The Cliché of Beauty

Novelist Lionel Shriver wrote an essay where she claimed that “fiction writers’ biggest mistake is to create so many characters who are casually beautiful.”

Well, now. Them’s fightin’ words.

Because you can't possibly be as attractive as the protagonist in the book I'm reading. Even though you have the distinct advantage of being real.

But before you start pointing to the few books where there is an overweight protagonist or a love interest with crooked teeth, understand that Shriver wasn’t really telling writers they ought to make all of their characters ugly. She merely pointed out that, in fiction, we don’t think it’s strange to be in a world populated with beautiful and handsome people in a much greater percentage than we would find in the real world.

Romance novels are almost inevitable offenders here, but other genres are not excused either. Most books we read are filled with good-looking people. Shriver puts forth a few reasons why this might be. First, our culture has told us that beautiful people are more likeable, and we accept that. Second, beauty is a form of power that characters can use to get others to do things for them.

I’d add a third reason: fiction is about escapism, and almost all of us have had times where we have not felt attractive. So we want our heroes and heroines to be attractive…and we actually have control over this.

Tips for Dealing with Distractions

When you're writing a first draft, a very important thing to do is tell the red pen inside your head to shut up. You do not need to be fixing typos at this point. That will slow you down, distract you. Did Frodo stop to sweep cobwebs out of Shelob’s lair on the way into Mordor? No. He knew his goal: get to Mount Doom.

Of course, there were also plenty of distractions that got poor Frodo distracted against his will. That’s the way life works sometimes. We can be as single-minded and determined as we like, but distractions will come up. Here are a few bits advice about how to deal with them.

• Good life rule: people are important. Especially people close to you, like your friends and family. Remember that guy in high school who ditched all his friends because he started dating his first girlfriend? Don’t be that guy with your novel. Be realistic in what you can accomplish without becoming an anti-social jerk.

• When people find out you’re writing a novel, they are going to ask you, “So, what’s it about?” I never have an answer for this one. Summaries, for me, come after I’m done. If you want to avoid answering this one 700 times, only tell a few people what you’re doing. That takes some of the pressure off anyway.

• Don’t beat yourself up if circumstances come up that make you put your writing on hold for a little while. A new baby, a move, a funeral, a summer full of activities and weddings and graduations…those things happen. If you can write a little bit even in busy times, that’s great. If not, just promise yourself you’ll go back to writing later…and actually follow through.

• It’s probably not a good idea to let someone read your novel before it’s done. The exception might be if you just want a yes or no answer to something like, “Is this interesting?” But, often, people want to give advice on how to improve. That’s a super important part of the editing process…but you’re not there yet.

• Writer’s block: This one cannot be shoved aside in just a sentence or two, because there are so many reason that writing might grind to a sudden halt. Lucky for you, I've already written a post about it. And another one. And I'll probably write several more in the future.

•  For many people, it helps to set aside a consistent time to write. Schedule it into your life. Maybe that’s unrealistic for you. But give it a try. And turn off your phone, for goodness sake. And social media. Checking Facebook every five minutes doesn't help with your word count.

•  Reward little victories. Celebrate every chapter, even if you don’t know how you could possibly write another one. With each sentence you type, you are getting closer to a goal that most people abandon somewhere before page five. 
   

Writing is hard work, and can be frustrating, time-consuming, and exhausting.

Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe writing should be…well…fun. When you loved to do something as a kid, you didn’t have to force yourself to do it. Writing can be like that. It won’t always be. But if you can get back to the place where it feels like snapping one Lego brick on top of another, slowly creating a more complex masterpiece, then do it.

Tune out the internal voices that say you’ll never be good enough for this. Don’t worry about what other people will think. It’s not the time for that, not yet, and maybe not ever.

Just write because you love it. Try things. Take a break from your novel and write something just for the fun of it. Re-read something that turned out just the way you wanted it to. Remember that you’re telling a story, and remind yourself why you want to tell it.

13 More Places to Get Ideas

(See last week's post for the original thirteen idea sources.)

Museum Staff: If you find someone working at a museum or history society or any kind of group that specializes in a particular area, ask them, “What’s something here that you think most people miss?” or “Why do you care about this particular subject?” or “Who is the most interesting person/piece featured here, in your opinion? Why?” In my experience, museum people are usually passionate and love the fact that you’re asking them something other than where to find the bathroom.

Notes on Posters: Look at notices on bulletin boards and see if anyone has penciled in a witty comment, corrected grammar, or otherwise marked up the content. One of my favorite examples of this was a “Muslim Beautique” ad pinned up on the bulletin board in the prayer room of a mosque. The clip art of a woman’s face was scribbled out, with “Pictures are not allowed in the prayer room” written beside it. In another handwriting, it said, “Images not intended to be worshipped are halel [acceptable].” There’s conflict here. There’s a story.

Olympic Sports: Or any kind of competition, really. Observe how the winners react, and how the losers do as well. Is the silver medalist disappointed, and if so, what does that mean? Think about what might motivate the athletes besides the obvious lure of winning. What would those motivations look like applied to other situations?

Pop Songs: Look up the lyrics for the current Top Ten songs and pretend—I know it’s a stretch, but stay with me—that the people involved in the song are really, really deep and interesting and someone just wrote out a simple version of their story and made it into a song. What plot might be going on between the lines?

Questions: Think about what would happen if you put a jar that said “Questions for God” in a hospital emergency room. Or a jar labeled “Questions for Rude Customers” in a diner. Or a jar with “Questions for My Parents” in an inner city junior high. If people could write anonymous questions in any of these situations, what would they ask?

13 Places to Get Ideas

Some days, you just don't feel very creative. And writers are notoriously bad at answering the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" so that's not very helpful. If you're in need of a new idea or want some fun story starters, here are a few places to look.

Advice Columns: Read a letter and the response, then think of what would happen if the person involved did the opposite of what they were told. Or read the response and try to figure out what the problem was. Imagine more details about the people involved. Put the letter in a different country or time period and think about how the advice would change.

Book Covers: Look at the cover of a book and cover up the title before reading it. Then invent a short description of what the plot might be based on the cover. Uncover the title and see if that adds another dimension to your plot or changes your original impression. Then compare the description on the back to the one you came up with.

Comic Strips: Find one of your favorites and ask the question, “What would need to happen to turn this strip into a tragedy instead of a comedy?” White out the speech in the bubbles and give it a try.

Discarded Paper: See the above book by Bill Keaggy. It contains his commentary on hundreds of abandoned grocery lists he collected from shopping carts. (My favorite contained the poignant line, “If you buy more rice, I’ll punch you.”) Give it a try—pick up a stray piece of paper you see at the store or on the street or tucked in a library book. See what you can learn about the person who threw it away. Make the rest up.

Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part Three

(Part Three in a three-part series about how to edit when you run into a major problem. Check out Parts One and Two.)

Three: “There are long sections of my novel where it feels like nothing is happening. But those chapters still have important information in them, so I kind of have to keep them.”

This has happened to me a lot, since I don’t usually outline before I start writing. Pace is a big reason to rewrite sections. The plot has to keep moving.

Before you do anything else, identify your “lullaby” sections. This is what I call the boring parts, the chapters readers would be tempted to skip if they were in a hurry to get to the end. Then try one (or more) of these ideas:

Add conflict. It’s fine to have chapters where there aren’t any explosions, shouting matches, or cave-ins. But it’s not acceptable to have a chapter without conflict. Easiest way to have conflict? Work with the characters you have. If you haven’t noticed in your interactions with others, people are experts at creating conflict. They have different goals, have the same goal but different ways of getting there, hate something the other likes, want to avoid confrontation, love confrontation, say things they don’t mean, refuse to say things they should have said a long time ago, and generally are excellent at adding tension to a scene. Also, people and their interactions—positive or negative—are extremely interesting to us. We are drawn toward dialogue because of that. Try putting a little conflict in to liven up scenes where not much is going on.

Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part Two

(Part Two in a series of tips about how to make major changes to your novel while editing. You can read Part One here.)

Two: “My beginning/ending is a letdown, and I don’t know what’s wrong.”

For some reason, the first and last thing we write tends not to be our best work. (Maybe you’re one of those people who write brilliant opening lines and climaxes in the very first draft. Congratulations. Also, I hate you.)

Honestly, with this one, there’s only one solution: try things. Open with a flashback from the narrator’s childhood. Open right in the middle of a scene when the readers don’t know what’s going on. Open with dialogue between the two main characters. Open with the perspective of the murderer. Open with anything but an alarm clock going off or a dream sequence (both clichés that have to be done really well to be original).

You know what I love about this picture? The fact that "Keep Calm" posters have become just as cliche as the story device listed on this one.

Try an ending that explains what happens to every single character, as well as one that leaves several subplots dangling. Try an ending right after the climax, and one that rambles gently through a scene of reconciliation and repair afterward. Try letting the narrator address the reader directly, try a final exchange between the main character and someone important in his or her life, try a graveside goodbye, a letter, an introspective assessment of what happened, a bystander’s observation on the whole affair. Try anything and everything, and go with what you like best.

(Note: this is not the same thing as "go with what your friend likes best"or "go with what feels safest" or even "go with what's marketable." It is also, however, not the same as, "go with what you like best even if several editors said it didn't work for them.")

Most of all, try an ending with hope. That doesn’t mean your last few pages have to be happy. Actually, if you like, nearly everyone on your cast list can be dead, but the reader has to feel that they died with purpose, or that tomorrow will be better, or that we learned something very important about people and life and love. As Anne Lamott advised writers in Bird by Bird: “In general…there’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.”

Not-So-Minor-Changes, Part One

Many writers don't enjoy micro-editing: the teeny tiny little changes and grammar rules that they have to follow to make their fiction flawless. It can get a little tedious, and there are always going to be a few things that slip by. Beyond proofreading, I've also written a post about small changes to strengthen your story, little things to add or take away or watch out for.

Sometimes, though, the alternative is even more daunting. It's the scenario every writer is secretly afraid of: what if, reading over your manuscript, you find something that takes more than just a fine-tuning or an inserted sentence? What if it looks like you'll have to get rid of whole chapters, rework an entire sub-plot, or even *gasp* start over?

First, panic. Go ahead. It’s totally natural. The rest of this post will be here when you’re done having an emotional meltdown.

Basically, red ink is scary. Even if you're editing yourself.

 

Okay, if you’re back and ready for some advice, I have some for you. Basically, making major changes requires a balance between two opposite-yet-still-true-statements.

True Thing 1: you may not need to change everything. Sometimes, there are ways to solve even seemingly unsolvable problems with the plot or structure of a novel. Don’t assume you’ll have to scrap the entire thing.

True Thing 2: Sometimes you may have to change everything. Or, at least, it will feel this way. You might need to get rid of a cherished character, cut out a plot twist you found particularly clever, or say goodbye to a chapter that was crammed full of your most heart-wrenching dialogue.

Do it anyway. Your story will be better for it. (I feel a little bit like a camp counselor telling the little rookie that getting poison ivy, eating mystery meat, and sleeping in the rain “builds character.” But it’s still true, anyway.) When you get so attached to a line or chapter or event in your story that you can’t bear the thought of changing it, then you’ve stopped caring about the story you want your readers to hear. Basically, you get to choose: will I put in the effort to make this the best story possible, or will I cheat my readers by ignoring this change that needs to be made?

Writer's Block: Strategies to Beat It

Maybe you had a very clear vision for the first few chapters of your novel, and you zipped through those, typing so fast that your fingers blurred on the keyboard. Or maybe you started with the ending, scrawling out a climax of epic proportions, and getting the characters exactly where they needed to be.

Problem is, what do you do with the rest of the story?

This is a difficulty that doesn’t just apply to the non-planners among us. Even faithful outliners may realize that they have a gap in their carefully-constructed plan that they don’t know what to do with, or that can’t be fixed by what they have as a placeholder right now.

When that happens, I say, go back to elementary school.

Before deciding that I am completely unqualified to be writing this blog post, hear me out. I know an elementary school teacher who explained to me once the methods she uses to engage students in reading. “We have them make predictions and connections,” she said. “Sometimes it even helps them to show events in a visual way.”

She spread out a series of charts and diagrams and organizational maps in front of her. Normally, I flee at the sight of anything that looks remotely structured. When I saw those charts, though, something in my brain clicked. These activities help kids because they take them outside of the narrative structure and help them see the big picture. What if the same thing would work for writers?

That said, here are some fourth grade tools adapted for use by the big kids.

Timeline: This is a popular get-to-know-you activity, along with a family tree, probably because they look good on bulletin boards. Both are also great for helping you understand your main character better—your protagonist’s family and the events of his or her life, even before the story starts, are going to have an incredible amount of impact on your story. Alternately, a timeline can be useful to plan the fictional history of a fantasy or science fiction world. Think about how much our nation’s past influences what matters to us now. It will be the same with your fictional world.

Venn Diagram: There may be other ways to use this, but the single most useful on for me has been a Venn Diagram answering the following question: “How is this story similar to and different from my own life?” Drawing those two overlapping circles has shown me that my protagonist is basically me in a different time period, helped me understand that I was working through my own sense of grief and loneliness in one story, and given me ideas for how I should change the setting of a fantasy so it reflects a different set of values than contemporary America. A self-aware writer is a better writer, and sometimes activities like this can help us connect things that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Flesch-Kincaid Levels for Writers

A while ago, I found a nifty website that uses an excerpt to determine reading level on a range called Flesch-Kincaid. This scale/formula uses syllable count and word length to give you a number that’s supposed to correspond to grade level.

After doing some copy-and-paste, I discovered that my last fantasy book came up with a level of 7, just about right for the target audience. This blog’s posts clock in around 10-12 (so if you're under age sixteen, this is too advanced for you--go away). My final Eastern World Religions paper on bacon in world religions was a 15, which probably makes it the most complex block of text written about bacon in the history of the world.

Except then I used Word’s Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics on the same documents. The book was a 4,  the blog averaged 6.5, and my paper was barely past high school standards, at 12.1. Another online Flesch-Kincaid calculator put those same excerpts out as 3.7, 9.1, and 13.6.

What is going on here?

Basically, I have no idea. There’s a set formula for the Flesch-Kincaid method. This one.

Probably the only time you will see a formula on this blog.

That means that both the website and Word should be putting out the same number. I can think of a few possibilities for the differences (treatment of proper nouns, difference in how they deal with syllable counts in unrecognized words. etc), but it still doesn't explain everything.

I realized after an Internet search that I had accidentally stumbled on a point of great contention. On official Flesch-Kincaid-using sites, some books line up very nicely. Black Beauty, for example, is a 4, and level 2 contained mostly short fables and fairy tales.

For others, usefulness is questionable. Sure, maybe a 6^th grader could read The Illiad according to sentence structure…but what twelve-year-old wants to? And would anyone want to explain to me how The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ended up with a level of 4 while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn jumped up to a 10? Either Twain dumped the entire contents of an SAT prep vocab list into Huck, or subject matter somehow comes into consideration. (The site never mentions this in their methodology explanation, so maybe I’m just crazy.)

Be Nice

In my time at college, I listened to probably a hundred chapel speakers and seminar lecturers and special guests of all kinds, all of whom seemed to have a book to sell afterward.

I only bought one: Andy Crouch’s Creating Culture. (It’s really good, by the way, and challenged me a lot as a Christian artist to rise above mediocrity.)

You know why I bought that one book? I enjoyed his topic, sure, and I liked the way he presented his information when he spoke (engaging speakers are often good writers). But what set this guy apart was something that happened over sandwiches.

A group of about twenty students were meeting in a small Q and A session after Mr. Crouch’s lecture on culture. “Let’s go around and say our names, major, and something interesting about us,” the host of the session said, “so Mr. Crouch has a chance to eat.”

He dutifully shoved down a Subway veggie offering while we all did a rapid-fire round of names and other information that we all pretend to care about but forget seconds later. Then we moved on to the real purpose of the session: picking this guy’s brain.

At one point, I asked a question of some kind—I don’t remember what it was, just that it was kind of impertinent and challenged one of the ideas Mr. Crouch had just raised. He nodded and wiped a bit of mayo off his mouth. “That’s a great question…Amy, wasn’t it?”

I nodded blankly. He actually answered the question after that, but I was just staring. He said my name. The guy got shoved into a group of two-dozen and he actually knew who I was! We all knew that the name thing was a stall tactic so he could actually eat lunch. No one expected him to be paying attention, least of all me.

And that’s the reason I bought his book. Because a guy who cares enough to remember my name (and can talk articulately and passionately about what monastic chants and African-American spirituals have in common) is worth reading.

Four Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Write Letters

Most people know I’m in a strange, old-fashioned category of people who still write letters. There is actually a line in my budget labeled, “Postage.” I buy stamps in bulk. One of my most frequent complaints is that the US Postal Service is supposed to persevere through any kind of weather, but will shut down for every single minor official holiday.

But I’ve seen the light.

That’s right, friends and blog readers. I have repented of my letter-writing ways. From now on, I will use only electronic communication (and then only when absolutely necessary). Here are a few good reasons to let the art of letter-writing die.

Sorry, summer pen pals. It's all over now. Thanks for writing, though.

Simplicity

I can fire off a Facebook message in seconds. And we all know that efficiency is the single best measurement of communication. Maybe the only measurement. If you send someone a letter, you have to grab paper and a pencil, get their address, form actual words with your own handwriting, and buy a stamp. An incredible waste of your time (not to mention the rising cost of postage). Also, with hand-written letters, there’s this general idea that you should put thought into what you’re saying instead of just reacting in as few characters as possible, Twitter-style. That has to go. In fact, I think all of our communication would be better if we got right the point and skipped any personal information and small talk. Because who are we trying to fool? No one cares, and we’re wasting their precious time.

Writers (Disagreeing) on Writing

I love reading quotes on writing by writers. They’re not only experts on the subject matter, but they also tend to express things well.

Sometimes, though, they are just so very sure of themselves, able to make sweeping generalizations about everyone everywhere who adopts the title of “writer.” And often, there’s another writer who thinks the exact opposite. Here are a few contradictory bits of advice I’ve found recently.

On How Much You Should Enjoy Writing:

“Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth... But amusing? Never.”

— Edna Ferber

“Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all…I never feel as good as while writing.”

― Ernest Hemingway

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

― George Orwell

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

— Brenda Ueland

Four Annoying Things About the Internet

You may have come to this post looking for a rant.

But you won’t find it here. Oh no.

You see, anyone can complain about the Internet. But not everyone can turn obnoxious uses of social media into something entertaining and educational. And that’s what I have for you today.

Here are four annoying things about the Internet, with suggestions for what to do about them other than complain. Because otherwise I would have had to list a fifth item to the list: “People Who Use Technology to Complain About Technology.” And that would be so many layers of irony that it would be like an irony lasagna.

One: Wrongly Attributed Quotes

I’m pretty sure that, according to the Internet, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and C.S. Lewis said everything deep, funny, or Christian (respectively) that has ever been said. We have an entire library’s worth of encyclopedia information at our fingertips, and somehow it’s still too much bother to look up whether that meme has cited its source correctly.

Instead of being frustrating, though, this should be inspiring. If anyone can be witty or profound just by attaching their name to a witty or profound bootlegged quote, why not you? Or just become the kind of person other people attribute quotes to at random. Elementary, my dear Watson. (Which, incidentally, Doyle’s Sherlock never said.­)

Two: Bad Spelling and Grammar

Blame autocorrect, blame instant sending of messages when you hit the enter key, blame that fact that spellcheck highlights every proper noun in existence so people start ignoring it. Blame whatever you want.

Or, instead of blaming people, you could make a delightful grammar guide like this one.

Also, you can screenshot all of the mistakes and put them together in a funny coffee table book.

And rejoice that you will get better scores in Scrabble or Words With Friends than any of these people. Unless by making a spelling mistake they actually spell another word you didn’t know about…

Any of those reactions are better than being “that guy” who constantly corrects people’s grammar, on the Internet and in real life. If your friend is about to make a mistake in a research paper or a tattoo, tell him. If it’s a Facebook status, let it go.

Because as soon as you become “that guy,” you are no longer entitled to make any grammar or spelling mistakes. Ever. And that’s just too much pressure.

To the (Non) Stereotypical Teachers

I was reading Linchpin, a book by Seth Godin, blogger extraordinaire, and came across this paragraph: “Hand in a paper with perfect grammar but no heart and soul, and you’re sure to get an A from the stereotypical teacher. That’s because this teacher was trained to grade you on your ability to fit in….And that’s how school stamps out (as opposed to bakes in) creativity.”

Right then, I stopped reading, because I realized something very important: that was not my story.

I am a creative person. Always have been. Eight-year-old bowl-cut Amy, an enthusiastic little dweeb who wore brightly patterned shirts and a perpetual smile, decided one day that she wanted to be a writer. And people told her she could be.

Also, I was fascinated by everything. This is totally not posed.

One example in particular comes in mind, one that goes against Godin’s entire chapter about how our education system is designed to repress creativity. I got an A on a high school history essay once. But it wasn’t an essay. It was a one-act play about the life of Louis XIV. My teacher, Mr. Gilmer, had me read parts of it out loud to the class.

At the time, I didn’t even know how to read the Roman numeral in Louis’s name out loud without looking at a clock (it’s the fourteenth, just for the record). But I did know that having people fight over roles in your academic paper was pretty cool.

Generic vs. Name Brand Products...and Writing

I didn’t learn an awful lot in my high school economics class. (Case in point: at the beginning of the recession panic, I raised my hand and asked my teacher to explain what would probably happen with the national debt over the next ten years. She said it was too complicated and not to worry about it.) Mostly, we were told to not go into credit card debt. So far, I’m doing pretty good on that one.

But there is one lesson that has still stuck with me. Even though it wasn’t the lesson I was supposed to be learning.

One day, our teacher brought in a sack of food and asked for volunteers for a demonstration. Food + high school students = an unlimited number of volunteers. One lucky participant was chosen and blindfolded. Then he was given two cookies, one generic and one Oreo brand. And so on, with products like orange juice, crackers, and fruit snacks. Each time, the student was supposed to raise his right or left hand to guess which product he thought was the brand name one.

He guessed right about 50% of the time. And even then, he admitted, “I’m just picking one. They taste exactly the same.”

Granted, this lesson on the relative unimportance of brand names might have been lost on the saggy-pants volunteer wearing a shirt proudly emblazoned with Abercrombie and Fitch, upping the cost about 400%, but the point was supposed to be clear: you don’t have to pay more for a quality product.

I say “supposed to be clear” because I learned a different lesson: you can charge more for a product if you market it well.

How Many Crazy Writer Tendencies Do You Have?

I realized I hadn’t had a quiz on here for a long time. And, since crazy people, by definition, don’t know that they’re crazy, I thought this handy guide might be helpful. Enjoy. And let me know what your level of insanity is.

Say you were alone at a cabin in the mountains, well-stocked with supplies, in November, probably hunting a turkey for your family’s Thanksgiving dinner. If a freak avalanche trapped you there for the winter, how long would it take you to go stir-crazy?

1. Probably about a week, if that. I couldn’t handle not being around people. 
2. Around Christmas I’d get a little lonely, but I could keep myself busy and stick it out the whole winter without going completely insane.
3. Are you kidding me? I’ve waited my whole life for an opportunity like this! Think of all the writing I could get done!
4. Wait, why was I hunting a turkey when I can buy one at the grocery store? This question doesn’t even make sense.

How heated is your opinion on the Oxford comma?

1. That’s a kind of punctuation, right? I think I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really care.
2. I mean, I can see both points of view, although I could argue one side over the other. Really, just follow the rules of whatever publication you’re writing for.
3. Oh my goodness, don’t even start. I have had five heated debates about this in the past year. Friendships were ended. It was bad.
4. Oxford…that’s in England, right? I like England.

Why the Communist Versions of Monopoly Failed

You’ve probably heard about how the USSR banned Monopoly during the Cold War. But have you heard about what they did to replace it?

According to a Mental Floss article, “Soviet leaders even tried coming up with their own Marxist-themed spin-off games designed to highlight the virtues of frugality. The title of one such knockoff from Communist-era Hungary loosely translated to ‘Save,’ while another in Russia had a name that roughly meant ‘Manage.’”

What, never heard of these? Why on earth did these communist reboots of Monopoly not immediately take off?

Because they were trying to create culture in a purely reactionary way.

There was a cultural movement out there (capitalism) that was being encouraged by a wildly popular bit of creative property (the game Monopoly). If we’re communists, inherently opposed to capitalism, we’ve got to make our own bit of creative property to combat the one from the other side, because otherwise our people are going to be sneaking around covertly buying up Boardwalk and Park Place into the wee hours of the night. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Don’t even try to say that it’s “just a board game,” and that it doesn’t affect how people think. By entering into a game where you are a greedy landlord trying to get rich at others’ expense, you are accepting that philosophy, even if it’s in a small way. We create culture, and then it creates us.

The problem is, if the culture we create is weak and poorly designed—the Hungarian game “Save” sounds pretty compelling, doesn’t it?—people will reject it, no matter how careful we’ve been to infuse it with the right values.

Okay, let’s stop pretending we’re communist board game developers for a minute. (What? You were never pretending? Oh, come on, where’s your imagination?)

Instead, let’s talk about Christian fiction. Or Christian music. Or Christian art in general—or any area where “Christian” is used as an adjective. And let’s ask the question: are we simply reacting to the culture around us?

Why "Validation" Works

In a scriptwriting class I audited, we watched this short film, a delightful comedy that everyone seemed to love.

The question is, why? Really, there are a lot of clichés that we should have been booing halfway through the film. But we didn’t. Watch it for yourself if you haven’t already. Then, here are the reasons I think “Validation” shouldn’t work, and why it does anyway.

Super Cheerful Protagonist: If the movie had ended halfway through, I probably would have punched our enthusiastic parking attendant in the face. Because while his compliments might have been nice, they didn’t feel sincere at all. I was almost grateful when someone finally rejected him, because a little suffering made him seem more like a real person. The change that he goes through during the film makes him into a better, more relatable character by the end, and it was that change that justified his too-happy persona at the beginning of the film.

Puns: Generally, people hate puns. The very title of this film is a pun for the main plot device. Which is probably why it works—it’s the premise, one that we are told to buy into from the very beginning. Characters who make dumb puns as punchlines usually aren’t compelling. A pun as a concept that supports other humorous elements? That can work.

You Know How This Is Going To End: Was there ever any chance he wouldn’t get the girl? Of course not. But we all wanted him to, so it was okay that the plot wasn’t super complex with a dramatic twist ending.

General Corniness: Yes, there are so many things about this short film that are completely corny. But you can tell from the set-up that the writer knew it was corny…and did it anyway. The song-and-dance number, the melodramatic lovestruck-ness of the protagonist (with accompanying facial expressions), the clips of celebrities, and the ridiculously stoic love interest are all telling the audience “We are not taking this seriously. And neither should you. Just enjoy it.”

We like change, character growth, fulfilled dreams, and happily-ever-after-endings. “Validation” does all of those things, and it does them well. So despite not wanting to like this short film at first…I loved it.

And I smiled at the end. So sue me.