Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4036 - Use Skinner's Law to Overcome Feeling Unmotivated
Before I start, I should mention that today is day 3900 since Mom died. I mark these occasions with at least a short reflection, and just 100 days from day 4000, which seems more significant. If for no other reason, I keep this count just to see the number get bigger and marvel at its size. It just feels wrong.
I am really battling to start things, to be productive, especially with things that I am resisting for one reason or another.
This battle does not mean that I am not productive. I am not idle. I am meeting deadlines and working through the things I need to work through.
But the motivation is not always there. In fact, with the school assignment that was due back on Wednesday, I had a real mental block to it. I just didn't want to do it. PROFOUNDLY. Like existential crisis, deep-seated unwillingness to do it.
This article stood out to me given my recent struggles.
However, I am not fully in favor of it, even though I am sharing it.
I am all for rewards for getting things done. I do reward myself. I will put off a thing I want to do, eat, experience, and reward myself with it when I finish the thing that I am resisting finishing.
Punishment? I am less interested in punishing myself for not doing something, like in the example below wagering that someone can have your Playstation if you fail to lose weight. For one thing, I don't have a Playstation. For another, I would never make such a wager.
Missing deadlines often come with their own form of punishment. For instance, in my class, I would lose 10% for being one day late. That's a punishment. And I even considered not submitting the assignment on time and taking that grade hit just because of how very much I did not want to do it. After all, the assignment was worth only 10 points in a class of 300 points total with the A set at 89.5% and above. In other words, I need at least 255 of those 300 points to earn an A. Obviously, there's lots of points left to earn. Sure, 10% of 10 points is only a single point, so that would not have been a significant grade hit.
Still, I did the assignment and submitted on time. I often find the motivation as the deadline approaches. This is why I posted three blog entries yesterday: Tuesday 3/3 - Thursday 3/5. I had put off working on my blog while I suffered the angst of not wanting to do what was actually not a difficult assignment. I also did not write any fiction for two days. Then, once finished, I did both things yesterday, completing three blog posts and writing fiction on my novel project.
Today, I have other work that needs doing, though nothing due today. I am stalling but I do not feel as unmotivated as I did earlier in the week. Probably the sense of achievement in finishing the assignment that I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO DO has fueled my fires at least somewhat. I feel more motivated. Not REALLY motivated, but better. Not as bad.
I am working around to a point. I promise.
Here it is.
This Skinner's Law stuff may work for you, and it may not.
As I think about how I am going to practice in the mental health space, how I am going to listen and respond to clients, I am very hesitant to apply a "one tool fits all" approach.
My own case demonstrates that finding motivation and overcoming resistance is a very individual thing. What worked for me may not work for others. For me, there was no magic trick. The thing was due Wednesday, so I did nothing else Wednesday but sit down and hammer away at the thing with increasing frustration (as I shared in yesterday's blog).
For others, the threat of having to give up one's expensive video game machine may have been the thing to spark the motivation.
Reverse today as I will dive into the assignments due Sunday later on after blogging, emailing, and writing.
It's all about selfcare. Doing what's needed to protect your mental health while also doing what needs to be done in life.
I am now living by the line that ENO said in the ENO movie (Tuesday's post):
We all OVER ESTIMATE what we can do in a day and UNDER ESTIMATE what we can do in ten years.
I have lived my whole life battling the tendency to OVER ESTIMATE what I can do in a day.
These days, at the end of the day, I often review just what I did, especially when beating myself up over the six things I didn't get done.
Some days are more productive than others, and one must make peace with that.
But even days with lower productivity than others days had productivity, and often, one accomplished more things than one realized because of the pain of not doing a bunch of other things.
Review the day. Feel pride in what you got done. Give yourself grace to do better if you really needed to get some things done and didn't. What changes can you make to be more productive the next day?
That's why GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) is a great model for being productive by sorting tasks into those that need to be done with others in short and long term goal lists.
And some things can be done right away of they will only take a minute or two. This is how task switching comes into play. For instance, I just took a few minutes to answer an email while writing this blog entry. And then I felt a sense of accomplishment.
In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham built his philosophy on the idea that humans are motivated by pain and pleasure, and this idea is supported by many social sciences today.
A concept called “Skinner’s Law,” named after the American behaviorist B. F. Skinner, suggests that we can manipulate our motivation by making the pain of not doing a task greater than the pain of doing it — or making the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.
In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham built his philosophy on the idea that humans are motivated by pain and pleasure, and this idea is supported by many social sciences today.
A concept called “Skinner’s Law,” named after the American behaviorist B. F. Skinner, suggests that we can manipulate our motivation by making the pain of not doing a task greater than the pain of doing it — or making the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.
“Commitment devices,” such as setting up rewards or punishments for completing or not completing a task, can help us self-motivate and increase our chances of success.
In 1780, hunched over a table at his home in London, Jeremy Bentham wrote the first lines of the first chapter of one of his most famous works. It read, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”
The British philosopher built an entire philosophy around this idea — that we are all motivated by pleasure and pain. Lucky for him, then, that almost all of the social sciences today agree with him. We are a hedonistic, happiness-seeking species who fear the pain-inflicting monsters of the world. Under all the pretense and bravado, we can be reduced to the simple push-and-pull mechanisms of the carrot and stick. After we get over the humbling and demoralizing simplicity of this, we can learn a few valuable lessons. We can game our own mechanisms and manipulate our Benthamite sovereigns. We can do anything. It’s all to do with something the writer George Mack called “Skinner’s Law.”
According to Mack, Skinner’s Law is that when you are procrastinating or finding a task hard to get on with, you have two choices: either “make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it” or “make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.” Since we know that we are only motivated by two things, we can use our higher, rational faculties to work that fact to our advantage. Skinner’s Law is named after B. F. Skinner, the American behaviorist who developed the idea of operant conditioning with his experiments on rats and pigeons. Skinner’s main argument was that human beings can, just as rats can, be conditioned to behave a certain way when given the correct pain-pleasure incentives.
The trick, then, is to set yourself pleasure rewards or pain punishments for doing (or not doing) a certain task. Essentially, there are two ways to motivate yourself: intrinsically or extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is when you want to do something out of some inherent drive or desire. You might just want to eat pizza. Extrinsic motivation, though, is when you do something for some further benefit or reward (or to avoid a punishment). So, I don’t eat my pizza because I want to be trim for my beach holiday. The genius behind Skinner’s Law is that it turns our most powerful intrinsic motivator (pleasure) into an extrinsic reward.
Milkman told Big Think that these kinds of techniques are called commitment devices in the behavioral psychology literature. “It’s a tool for a person to self-motivate,” Milkman said. “It’s something where you opt in to creating an extrinsic reward system.” She described a study involving smokers trying to quit. There are two groups, each given the same “standard smoking cessation products,” but one group is also told “they will lose the money if they fail a nicotine urine test in six months. What they found was that it increases quit rates by about 30%.”
The strongest master
We know, then, that if we want to succeed in any task, we need to set compelling commitment devices to keep us on track or to raise the stakes. The next question is: How can we make the best kind of commitment device? Is it better to promise yourself pleasure or to threaten yourself with pain?
It turns out that pain is by far the stronger motivator. As Milkman told Big Think, “So [Daniel] Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize for a theory called ‘Prospect Theory’. He and Amos [Tversky] showed that we find pain more motivating than equivalent pleasure. For example, if you lose $20, you’re more upset, and then if you find $20, you are happy. The pain outweighs the pleasure.”
Using all of this and Milkman’s advice, here are three practical bits of advice:
Make a wager: Find a friend or a family member, and bet them some sum of money or some item you value that you will do a certain thing. “Okay, Dad,” you might say, “if I’m not 5 pounds lighter by my birthday, you can have my PlayStation 5.” Ideally, place the “wager” in some kind of intermediary location so you can’t back out of the deal if you lose. Commitment devices only work if you can’t slip out of them.
Social accountability: Tell everyone you’re trying to do something. Tell them your target and your deadline. Keep people updated about your progress. This serves two purposes: to present the carrot and the stick. The carrot is that you get praise, support, and advice from your closest relatives. The stick is that you might be embarrassed or ashamed if you fail.
Avoid boredom: It’s easy to assume that boredom is some middle, neutral state somewhere between pleasure and pain—it’s just absence. But not according to Milkman. As she put it, “There is research to show a fundamental dislike of boredom. It causes us pain to be bored. In 2016, one study showed that when presented with a long, monotonous, and tedious film fragment, people would rather shock themselves than be bored. So, as a general rule, try to keep yourself busy. The devil makes work for idle hands; bored people do silly things.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.06 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3900 days ago & DAD = 554 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4035 - Letter to Dad #25 - ANGST
Hi Dad, Once again, I am postponing a planned entry because I need to do more work on it.
For today's. I just wanted to vent as I am taking off the morning to do whatever I feel like doing.
But first, I went into the boxes of photos I shipped from Michigan back in 2024 when Ivan got married and have not gone through yet.
Right near the top was an envelope of photos printed in June of 1982, and I assume they were taken around that time.
There's more photos in the envelope, but I only canned two of you, Dad.
In 1982, you are 47, or 46 if these were taken before your birthday. I am 20, Lori is 12 (not yet 13), and Mom is 45 (not yet 46). This is the year we adopted Mittens. It is also the year I had some ... legal trouble, which is all that I will say about that.
I have no idea what is going on in these photos. I went to your little black books, but you DID NOT WRITE DOWN what you did here, unless it's from LONG before June of 1982. There's no clues in the pictures as to what this all is. It makes me wish I had sat down with you and Mom before you died and talked about these things. But then, we always think we will have time to do those things, don't we?
Anyway, some pageant that my sister remembered was from when the church turned 150. I believe the drape on the pulpit is for Pentecost, which is in June but unless I missed it, you didn't note what you're doing in your book.
Lori thinks you are being John Knox in these photos.
Anyway, that's the photos. Not my planned topic.
I just wanted to recap the last week.
I watched the Eno movie, as I wrote about on Tuesday.
I have done some cooking. Some cleaning.
Sunday’s blog shared a bunch of romance comics from the 1940s and 1950s, which I know Mom read a lot of. There were ads for “pen pals wanted.” I wonder if this is how she got her pen pal? I am pretty sure that the one down in Wales came from the first one in Preston, but I am not sure of that either.
Again, questions I should have asked before either of you passed away.
Had great tacos Friday and then went to the wildlife refuge. So filled with joy and serenity connecting with nature that I started to cry. So peaceful. You are not allowed to get out of your car except in two parking areas. I had planned to take you there, Dad, but I don’t think we did.
Yes, Michigan loss to Duke, and that sucks. I HATE DUKE. I think that Michigan will go all the way even so. I figured I needed to start following women’s sports if I am going to call myself a feminist. I mean, really. BUT hey!! The Pistons have the best record in the NBA and just last night exceeded their win total from last year with 20 some games to go (45 wins). They are so good!
I have to be better about not eating moldy things. Some moldy jam may be why I was sick a while back.
Yeah, Ellory does not like me to see her poop, which I just figured out, so this may be why she almost never poops on a walk. She is having diarrhea again, bad. BUT they forgot her B12 shot when we were there last week for tons of vaccines, so that may be why. I decided to break her diet yesterday. Since she was having diarrhea anyway, why not give her a favorite as she misses her old food. Worst thing would be her getting me up in the night to go out, which she did. But early so not too bad. It sucks when it’s too close to wake up time.
We had Satchel’s anal glands expressed last week and she is still scooting!! I don’t get it.
In other news, I ordered a book from the UK back In November that is not available in the US. Paul Weller oral bio. Turns out I ordered from Galway, Ireland. Two copies were lost in the mail. I corresponded with very nice people and eventually paid extra for shipping with tracking and my post office almost returned it as we took the PO Box off the address because it was supposed to be shipped directly to my house. Thankfully they did not send it back and I now have it. The audio version is also only available in the UK unless I want to buy it from Apple.
ANGST
So I had this assignment, and it was causing me SERIOUS EXISTENTIAL ANGST, and it really should not have caused such pain. It was easy.
For Psychopharmacology, I had to create at least one visual aid and then use it in a video explaining pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. Maybe I will make a post sharing these later.
I just didn't want to do it. I hate making videos. But I can do that. I have lots of experience. But the visuals were giving me angst.
I tried using AI to give me ideas that I could remake myself and that was very little help.
When I finally got a visual for the ADME process (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Excretion), but I could NOT figure out how to edit it and add descriptions. Even Google searching instructions for DESIGNER did not seem to help.
EVENTUALLY, I figured it out. Made a second visual for pharmacodynamics and added them all into a power point with a few others. Then after studying my notes and doing some dry runs, I made the video, which had to be three-five minutes. Because I had practiced, I was reasonably happy with my first take recording and posted it all in time to walk the dogs, cook dinner, and vacuum.
But this assignment caused me SO MUCH ANGST.
Ultimately, I decided that even if it's not my best work, even if I could do better, it's an assignment worth only 10 points in a class that totals 300 points. So even if I got a zero (and I won't), 10 points is like 3.33%? (30 pts is 10%, right?).
I have to stop being a perfectionist. I do not need 100% on all assignments for an A in the class. In fact, I only need 89.5% or higher for an A, though I usually stay well above that lower limit.
I think I am experiencing burnout, which is silly as I am hardly overloaded right now. But I am nearing the end, and so my drive is faltering a little.
I am also waiting to hear on my field experience, which is making me nervous, among several things that are making me nervous.
Writing to you, Dad, is almost as good as talking to you. I relied on talking to you and Mom so much for most of my life. I really miss both of you, especially at times like this when I need your love and understanding.
Talk to you more, next week, Dad, when MAYBE I finally finish the post about seeing David Bowie live and your role in it.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.05 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3899 days ago & DAD = 553 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
I include an article from that blog below and some extra links as well.
And it's a current project, not a defunct blog that exists on the Internet but has had no new posts in many years. (I have two of those, also, though, so can't be too harsh).
I was drawn to Brianna's video and then the mythcreants article because my current cyberpunk-sword-and-sorcery project uses multiple point of views.
Of course, like many, I was inspired by the scope and complexity of Game of Thrones and the multiple ongoing story lines. I spent time studying this model. Which ones engaged me the most? (Tyrion and Arya). Which ones engaged me the least? (Bran and Sansa).
But the link below argues that Game of Thrones might have been better without so many POVs. And maybe ALL THE POVs has something to do with why it has been FIFTEEN YEARS since Dance With Dragons came out.
One strong element of Game of Thrones is that at the start of the first book, nearly all the most significant POV characters are together; all the Starks and Lannisters are at Winterfell. Only Daenerys Targaryen is not present along with some minor POV characters like the Onion Knight (Davos Seaworth), Samwell Tarley, and others. But only Daenerys appears in that first book. All the others are POV characters in later books.
In any case, when I returned to my book which at the moment is called Cyberspell but that is likely the name of the series if I am allowed to have a series, if I even ever publish this book, I just focused on the primary main character: Thomar. I was considering dumping the planned POVs or severely limiting them.
As I wrote, I saw the ways that different story elements could and should fit together. This resulted in the first added POV character not being one in my original plan -- Thomar's sister Ayla -- but she is a key character and one I had originally as a POV character. And then I flipped it, creating a new character to see and encounter Ayla, which at the moment is a one-off, but I am not sure if it will stay that way.
That led to something I had resisted in writing going back to my first unpublished book -- a one off. Having a character that is only a POV character one time seemed cheap to me. However, V.E. Schwab used this technique well in her DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC series. And since I look to make things fit, the one-off I added that allows the reader to see someone observe Thomar early in the book will now not be a one-off. Though I may not return to him as a POV character, he is not off the map. And the character who sees Ayla, the other one-off, may become a POV, but she's (Salu) not off the map either.
Once I started adding POV, I returned somewhat to my original plan for other characters, though so far I have only written one of those with plans for a second and the others on hold.
In my original draft of the book (unfinished), I had planned NINE POV characters but I had not written them all yet. I felt justified in this number as the first three books of the Songs of Fire And Ice varied from eight to ten POV characters, not counting one-offs.
FOR SURE, nine is too many. Right now, I have just three with possible two more additions.
However, some of the CRITICISMS of multiple POV are not things I am doing, such as having multiple stories in one book for little reason.
My plan all along is that the POV characters and their stories, though separate at first, come together. They are all part of the same story. The POV divisions are necessary, especially when they are apart, though the question is whether or not they will be when the characters are together.
But obviously, I have a lot more to think about.
When it comes to Brianna's video, as always, her videos are validating as I am not doing the things she identifies as "mistakes."
Here's her list:
Mistake #1 - Head-hopping within scenes
Mistake #2 - Too Many POV characters
Mistake #3 - Undeveloped POV characters
Mistake #4 - Weak POV transitions
Mistake #5 - Head-Hopping Within Scenes - examples
Mistake #6 - Adding POV Characters for convenience
Here's her solutions:
I feel like my original plans were too many POV characters, so I am limiting that number.
I have strategic plans. Characters have distinct voices and their own arcs. I have very clear transitions between the characters (each in their own chapter), which maintains switch rules.
But the last, which is POV for convenience, is an issue only if I do not make good use of the two one-offs I have created, and I think I am already making good use of those.
One thing in the mythcreant article that's not in Brianna's list is considering villain POVs, which mythcreants claim rarely work. I had considered a villain POV for my book, but I had not started down that path yet for all the reasons listed in that article, which is linked from the mythcreant text below.
I like that my choices get validated.
Going through all this advice is part of "questioning habits" that I wrote about in this blog post, yesterday:
Level up your third-person multiple book and stop making these common mistakes that confuse readers and weaken your story. I’ll break down the 6 most common errors new writers make when juggling multiple perspectives, including head-hopping, adding unnecessary POV characters, weak transitions, and creating indistinguishable character voices.
I'll show you how to create distinct character voices, plan your POV characters strategically, and transition smoothly between perspectives. Whether you're writing fantasy, romance, sci-fi, thriller, or any genre with multiple main characters, these techniques will help you write stories that keep readers hooked from start to finish.
👉 Write your best novel yet with my cheap, digital & printer-friendly writing workbooks: https://plannerpaletteco.etsy.com
📲 FOLLOW MY SOCIALS:
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
What is Third-Person Multiple POV?
Mistake #1 - Head-hopping within scenes
Mistake #2 - Too Many POV characters
Mistake #3 - Undeveloped POV characters
Mistake #4 - Weak POV transitions
Mistake #5 - Head-Hopping Within Scenes - examples
Mistake #6 - Adding POV Characters for convenience
Great Book Examples
Tips for Success
Music track: 2 am by Lofiru
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When I started Mythcreants, I had an axe to grind: for years the epic fantasy stories I loved had forced me to wade through belabored chapters that bored me to tears. I just wanted to see my precious farmboy be crowned king – why did I first have to hear about how some random elf plays elf chess?
I expressed my beef with multiple viewpoints in an article shortly after the site launched in 2013. But this criticism made me an outlier on the site and elsewhere; I even debated Oren about it on an early podcast episode. Then over the next five years, something strange happened. Oren decided I was right: multiple points of view are the bane of novels everywhere. After that, it became the official Mythcreants position.
While my original article (PDF) held up surprisingly well for newbie axe-grinding, our readers deserve an updated explanation for why we’re so cranky about a writing practice that’s considered normal. So, let’s go over the problems that multiple viewpoints cause and when they actually work.
How Multiple POVs Work in Theory
I’ve never insisted that multiple viewpoints have no use. Like other choices about narrative style and perspective, they are a valuable tool in the right situation.
In theory, using multiple viewpoints allows writers to benefit from the immersion of close limited narration without giving up the opportunity to narrate the thoughts of side characters. By including a character’s viewpoint, writers can help their audience get to know that character more intimately and understand where they’re coming from.
A great example of this in practice is Steven King’s The Shining. In it, a family of three – Wendy, Jack, and Danny – are isolated for the winter in a haunted hotel. Jack has a history of heavy drinking and violence, which almost caused Wendy to leave him previously. As the hotel works its evil magic, Jack’s troubling behaviors reemerge.
King could easily have told this story with one viewpoint. However, he clearly wanted his audience to root not only for Wendy and Danny’s survival, but for the whole family to stay intact. By switching between the viewpoints of all three central characters, King develops each person in detail, builds sympathy for the antagonistic Jack, and explains why Wendy doesn’t leave with Danny at the first sign of trouble. If King had used omniscient POV to do this, he would have sacrificed far too much tension for a horror story.
Many other novels feature a few central characters that deal with the story’s problems together, romances in particular. Using the viewpoints of both people in a relationship arc can allow readers to discover the full complexity of each character’s perspective. With a better understanding of the obstacles they face, relationship conflicts can become deeper and more interesting.
How Multiple POVs Work in Practice
Instead of being a technical tool for developing characters, multiple viewpoints have become synonymous with something else: multiple stories thrown into the same book for very little reason.
As long as a writer sticks to one viewpoint, the main character has to be included in every scene.* While writers chafe at this restriction, it’s really good for them. In a world where most writers don’t know what a throughline is and are always stuffing too many ideas into one book, a single viewpoint forces them to streamline and focus on what matters. It doesn’t guarantee a tightly plotted story, but it definitely helps.
When writers add a new viewpoint, they often do it for the explicit purpose of inserting content with little or no relevance to what they’ve already written. They might even jump to an entirely different continent to follow characters that have no practical means of interacting with the main character anytime soon, such as the Daenerys viewpoint in Game of Thrones.
Writers believe that if they bring these disparate arcs together at the end, this practice is fine. But that’s not true. As long as the novel is stretched between independent stories running in parallel, engagement will suffer. A great end doesn’t justify a terrible beginning and middle.
How This Makes Novels Boring
When people read for pleasure, they generally pick up a book and read it through. They don’t read a chapter of one book, put it down, read a chapter of another book, and then switch back to the first book again. The reason for this is pretty obvious. A story has specific mechanisms for hooking readers. When a reader is hooked on Lord of the Rings, they want to read more Lord of the Rings, not more Interview With the Vampire or more Dune.
The two primary mechanisms for hooking readers are:
Emotional attachment to the main character
Tension created by the problems the main character faces
New viewpoints often feature a different character facing different problems. That means even if the previous viewpoint had a great hook, the new viewpoint isn’t benefiting from it. For readers, it really is like starting another book.
Then, many writers make this problem worse. It’s incredibly common to only bother with a good hook for the first viewpoint of the story, which features either the main character or a throwaway character during a prologue. Once this is done, writers assume they can throw in another story without taking the same time and care to hook readers. After all, the writer can make readers wade through this second story by holding the first one hostage. They might even end the first viewpoint on a cliffhanger before jumping to the second.
Considering all of this, it’s no surprise that so many secondary viewpoints are not only boring but actively resented. They’re getting in the way of the content readers are interested in.
This doesn’t mean that every reader will get bored during extra viewpoints. Some readers may become really interested in the world. Others may decide they like the secondary viewpoint character as much as, or more than, the main character. But even in a best-case scenario, readers will be more interested in some viewpoints than others. If they love a secondary viewpoint character, they could start resenting the main character for taking up time.
This is why even when you put effort into making each viewpoint riveting, it still doesn’t justify stuffing multiple stories into one book. If those secondary viewpoints had their own books, the writer would pay more attention to making them engaging, and readers would have more control over what they read. No one would be forced to put down Lord of the Rings until they read an obligatory chapter of Dune.
Since many novel writers emulate filmed stories these days, it’s also worth explaining why our favorite TV shows get away with covering so many protagonists with their own arcs.* It comes down to two factors:
Narrated works require their audience to focus on the narration in hopes that it will pay off in the form of an engaging story. Visual works grab the audience’s attention immediately and then just have to keep it. The engagement bar is simply higher for narrated works because they require more effort to consume.
Hollywood writers collaborate, and when their bosses tell them to make edits, they have to do it. If the ratings go down, the show gets cancelled. Because of all this, visual stories are better plotted than the average novel, so they handle multiple protagonists with more skill.
Even so, the occasional TV show does get itself into trouble for doing what novelists using multiple viewpoints do. The second season of Stranger Things sent Eleven off on her own. Carnival Row had a cast of characters that barely interacted with one another. This lowered engagement just like it would in a novel.
When Multiple POVs Work
A novel should be one consolidated story, not multiple stories that beg for reader patience as they inch closer together. As long as you keep to one story, it can be told with multiple viewpoints. This doesn’t mean you should give all your minor characters a viewpoint. Using additional viewpoints still takes readers further from a beloved main character, so they need to offer a benefit to make up for that. However, as long as you’re telling one story, the tension of the primary viewpoint should be in effect. In other words, the hook you put in earlier will be doing its magic.
So how do you know the difference between one story and many? To start, if you don’t actually need multiple viewpoints to cover all of the events of your plot, that’s a good sign you’re telling one story, not several. A more accurate but technical explanation is that multiple viewpoints should keep the throughline moving. Let’s dig into what that means.
Your throughline is the basic arc that holds your entire novel together. It opens with a big problem that your main character must resolve at the climax. For instance, they might need to find a loved one who’s been missing or stop the library from being destroyed. Then, movement is the sense that the story is heading toward that climax. It could mean the main character is making progress on finding their loved one or that they are approaching an inevitable confrontation with the villain who wants to destroy the library. When a story has good movement, every event is essential. If you take one event out, later events don’t unfold the same way. They’re all linked together in a single chain of causality.
This shouldn’t change when you add more viewpoints. If you can remove a scene from one viewpoint without impacting the next few scenes in another viewpoint, you probably have multiple stories on your hands. On the other hand, if scenes in one viewpoint have important implications for scenes in the other viewpoint, that suggests they are one story.
Let’s go back to my example of a main character who has to find a lost loved one. You give that loved one a viewpoint, revealing that they’re being held prisoner by the villain. Then they develop a relationship with another captive. Since that relationship has no impact on the main character’s search, you have two stories on your hands. However, maybe the villain lets slip to the kidnapped character that someone is searching for them. Then, the kidnapped character finds a way to send out clues. The main character receives those clues and gets closer to finding the kidnapped character. Now you have one story.
Viewpoint characters can also act against each other. One viewpoint character might plant bombs beneath the library, and then the next viewpoint character could defuse the bombs. Generally, this would be a gray morality story where the protagonists are at odds but none of them are strictly villains, because villain viewpoints rarely work. On top of that, these types of political intrigue stories need to be tightly paced, with lots of interplay between viewpoint characters to stay entertaining. Most writers would struggle to keep this up.
If you’re on the fence about using multiple viewpoints in your story, you should stick to one. It’s essential to keep your story simple where you can, so when you inevitably want to add more characters, places, or magical curses, you’ll have a chance of fitting them in.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.04 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3898 days ago & DAD = 552 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
I did buy another showing and then I took notes (no recording).
The movie was different the second time. There was a DEVO segment and not a Roxy Music segment. Some of the clips appear to possibly be standard clips but they appeared in a different order.
Here's my notes, from memory from the first viewing:
"Art is the way we synchronize our feelings about things," Eno said.
What if art is just about feelings? Nothing more than that.
Isn't that enough?
Early in the version I watched, Eno posed the question - why do we like music?
He theorized that music came before language.
But why is one set of notes preferred to another, why one beat over another beat? Why do we like that? What is it about?
Concerts are about BELONGING. The sense of belonging is the strongest sense of all, Eno suggested. The desire to belong is stronger than the sexual impulse, the desire to get ahead and be on top of the heap. We all want to belong.
Concerts, BIG concerts, give us the experience of being part of something greater than ourselves, something bigger. We want that experience. We need it.
Eno spoke of his interest in evolutionary theory, of complexity arising from simplicity.
Eno often thinks of nature -- what would this thing be like in nature?
So many other things, but those are the big impressions I wanted to get down right now.
Also, Fela Kuti, which I featured in Music Monday.
Also, an oblique strategy that made me see something with my book:
Honor thy error as a hidden intention (see link and images below).
HERE'S my notes FROM THE SECOND VIEWING - TRANSCRIBED:
Viewed 2602.27
Eno recommended John Cage's book Silence as pivotal in his development as an artist,
Following on the earlier comment (above) on art as synchronizing feelings, Eno explained that art has often been considered a way to express our thinking, to express philosophy, but does it have to be that grandiose?
The first song that Eno remembers as an embodiment of a female, a woman:
It was also an introduction to black American music, which was not something happening in England at the time.
In discussing his early playing with androgyny, Eno said he didn't really feel like a man nor like a woman, and that he wore make up because he looked better with make up.
He added that he has always been interested in the space between things.
He told a story about the recording of his album Another Green World and specifically the song "Spirit Drifting."
He explained that he recorded "Spirit Drifting" with tears streaming down his face because he didn't feel like he knew what the fuck he was doing, but he had paid a lot of money for studio time, and he had to do something. He had to use the time and deliver an album.
The point of the story was that what may seem like shit in the creation of it will take on another life after it's done, and perception by others may not be that it's shit.
LEARN TO TRUST YOURSELF
He said, as the key lesson there.
In discussing music and why we love it, he also described concerts, large concerts of 10,000 - 20,000 people as an experience we need because we feel part of a BIGGER YOU. This is also where he discussed the drive to belong which I described in the first set of notes.
Eno claimed that SINGING IS THE KEY TO WORLD PEACE.
The more singing groups that exist, people would be happier.
In describing the OBLIQUE STRATEGIES, he said that the main impetus was to question one's habits as an artist. This questioning is necessary. Maybe the habits are good and valuable and maybe they are not. But the constant examination of these habits is part of the creation process.
There was a segment in the second viewing not in the first about his discovery of futurists like Stewart Brand, Peter Schwartz, and others.
"We depend on each other more and more these days and understand each other less and less."
Eno quotes:
"Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."
This comes from an author he names and I didn't catch it. Internet says Bill Gates but that's not who Eno named.
The ambition of art is that we want to understand how the world of feelings works.
I could recall more (DEVO was difficult to work with, or he played with tape recorders and synth in Roxy Music), but that's most of the big stuff that struck me and I wanted to remember.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.03 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3897 days ago & DAD = 551 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4032 - Dazzled by the Groove - Brian Eno on Fela Kuti
I probably heard of Fela Kuti as Eno and Bryne discussed his influence on both of them, on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and on Talking Heads; however, in the 1980s, it wasn't as easy to INSTANTLY access music and explore an artists as it is today.
I probably had a note somewhere to investigate Fela Kuti when at a really robust, big city music store, but even so money was probably a factor.
Fela Kuti returned to my radar in watching the ENO DOCUMENTARY (the topic of tomorrow's blog), and so I put together this post featuring some of Fela Kuti's music and heralding his Grammy, just awarded, for lifetime achievement.
On the Bandcamp page, you can see that in addition to Eno curating a box set, Erykah Badu also curated one, which is no surprise to me.
Fela Kuti remains Nigeria’s most famous musician. He pioneered Afrobeat – a genre blending jazz, funk, psychedelic rock, traditional West African chant and rhythms – into conscious music in the 60s and 70s. Fela’s music continues to live today across the continents.
Famous for pairing his music with politics and with human rights activism, Fela, who passed in 1997, stood against Nigeria’s military dictators, often at great personal cost to his family and band members. His art has become fuel for a new generation of creators who are tapping into his music, and the spirit behind it, to make new records.
Principal among the new creators are Wizkid and Wyclef Jean. Wizkid is a Nigerian pop act with a string of hit records and awards, especially in Africa. Wyclef Jean is a Haitian-American rapper who transitioned from a successful career with the 1990s hip hop group Fugees to a solo career.
Both artists have made records infusing elements of Fela’s Afrobeat. As part of my research into the legacy of Fela, I examined two songs – and their videos – demonstrating the complexity inherent in his musical legacy. Fela Kuti (2017) by Wyclef Jean and Joro (2019) by Wizkid.
While Wyclef and Wizkid have infused Fela’s work in their new creations, they interpret his legacy in very different ways, which fans can judge for themselves.
Wizkid – Joro
Wizkid’s hit Joro, released in 2019, incorporated elements of Afrobeat in its production, but the essence of Fela’s message was not infused. For lyrics, he looked elsewhere.
Amid criticisms across social media that the lyrics in both of his 2019 singles are below par, Wizkid proceeded to tell interviewers that: “Joro means enjoy.”
Indeed, the track is enjoyable. It samples from a number of places. From Nigerian music-comedian Maleke’s 2007 track Minimini Wanawana, Wiz’s Joro adapts some lyrics, “na wini-wini wana-wana your love dey do me this night. It continues:
This kind love, e dey do my body ta-nana/E dey make me wan dey your life ha-nana/…Dance to my konto, make you panana…
Wizkid is one of the world’s most prolific adopters of Fela’s works. For the chorus, he also draws from Fela’s 1977 Zombie (in which Fela sings “zombie way na one way … joro jara joro”). Wizkid adapts what is just a chant, “joro ja joro”, rather brilliantly to communicate the one-way, utterly loyal nature of the love he professes in Joro.
Perhaps a more effective way to engage with Joro would be to shelve the motley texts and look to the visuals. In 1982, Michael Jackson released Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. Probably the world’s most famous music video, MJ’s Thriller drove the album doubling its sales and transformed music videos into an art form.
A common theme in the videos of Thriller and Joro is love between a young man and woman. In Joro, Wiz dances in a candle-lit room in Lagos, a deliberate and double signifier to depict Fela’s synonymy with the ‘shrine’, and to show how deeply his love for the subject of his affection – played by dancer Georgia Amodu Curtis – drives him. In Thriller, MJ is accompanied by zombies through extensive dance routines.
Considering that Joro is adapted from Fela’s Zombie, Wiz’s motivations for taking a ‘zombie’ route to express this love become apparent. While the video of Joro is not as horror-engaging as MJ’s spectacle, it is without doubt as enchanting as the love affair of Thriller. Joro or ‘Enjoy’ is a thrilling excursion through generations.
Wiz is an Afrobeats superstar with a Lagos heritage who is able to access Fela’s catalogue and tweak selected texts for the enjoyment of his audiences.
Wyclef – Fela Kuti
What is curious in Wyclef Jean’s case is how a pop act with no deep African background appropriated Fela.
From his time with the Fugees through a solo career, Wyclef made a mark on pop music winning three Grammy Awards. In 2017, he released Carnival III: The Fall and Rise of a Refugee, his 8th studio album of which its first single is titled Fela Kuti.
Within a month of the audio release, he put out an official lyric video in which he shows how he samples Fela’s lyrics, “sibi ti mo le f’orile”. Wyclef’s Fela Kuti (2017) hinges on the instrumental of Fela’s Eko Ile (1973) – a track from Fela’s Afrodisiac album. In Eko Ile, Fela pays tribute to Lagos, saying that irrespective of where his travels take him, he would always return home. Hence his submission, “Ko ma sibi ti mo le f’orile, ko si o” (There’s just nowhere I can make my home, nowhere at all) – other than Lagos, that is.
This homage to Lagos isn’t Wyclef’s only source of inspiration. He also sampled from Femi Kuti, Fela’s first son. We see him appropriating from father and son to create his work.
Femi Kuti also has a record titled Eko Lagos (2001). Femi’s message here is on the distance between his dream for a prosperous world, and the reality of the hardship of Lagos once he awakes. Wyclef’s adaptation of Eko Ile may also be processed along this frame.
Fela Kuti’s work also influenced Wyclef’s state of mind when making The Fall and Rise of a Refugee. Speaking about it, he said he was personalising Fela Kuti’s struggle, and drawing parallels with his life.
Wyclef said, “Fela … tried to help his country by running for president. Wyclef … did the same thing,” before making reference to American rapper Young Thug’s track titled Wyclef Jean. Such justifications give credence to a scathing review of the album: “This uninspired melting pot of music features what is undeniably Jean’s weakest song-writing to date.”
In Wyclef’s music video for Fela Kuti, it is confounding to see him make an appearance amid a bevy of dancing ladies.
To gain more understanding, we conducted an audience selection of Fela’s and Wyclef’s music. Respondents were at least 25 – old enough to have consciously watched and listened to both artists. The exercise revealed that Eko Ile isn’t a favourite among audiences who otherwise consider themselves Fela enthusiasts. Many said they see through Wyclef’s ‘tribute’ to Fela in the twilight of his career and reckon that it is an afterthought, and a ploy to mask a creative deficiency.
This article is based on Osiebe’s paper Methods in Performing Fela in Contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019. You can read the full paper over here.
Garhe Osiebe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Rhodes University.
Recalling his introduction to the Nigerian legend, Eno said:
"I remember the first time I listened [to Fela's album Afrodisiac] and how dazzled I was by the groove and the rhythmic complexity, and by the raw, harsh sounds of the brass, like Mack trucks hurtling across highways with their horns blaring. Everything I thought I knew about music at that point was up in the air again."
With over 50 albums to choose from, Eno narrowed it down to London Scene (1971), Shakara (1972), Gentleman (1973), Zombie (1976), Upside Down (1976), I.T.T. (1980), and of course Afrodisiac (1973). The selection spans the more personal music of Kuti's earlier years, right up to the searing political protest of his later LPs.
Of course, many of us will be familiar with Zombie, the scathing critique of Nigeria's military. However, fewer fans will have heard Eno's selection of Fela's earlier work, which revealed his views of a changing African society and set the tone for the Afrobeat genre.
The box also includes a 12-page full-size booklet with a foreword by Brian Eno, in-depth commentaries about all seven albums written by Afrobeat historian Chris May, plus song lyrics. As a special bonus an exclusive A2 poster is included, and of course all seven LPs come in their own sleeves with the original artwork, so you can marvel at Lemi Ghariokwu's iconic covers again.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.02 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3896 days ago & DAD = 550 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
