kind of tweaked) is usually the character’s misbelief.

So, here’s how it goes, step by step for those of you who like steps:

Cool, right?

Every once in awhile reassess the things you believe about yourself and the world. Are they really true? Why do you even believe them?

What’s the theme of your life? It sounds like we’ve had some Mary Jane, but seriously, as Kira Newman at the Greater Good asks,

“If your life were a movie, where would the plot be headed right now?

“You may not be immortalized in film anytime soon, but your life is still a story. According to psychologists, we all have an internalized narrative that explains how we became the person we are today and where we are headed tomorrow. Like any Hollywood blockbuster, this narrative has settings, scenes, a plot, characters, and themes.”

A lot of books are flat not because they aren’t clever or the plot doesn’t have cool things. They are flat because the characters are. The characters are often flat because there’s no big lie that’s part of their motivation.

“The Awakenings Review is an award-winning literary magazine committed to publishing poetry, short stories, nonfiction, and photography by writers, poets, and artists who write from experience with mental illness: either in themselves, family members, or friends. Located in the Chicago area but international in scope, our print publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. By its nature, mental illness is a troubling, distressing, and painful experience. At The Awakenings Review we love to get works of renewal and healing, a positive outcome to your suffering and distress. We are currently accepting submissions for our Spring 2024 issue. Please read our submission guidelines at www.AwakeningsProject.org.”

Over on the Reedsy blog, there is a post about finding your novel’s theme. You can read it in full over there, but we’re going to encapsulate it here:

Write Better NowNeither of Us are Lookers, Seventh Grade Insults and Character Misbeliefs

Carrie Jones

·

Sep 28

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Write Better NowYOUR BIG LIE OR CHARACTER’S MISBELIEF

Carrie Jones

·

Sep 21

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.

Read full story

Poop there it is

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

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Living Happy and Write Better Now! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s a romance brawl. Not really. But it’s a bit of one. And it comes down to this:

Does a romance have to have Happily Ever After or Happy For Now to be a romance?

Does there need to be a positive, happy ending in order for a book to be a romance?

Let’s talk about it.

Unspoken agreement with the reader

If your story isn’t happily ever after, it may be a love story, but it might be hard to market as a romance.

A goal of happy for now? It’s a damn good goal. Squirrels move. Mailmen come and go. The treat jar might diminish, but making the goal a for now goal? That helps keep it in balance.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

https://writingcooperative.com/hea-vs-hfn-aea4ad42f7c5

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.

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:

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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.”

Pogie’s big lie is that she’s a super toughie. She is not. Do you have this lie?

Think about your character’s lie. What is it that they wrongly believe?

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

It's a weird, wild, not PC live ride into strange storm things as we wait for Hurricane Lee. I tried to keep this podcast on track. I failed.

https://www.factretriever.com/hurricane-facts

https://bestlifeonline.com/storm-facts/

http://www.theworldgeography.com/2011/04/top-8-weirdest-natural-disasters.html

https://news.yahoo.com/7-weird-weather-phenomena-around-200000567.html

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.

www.luckyboysconfusion.Net or www.Facebook.com/mrmsandtheinfusions 

Thanks for hanging out with us! And remember, don’t be afraid to let your strange out.

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."

Hoarding all your toys on the couch isn't the best idea.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201810/why-people-ignore-facts

https://apnews.com/article/ig-nobels-prize-2023-3f34e020cfb9154c240dfef7c076f177

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

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."

Hoarding all your toys on the couch isn't the best idea.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201810/why-people-ignore-facts

https://apnews.com/article/ig-nobels-prize-2023-3f34e020cfb9154c240dfef7c076f177

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

Chuck Wendig has a piece on his blog, Terrible Minds, called "Series vs Standalone: Cage Match," which shows that Wendig is great at blog headlines and marketing.

But his riff on a BlueSky conversation between a lot of writer elite. And it’s why he’s writing standalones mostly from now on instead of a series.

Quickly, his reasons are:

That’s a lot, right? But it made me think about the state of publishing and the state of living. Do we want to be a group of series or standalones? Do we want our life to be part of a bigger connective something or inclusive in itself.  

Connections can be okay. - Pogie the Pup

The ones above and also . . .

https://news.yahoo.com/homeowner-mystified-strange-cheese-puff-093000484.html

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

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!

A poem for Monday!

This week we tried to take a deep dive into the strange, but basically just told four stories. God only knows what went wrong, honestly.

LINKS WE MENTION:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/