Writing People

The quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You’ll never write above what you know about people.

- Tony Gilroy, writer of the Bourne films and winner of the Original   

   Screenplay Oscar for Michael Clayton

I’d add to that statement. I’d say that you’re writing will always be capped by your understanding of yourself. Because you are a person. And you are the standard by which you judge all other people.

And vice versa.

I've been told a few times that psychology has nothing to do with writing. That just because I consider myself a writer, that does not mean I know anything about how the human mind works or how humans tend to behave.

The truth is that writing has everything to do with psychology. At least, it does if I am any good.

Writing is about character. Every character in a story is an audience proxy. If I don’t know what a human wants, needs, feels and thinks, how the hell do I know how to create a proxy that a real human will believe in? If the audience is human, the stories are about humans. The characters can be fish or dogs or candlesticks or lions, but humans is what the story is about. So until people start writing stories for an audience of fish or lions, an understanding of human psychology will be integral for any sort of writing.

So it follows that in order to build and manipulate convincing human proxies, you need to be good with human behaviour. You need to understand why people do what they do; the  ABC of their life choices; you need to be able to predict behaviour based on human observation; and, most importantly, you need to be curious to learn all this stuff in the first place.

I am a strong believer in the power of learning. I believe anyone can learn almost anything. But there are certain things that you either have or you don’t. Imagination is one of them. So is observation, pattern recognition, empathy, and many of the other traits required to properly study and categorise human behaviour. These skills can be enhanced, practiced, nurtured, but if you don’t have them to start with, then you may as well be a colour blind interior decorator. Because a part of the world is missing from your view. And a good writer needs to see the full spectrum.

I think the people who don’t see the link between psychology and writing don’t really understand themselves. Or other people. They think that writer’s are strange whimsical individuals who swan about plucking ideas arbitrarily from the air. They don’t realise that all writing is based on perceptions of reality. That everything from fairy-tales to news reports is just human beings trying to make sense of the world as they know it. That for any form of communication to be conceived from and then relayed back into the real world it must be built using real world structures. Nobody can create something out of nothing. Especially if they want anyone else to understand it. New reports use facts and testimonies, fairy-tales use metaphors and hyperbole. And so do news reports, come to think of it.

Biology, upbringing, gender, socio-economic status, what they ate for breakfast that morning – it all has an effect on a writer’s work. And the audience's response to it. Writing is really just an expression of perception. And if you’re dealing with perception, you’re dealing with psychology. Human buttons and how they can be pressed.

And because writing relies on the ability to understand others, one of the first steps to being a good writer is understanding yourself. If you know why you do things, why you get angry, why you get jealous, why you feel joy, you can superimpose that model over the behaviours you observe in others until you begin to see patterns. Then you’ll start to know people as a group. Then humans as a species. You’ll start to understand the “personal-yet-universal” dichotomy of all good stories. And you’ll start to see writing in a way that the average person does not. What it’s for. How it works. And what it can do.

But if you are one of the people who can't see how psychology and writing interact. If you don’t know why you do things, if you can’t figure people out, if you’re not interested in human nature and human perception and human humanity, then you don’t really understand what stories are. 

But you might be able to change that.

If you really want to write, and write well, learn about yourself. Because stories are about people, and your understanding of them relies on your understanding of you. And you can’t write about something you don’t understand.

Realistic fantasies

Justice League: War is one of the best superhero movies I've seen in a while. Definitely the best from the DC universe. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should check it out. Clever, character-informing dialogue, a constant stream of twists and turnarounds, and a well balanced distribution of attention between the players.

Why couldn't ANY of the other recent superhero movies be like this?

Well, for one, it’s a cartoon.

People expect real life superheroes to be treated ‘seriously’. And by seriously, I mean they get treated as if they could be dropped into the real world. I’ve always thought that any superhero story should, on some level, acknowledge that it is metaphorical. Same goes for fantasy. Superhero stories should never treat themselves like they are our exact reality. By trying to fit our reality, fantasy films merely expose their own inconsistencies as invented worlds. Films like this often aim for realism, when all they need to be is believable.

This is true of all films. Believability is far more important than realism; firstly, because making something believable is easier than making it reality; and secondly because stories aren't about reality. They’re about perspective. And when movies create their own reality, parallel but separate to ours, with their own standards of what’s possible and probable, they give their stories the legitimacy of their own universe because they’re not trying to pretend our reality is the same as theirs.

It’s an unpopular opinion, but none of the Bale Batman films resonated with me. I like Bale as an actor and Nolan as a director, and Batman is one of the coolest characters out there - but these films were highfalutin soap operas with two dimensional characters in unbelievable scenarios with bloated themes. And Batman had a lisp. More specifically, what’s known as a ‘sibilant s’. I don’t mean to be petty, but I can’t see how someone so studious and disciplined wouldn't work that out of his speech. Especially considering how many people could use it to connect his two identities. It doesn't matter how gravelly Bat’s voice is if he has the same lisp as a certain local playboy. To me, that’s not believable.

It’s also not believable for a human man to survive a forty storey fall onto a car, to talk like he knows his own story themes, and to support a hang-gliding wing structure with human arm strength. My basic opinion is that Batman could not exist in real life. Not like that. The idea of a human being so kick ass is great - and Batman is certainly one of the more realistic superheroes - but he would not fit any better into our real world than Superman or Wonder Woman. And near enough isn't good enough when it comes to connecting with an audience.

This is why Batman works so much better in cartoon, comic and video games. These forms acknowledge his fantastical elements without trying to wedge him into our world. They put Batman firmly in his own reality, where plant women and crocodile men are possible – and so is a dude who can hold a criminal above his head with one arm. If Batman existed in our world he would be more like Bourne or Bond. Smart, but fallible. He would be believable instead of a cartoon hero pretending to be real life.

This leads me to another reason fantasy can be tiresome if handled too ‘seriously’. Something which Justice League: War handled very well. A little thing called incredulity.

It doesn't matter how dangerous a situation is, how many times they've seen it, or how scared or brave they are, police officers, firemen, ambulance officers, rock climbers, and any other human who regularly engages in ‘serious’ situations will still be shocked when something incredible happens in front of them. They might joke about it, or swear, or gasp, they’ll probably leap into action to fix it - but they will always take a moment to go, “Holy crap, this is my life right now?” That’s the human thing to do.

But many current fantasy characters never do that. Bale’s Batman is one such offender. Cavill’s Superman is another. Affleck’s Daredevil is probably the worst for it. Even Harry Potter never really manages.

Filmmakers tend to think that having a character make fun of themselves will undermine the legitimacy of their peril, when it actually does the complete opposite. A character who shows incredulity in the face of extreme danger identifies themselves immediately as human, because human’s need to process what they experience, usually as they are experiencing it. Trained professionals know how to do it quickly, or keep it hidden, but they still experience an emotional response (that includes incredulity) in every situation, and the human audience knows that. So a character that is never incredulous doesn't read as human.

Did anybody else find Man of Steel’s Superman to be a little robotic? Henry Cavill is a good actor, but the script didn't have him respond to the fantasy elements of his own situation with anything other than “Hmm, this is serious.” Christopher Reeve’s Superman was far more believable, despite clunkier effects and 70s hair styles, because he had moments of ‘Oh crap’ and ‘How is this happening right now?’

Even Mr Incredible was more believably human than the Man of Steel. The way he cringed before stopping that train, or the way he clapped his hands to encourage himself to keep looking for the escaped robot on the island that first time. This is what real people do. What believable characters do. Fantasy or not. They sigh and cringe and shake their heads at the ridiculousness of their situations – and then they get on with it anyway.

This brings me to my final point – emotional believability. Nothing is as important in a film as emotional believability. The laws of physics, the rules of war, the vocal abilities of monkeys – none of them matter as much as the emotional reality of a story. Because there is nothing humans know better than emotions. We can accept breaks in number logic, or physics logic, or monkey logic, but we cannot accept breaks in emotional logic.

Which is why character incredulity has so much power in fantasy. In a story where nothing is familiar to us – not the setting or the slang or the physics – the one thing that will cement the reality of a world in our minds is its inhabitants and their feelings. If we are watching Star Wars with its X-wings and confederacies and wookies and droids, and we try to explain all of that stuff to the audience, our story is going to die on its arse (Episodes 1 to 3). If we throw in Han Solo with a bit of ‘Fly casual’, all of a sudden we have a reason to accept the foreign, ‘ridiculous’ elements of the story because the characters do and the experience improves dramatically (Episodes 4 to 6). Because, in stories, emotional logic trumps all other types of logic every time.

Some filmmakers seem to think that an audience will only take a fantasy seriously if all the characters in that world do the same. Ridiculous. People only have time to respond to serious situations in two ways – by laughing about it, or by getting on with it. They almost never say, “This serious situation is serious.” Which is why, without incredulity, a character is completely unbelievable.

Filmmakers know they are pretending. We know we are pretending. So why do they feel the need to convince us their fantasy is real? Do they think their emotional logic lacks the power to hold our interest? Typically, the answer is yes. If an audience refuses to accept the other types of logic running through your story, it’s because they haven’t been swayed by the emotional logic. Whereas if the filmmaker is able to show even the smallest acknowledgement that they are presenting us with a reality outside or our own, we will relax into their capable hands to see what they have to say.

So if you’re like me and have had trouble with the new Spider-mans or Man of Steel or all of the new Batmans, take consolation in this: that movies aren't supposed to be real. We all know that. But that doesn't make them any less special. Their specialness comes from what they tell us about our reality, not what they tell us about theirs. We have no use for the lessons of an ewok, or polymath millionaire, or an alien demi-god. But we do have a use for the lessons of a human being.

Even if that human being isn't real.

The Word Police

He and I are good at grammar.

Me and him aren't good at grammar.

The rest of us don’t really think about grammar.

But should we?

As a writer I sometimes find myself umming and ahhing over the proper use of words, pronunciation and grammar in conversational speech. More specifically, I think about the Word Police. And how Luddite they are.

For me, communication should be clear and comfortable. I don’t care if people invent words or use them in unusual ways. To me communication is about function over form. Rules can break and bend as much as you want - as long as you’re understood, you’re doing it right.

But not the Word Police. They need rules when they talk. They need to follow all of them. And they need you to follow them as well (the ones they can remember, anyway). And it’s all because they’re so smart, right? Smart people know all the rules. Science has rules. Maths has rules. Language has rules. Rules are there for a reason, so you better stick to them.

But anyone who understands communication knows that language hinders as much as it helps. That the rules exist only as long as they aid communication. And that they only aid communication as long as people use them. If nobody uses the rules, they have no purpose. New rules will emerge in their place. First as slang, colloquialisms and jargon and then as ‘real’ words. That’s all it is. We use the rules that work for us and scrap the ones that don’t. Like evolution.

Language is a code. Portuguese, mathematics, musical notation, Morse (the code and the inspector), and emoticons. Codes have two main features; to relay a message between two parties so that both understand; and to relay a message between two parties in the presence of a third party so that they (the third party) are not able to understand.

And because every language is a code, all of them exclude a certain portion of the population whenever they are used. Old people don’t understand texting, young people don’t understand Shakespeare, and nobody understands politicians.

So codes have their pluses and minuses. You can share information with people who know your code and exclude the people who don’t. This can be annoying, even condescending. But it is a symptom of the function of language. The codes of spoken language were built for the majority, but they can never be understood by everyone.

By the same token, if you can make up a word and have it be understood, then it’s a word. If someone says you made that word up, you can just tell them that all words are made up. 

Language is not based on common rules but on common symbols. As soon as those symbols are no longer common they are no longer part of the language.

Which is why the Word Police have no business correcting us. All they are doing is telling us we’re not talking in a way that was useful fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. They are trying to show off by proving they know the rules, but all they’re really doing is proving how little they know about actual communication.

If it was of some benefit to pontificate like an academic at the dinner table, then I’m sure a good number of us would partake in such eloquence at every opportunity. But it doesn't benefit us. It benefits academics. In an academic setting, academic speech is great. Perfect, even. It does what the language needs to do in that environment, at that time, in that social context. If the Word Police show up here, we will happily oblige.

But language in itself doesn't call for obedience, it calls for invention. If all we did was obey the language of our forebears no language would even exist because there would be no flexibility, no room for change or improvement or evolution.

Did you know that ‘pants’ was a rude word in the early 20^th century? In Victorian times, ‘leg’ was offensive. So was ‘bottom’. Should we go back to those rules? If we once talked like that, shouldn't we always talk like that? If following the rules is what matters, that’s exactly what we should do.

But it isn't what matters. In a few decades we've had ‘gay’, ‘cool’, and ‘partner’ all shift through different meanings. Are they correct in some meanings and incorrect in others? Nope. Just more and less offensive and more and less common.

I’d like to see how a member of the Word Police would go in the southern states of America. They speak English there, but it isn't 'correct' English. And yet however ‘correctly’ the Word Police spoke, the locals would not understand. So who’s speaking incorrectly in that scenario? Answer: whoever is failing to be understood by the majority.

Because understanding a language is exclusive to social context, not education. ‘Smart people’ know the same amount of correct language as ‘dumb people’. Which is why it is wrong to correct someone when they say lie instead of lay. Or me instead of I. Why belittle their use of language with your more correct but less useful version of the same language? Who is that helping? Conversational language operates under a Darwinian hierarchy, not tradition. What’s popular and what’s right are pretty much the same thing. 

The famous Webster’s Dictionary exists largely because an American named Noah Webster wanted to ‘Americanise’ the English language. So in the 19^th Century he decided to put out his own dictionary and change the spelling of a bunch of words. It wasn't evolution or contextual selection. It was one guy deciding he wanted centre and humour to be center and humor. He wanted to give his language exclusivity. He wanted his code to be secret.

And that’s exactly what the Word Police are trying to do. Showing off their knowledge of some long forgotten secret code as if it’s still relevant. The rest of us then mistake our ignorance of the code for intellectual failure when it’s actually our brains being efficient. Remembering the words that are useful. Because anything else is a waste of time unless you actually work in language.

And those are the only circles the Word Police should serve and protect; English, writing, and academia, that’s where the rules matter because that’s where they’re still useful. We want writing and academia to be poetic and illustrious and pragmatic and accurate. But casual conversation doesn't need to be because that’s not what it’s for.

The Word Police don't know the difference between small chat over capsicum dip and a graduate address at Harvard University. They're social simpletons. And their veiled attempts to prop themselves up in the tree-house of special language secrets with a sign that says: ‘No mispronounciation aloud’ are so misguided they might as well be trying to catch all the ants in the world to stop them evolving into other more successful kinds of ants.

So the next time someone corrects you for your misuse of him or I or lay or lie, ask them if they know about ‘pants’ or ‘leg’ or good old Noah Webster and his made up dictionary of special differences. Tell them that all words are made up, that language is what we want it to be.

And if they still don’t understand you, tell them to go dump an android farm on an empty of twelves.

Faux commentary

“A song is a good indication – if you can write a song, you can write, full stop.”

I've heard this comment a few times. Mostly in reference to film and TV writing. Seems pretty insightful. Songs can be hard to write. Some say they’re the hardest of all literary forms. I’m guessing most people would back themselves as short story writers before they’d back themselves as song writers. Maybe that’s a dumb assumption. The kind of assumption that would work better if I was ‘most people’.

Like most assumptions, really.

Speaking as one individual person, and more specifically as a writer, I don’t find songs hard to write. I don’t find poetry hard to write. For me, poetry, songs and short stories rank on the lower end of the creative difficulty scale. They don’t take anywhere near the time and planning of a screenplay or novel.

I should clarify here that I do mean good poetry, good songs, good screenplays. And ‘good’ so far as general critical and popular acclaim is concerned (we can talk about popularity vs quality another time). Anyone can write something badly. Everyone thinks they could ‘make a better film than that’. I’m saying good songs are easier to write than good films. I'd even say more good songs exist than good movies. I might be wrong, but its my perception. Plus, it supports my argument, so... 

And that’s basically the reason I don’t agree with that opening quote. Even making allowances for project scale, there’s a big leap between song and movie.

And here’s why.

A movie script is all writing. If it’s good writing - yay. You’re in. There’s a slightly better chance it will be made into a great film. If a movie script is crap, then, hmm, it still might get made, and it still might fill seats, but the likelihood is, at some point, people will realise its bad and start calling it that.

Same with TV. It all starts with the words. Good directors and good actors can make a great script greater, but it’s hard to make a crappy script good. The script is the foundation and a weak foundation equals collapso-destructo.

But a song is different.

A song has music.

Duh, right? But have you ever watched a movie with the sound down? Say a scary bit, or a tense bit, or a sexy bit? Notice anything strange? Like how you’re not so affected by what’s happening? The creeper isn’t as creepy; the gun fight isn’t as epic; the sex is kind of... funny. It’s because there’s no music. And music has power. It can trick us, turn us, make us feel things that aren’t there or amplify things that are. And when it’s not there, we’re emotionally stunted, unless the filmmakers have allowed for it. But it always has a powerful place in the media. And no more so than in song.

It sounds dumb to say, but in songs the influence of the music is so great that a bunch of crap lyrics can slip by without us even noticing. It happens every day. Poor writing plays on our ears because the music behind it makes it seem meaningful, makes it warm, makes it strong, makes it important.

I saw an old interview with comedian, Bo Burnham, in which he described a stand up gig where he made fun of modern pop songs and then realised Justin Bieber was in the audience. His song, “Repeat Stuff” is about how the songs of boy bands refer to young women in very general terms, the idea being to make every young woman feel like the song was written for them. I love how your fingerprints are different from everybody else’s, how your eyes are that blueish-greenish-brown and how your hair kind of falls off your head. How you have two arms, one on each side of your body.

And it’s a good point. A lot of those songs don’t really say much about anything. Funny too, was my initial reaction when I heard Burnham talking about this. I was like, “But I don’t listen to those songs for the words...”

And there you have it. There are songs we don’t listen to for the words.

Because words in a song can matter, but they don’t have to. Not like words in a script. Or words in a poem. Or an instruction manual. Of all writing, songs are one of the only forms that don’t require good writing to be considered good. You could make an argument for blockbuster movies, sure. But there’s still a general awareness that those films aren't good in the deeper, soul affecting sense of the word. But not so for songs with bad lyrics. Loads of people cherish a good Beiber. Or Kesha. Or Redfoo. These are artists who make no claims of Shakespearean aspiration. They put out ‘catchy’ songs and loads of people love them.  Then you have songs like “Same love”, “Price tag” and “Happy” – songs that express something more meaningful through what is essentially poetry. And loads of people love these songs too.

But both are classified as good songs. Not because both are well written in terms of words, but because both are well written in terms of music. Lazy poetry elevated by kickin tunes.

Scripts and prose don’t have that luxury. They don’t use music til they’re made. When the scriptwriter is no longer involved. Until then they’re on their lonesome. If the words in them aren't good, they don’t even get read.

So being able to write a good song – at least as far as popular culture is concerned – is about being able to write good music. Which means being able to write a good song does not mean you can write a good anything else.

Because in the land of TV, film and prose, words are important. But in the world of popular music, it doesn't matter what the fox says, because he can sing.

Success = vices

I don’t consider myself a typical artist. The stereotype, I mean. The ones that avoid sunlight and the outdoors and other people, the ones that are moody and broody, the ones that hate everything. The ones that are basically vampires. I’m not one of those.

And I was totally fine with that. Until a number of friends and colleagues started saying I wasn’t a real artist either. The fact that I don’t drink, or smoke, or act depressed all the time seemed to make me ineligible.  “You’ll never be a success,” they said. “You don’t have enough vices.”

They explained that real artists are burdened by the world. By their gift. Real artists have vices.

I didn't want to buy into the idea. Not all artists are sad, mysterious drug addicts, right? It’s statistically improbable, for one thing. But the question still intrigued me. What was my vice?

I wracked my brains. I must have a vice. Something that obsessed me. That I found myself addicted to without warning. That changed my day, my week, my month if I let it take hold. For years I've come back to the question and not found an answer. Junk food and sleeping and cartoons and video games don’t count. I could stop those whenever I wanted, probably. I needed something properly detrimental. I needed to suffer for my art.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I’d been struggling with this week’s blog rant, three half-rants already on my desktop. My problem wasn't finding something to talk about. To anybody who knows me, that’s ridiculous. But ten minutes into every post I would be itching to get back to what I had already spent the whole day on. A musical project. Because I write songs sometimes. And this one was really kicking my arse.

The idea had been floating around in my head for maybe a month already. I had a mumbled chorus and a vague melody recorded in my voice memos. Last week I landed on the bass line. Then, boom, the lyrics fall out of me in one breath and suddenly I'm finessing the drum section of the middle eight at three in the morning. I pull myself away from the computer, acknowledge it's time to go to bed, and sit back down to save my work. I decide I better check back through the track to see how that cool electro-funk piano thing was working with the new drums, and suddenly it's 5:30am.

I went on like this for three days. I ate at my computer, left plates on my keyboard, and started getting sore ears from my iPhone buds. I went into work a day early and almost forgot about the haircut I’d planned to get at the beginning of the week despite sideburns that felt like moustaches. I went in to work again and did an 11 hour day on three hours sleep. I skipped meals, I stopped drawing, I had trouble writing, and I spent all my time locked in my room with my keyboard and laptop. One night at 2am my computer froze and I spent a frantic thirty seconds pacing the room while I waited for the laptop to tell me I hadn't saved my last hour of work... only to restart and find the music program I use has a ‘would you like to recover your unsaved work’ function.

All this and I didn’t even have a deadline. This song wasn’t even for anything. It was a pet project. Like knitting a tea cosy.  I was doing it for fun. The hyperbolic optimism of the muse was pulling me through hours and hours of hunger and restlessness and sleep deprivation.  And it was driving me mental.

But today I came to the crest of the hill. I recorded the last group of vocals and my extended mishmash of sounds solidified into a cohesive thing, and I began the slow finicky process of ‘mixing’. But the hard work was over. I had made the thing that I wanted to make. My brain could be used for other things now. And I realised I had an answer to an old question. I had my vice.

It’s not as hardcore as drinking or dropping an E (that’s what they say, right?) and I haven’t destroyed any property or tried to do a tattoo on my own face. But I was addicted to something. And it was a detriment to my health and well-being and I needed to stop.

And all I have to show for it is four and a half minutes of something that might not really be much of anything. Just a bit of art. Except that it isn't. It’s also my vice. 

So maybe my friends were right. Maybe you do need vices to be a successful artist. But maybe I was also right - maybe I don't fit the artist stereotype. Yet I have something that makes me stupid and addicted and moody and broody. Something that makes me suffer. Something that will probably definitely lead to lots and lots of enormous artistic success in the future.

Art itself. And it doesn't get much more rock and roll than that.  

And least I assume so, I’m still not sure what a real artist is. 

But I’m thinking I should get a beret.