Scott Adams' BlogMorning Routine of a Writer
Business Insider asked me to describe my morning routine. You might be interested in how rigidly I control my body and my environment to invite creativity in.
Scott
0 CommentsHumor Writing Tutorial
How hard is it to write three sentences for my experimental web comic Robots Read News?
Probably harder than it looks.
I think of the writing process as having about eighteen layers. And one of those layers has six dimensions. If you get any of it wrong, your writing lays on the side of the road like a squirrel that had a bad day last week.
How much technique is involved in writing versus, say, instinct? Natural talent? If I know my readers, you will be interested in the answers to those questions because you might pick up some useful tips. So here is a quick tutorial on humor writing.
Humor Diversification Rule
One of the many blind spots we have as humans is the notion that people are similar in their senses of humor. Sure, some folks are more uptight than others, but we think humor is somewhat universal.
It is not even close.
My best guess is that a third of the public doesn’t possess an appreciation for humor of any type. I would go so far as to say they probably have to fake it when other people are watching. I mean that in a literal sense.
Another subset of people are only amused when something socially awkward happens to someone else in real life. For that group, professional comedians are just noise, but a restaurant server dropping a tray is hilarious.
For some people, humor only happens when there is a violation of societal standards. For this crowd, anything that would make a priest uncomfortable is comedy gold no matter how poorly executed.
For some folks, humor lies only in cleverness. This group likes puns and jokes with out-of-box solutions to problems. And they like some complexity and timing in their humor.
And nearly everyone enjoys humor about subjects and people that are close to them. Nothing interests you more than yourself. And when you see a version of yourself or someone you know played out in comedy it triggers a laugh reflex. This is the only form of humor that everyone enjoys. Even the folks with no humor gene whatsoever find pleasure in being the topic of a good joke. But since we all have different experiences, it is hard to find a topic that works for everyone.
So what do you do when there are so many types of people and your humor can’t please them all?
You do what any economist would do. You add quantity and variety, also known as diversifying. Instead of telling one joke, tell twenty. Make some of them clever, some naughty, and so on. If you spray enough types of humor into the universe, everyone has a chance to find one they can enjoy.
But is being funny 20% of the time good enough?
Yup. Because…
The Humor False-Memory Rule
My experience as a professional humorist is that if you are funny one time out of five, people will remember you as being funny all the time. So make sure you produce enough volume, and enough different types of humor, so diversification works for you. (Unless you are intentionally targeting a narrow audience.)
Some years ago I developed a formula for humor. I call it the Six Dimensions of Humor. My observation was that you have to use at least two of the six dimensions to be recognized as humor. You can use more than two dimensions for even better results, but two is the minimum. And it does not matter which dimensions you combine. I have written extensively on this topic, so today I will just list the six dimensions and tell you that you need two of them.
Six Dimensions of Humor
Naughty
Clever
Cute
Bizarre
Mean
Recognizable
Humor is only one layer that a writer must consider. To produce good writing you need to simultaneously balance about… oh, eighteen layers of technique at the same time. Luckily, most of this happens as an automatic process.
Writing Layers
- Logic
- Timing
- Messenger matches message
- Usefulness
- Reading level
- Conversational style
- Flow
- Humor
- Branding (of the author)
- Intelligence (write slightly smarter than the reader)
- Interest
- Relevance
- Tense (past, current, future)
- Whose point of view?
- Editing (grammar, spelling, vocabulary)
- Emotion
- Hypnosis layer (this is just me)
- musicality
Most of the layers are self-explanatory. The most interesting layer is what I call the musicality layer. Do your words form a beat? Are they smooth and silky? Does the musicality of the sentence match the tone of the piece? How would the sentence sound if read aloud?
Compare these sentences for musicality:
A big kid kicked a milk can. (Yuck. I sprained my brain reading it.)
Now read one line from a Keisha song: Are you dancing on the dance floor or drinking by the bar? (Perfect rhythm.)
Consider one of my popular tweets this week: “Repurpose the shattered pieces of your past. That stuff is useful.” I used a beat in the first sentence and none in the second, for the musicality.
How to Layer
You probably can’t hold eighteen layers of technique in your mind while forming coherent sentences. Writers can’t do that either. That’s why I write a few layers at a time, then add other layers in subsequent passes.
A lot of the work of writing involves picking a topic that will interest your audience. If humor is the goal, 90% of the job involves picking a topic that lends itself to laughs. If the topic makes you smile before you write the joke, that’s a winner. And if a topic is interesting before you add your twist, that is a winner too. Compounding the problem is that all writers are looking for the same gems, so you often end up in picked-over territory. Don’t stay there unless you came with something special.
I start my writing by laying out the logic of what I want to say, often in bullet points or short paragraphs that I can arrange on the page to discover the best order of presentation. If humor is part of the plan, I make sure the logic supports that future humor layer, like scaffolding.
A lot of the writing process is automatic once you have practiced enough. For example, I am typing this sentence without thinking of my hands. I just look at the screen and the words appear. Nor do I think much about vocabulary or grammar. That stuff is mostly automatic now, and I will fix any typos and sloppy wording in subsequent passes. The number one rule of writing is write something.
The last three writing layers (emotion, hypnosis, musicality) are where most of the magic in writing happens. Amateur writers are not aware that those levels even exist. Most folks stop writing as soon as they make their point. For professional writers, that is when the real writing starts.
I included hypnosis on my list of writing layers because I have a background in the practice. Most writers would not have a layer by that name. A close substitute is a basic understanding of the psychology of persuasion.
A quick way to understand the power of the hypnosis layer is to consider how words carry their own emotional weight independent of the sentence. For example, the word “gun” puts your mind in an emotional state that “pillow” does not. The hypnotist puts greater weight on the emotional content of individual words than a normal writer might. As a reader, you will never be aware of this layer; all you will know is that you are having a positive reaction while you read.
That was your mini writing lesson for today. Please let me know if this topic interests you.
Update Notes:
Imagine how hard it is for a book editor to evaluate my first drafts. At that point in the process I have not fully layered on the humor, hypnosis, musicality, timing, or emotion. Editing a first draft means divorcing yourself from the question of how good it is. Normal humans can’t do that. The best editors can smell good writing before they see it.
Scott
Do you think local law enforcement can monitor all of your smartphone communications in real time? They can if they have this device. Scary.
And now Ford has technology for reading speed limit signs and adjusting your speed automatically. Other companies have auto-driving technology that keeps you between the lines on a road and away from the back bumper of the car ahead. Human driving skills are becoming less necessary by the minute.
And if you dislike touching germ-covered objects, relief might be coming with this technology.
@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)
@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)
My book on success: “I’m only about halfway through but can definitely highly recommend it to anyone, young and old. It’s a quick read…but who would have guessed that I’d be highlighting so much that I want to go back to?!“ - Sarah (Amazon 5-star review March 14, 2015)
Robots Read News of Utah Firing Squads
[Updated 3/26/15 with result]
Today I bring you a Robots Read News episode engineered to get a healthy number of “favorites” on Twitter but relatively few retweets. The hypothesis is that people enjoy dark humor but they are cautious about associating with it, and wisely so.
If your corporate firewall is blocking this, see it on Twitter at this link.
0 CommentsThe Uncanny Valley Hypothesis Applied to Negotiating Strategy
According to studies, men who negotiate for more money are not penalized for doing so, whereas women are heavily penalized for negotiating, even by other women.
So it is no surprise that men negotiate for raises more often than do women. The problem is exacerbated every time one changes jobs and has another opportunity to negotiate. And even small differences in pay create a wealth compounding effect that makes a huge impact over a lifetime.
So what is up with women not negotiating???
There are two popular hypotheses on why women are less inclined to negotiate.
1. Shyness
2. Negotiating is genuinely riskier for women.
Today I offer a new hypothesis on why women might be penalized for negotiating when men are not:
Women who negotiate in the style of men have an Uncanny Valley problem.
The Uncanny Valley concept comes from the field of robotics. The idea is that a robot that looks like a proper metal-and-plastic robot can be cute, but if you make an artificial creature that is a-a-a-almost exactly like a human, yet slightly different, the effect is horrifying. That’s why horror movies use zombies and ghosts more often than proper monsters. Nothing is more scary than a creature that is almost human but not quite.
When men negotiate the way society expects men to negotiate, the picture is entirely compatible with expectations. But when a woman negotiates in an assertive style we associate with men (to pick one example), I hypothesize that it causes an Uncanny Valley problem that is slightly repulsive to observers on some level. And one can imagine that impression carrying over after the negotiations are done.
If my hypothesis is correct, the “negotiating gap” will be tricky to solve because classic negotiating tactics are viewed as male-centric behaviors. So the question is whether there is an effective negotiating tactic for women that avoids stereotypes, avoids using sexuality, and avoids looking like stereotypical male behavior? Let me take a stab at that question.
For starters, I assume that a man who uses the wrong approach to negotiate also suffers a penalty. And it is easy to imagine that the man’s penalty for bad negotiating is less than a woman’s because society expects men to be aggressive jerks now and then. But since both men and women have the option to use good negotiating methods, once they understand them, let’s focus today on good form.
In my experience, good negotiators say some version of “This is what I can do for you. This is what I am worth. I have options that are better than your offer.” There might be some negotiating back-and-forth, but the basic set-up is the same. When someone makes a claim of market value, I focus on the accuracy of the claim, and that seems like an objective process albeit with imperfect information. If the guy in front of me is asking for more than I want to pay, it seems like the market’s fault, not his. Why would I have a bad attitude about someone asking for their market value?
In my personal experience, when women negotiate for pay their tactics often involve appeals to fairness, as in “Other people doing this job earn this amount, so I should too.” Speaking from my ivory tower in the halls of white, male privilege, I can tell you that any appeal to “fairness” is received as fighting words no matter the context. You might get a raise using those words, but I won’t ever trust you again. I will expect you to be looking for more “unfairness” everywhere, which will be a pain in my ass. And it feels manipulative. My first choice is to tell you the job is no longer available. And I would certainly feel the same if a man appealed to fairness. No, scratch that – I would judge a man more harshly for invoking “fairness” because it would seem, well, unmanly.
On the other hand, a simple claim of your market value, along with a direct or indirect suggestion that you have attractive alternatives puts me in a competitive frame of mind. But now I am competing with strangers to be the lucky one to hire you. I am not competing with you personally over some ill-defined concept of fairness.
See the difference? A good negotiator makes you fight with the invisible third-party of market forces. A bad negotiator makes the negotiations seem like a personal contest. My hypothesis is that women can get better negotiating results, without a lasting stigma, by using neutral language and appeals to third-party market forces. Men would get better results doing the same, but the penalty for being a jerk in negotiations is probably lower for men because it seems in character.
To be clear, I am not suggesting my observations on how men and women negotiate are universal. I am limiting my scope today to proposing a reasonable-sounding hypothesis worth testing. My background in hypnosis tells me that training both men and women to negotiate in language that is not “fighting words” is one of several ways society can chip away at the gender pay gap. This idea has the advantage of having no structural barriers to implementation.
Is the hypothesis worth testing?
Scott
In other news, this company is building a user interface to reprogram your brain to improve your mood. We need a name for the trend of computers programming humans because a lot more of that is coming. I don’t think society realizes how big a deal this is because it is the beginning of the end of the myth of “free will.” Once we can push a button and electrically rewire our minds and our moods, the notion of free will becomes too absurd to maintain.
@ScottAdamsSays (my dangerous tweets)
@Dilbert_Daily (Dilbert-related tweets)
My book on success: “Best book I’ve read in years” - 5-star review on Amazon.com, Andrew Chowning.
0 CommentsEngineering a Viral Result
I recently engineered a Robots Read News comic for maximum viral potential, using what I have learned on that topic, and succeeded. It was my most popular tweet. Can I repeat that success with the same formula? That is not clear. But I will share what I learned about creating viral content for Twitter so you judge for yourself.
Who is More Anti-Science?
[3/25/15 FINAL UPDATE and Verdict at end of post]
Against all odds, it appears my post last week on gender bias in the workplace has been accepted as “balanced” by both the feminist side and the Red Pill guys on Reddit. I am confident no one saw that coming.
[I scrubbed more bias out of it over the weekend based on critiques. Updates at the end of the piece.]
That was the first test of a “system” for curating debates with an eye toward removing bias. The key to making it work seems to be a willingness to include both sides, and to update as new information arrives. And it has to be done in public so folks see the work.
Can the system work again? Let’s test it. I will intentionally pick one of the most politicized (and absurd) debates, run it through our system, and see if it can wring most of the bias out.
The question is whether Republicans or Democrats are more “anti-science.” Obviously there are plenty of pro-science folks in both parties. So we will be dealing with comical stereotypes.
0 CommentsMetaFilter’s Finest Moment
My Verdict on Gender Bias in the Workplace
Background: In a recent post I expressed confusion and ignorance about gender bias in the workplace. I asked how it could be true that studies consistently show bias against woman while studies on pay gap do not reflect that bias (according to strangers on the the Internet). Clearly someone is wrong. But who? I had no idea.
So I declared a link war to get to the bottom of things. You sent me your links, and I will declare my verdict(s) today.
0 CommentsMy Best Tweets
I have been testing jokes and content over on Twitter at @ScottAdamsSays. I pulled together the most popular ones so you can see what types of content people respond to the best, at least from me. Is there a pattern?
Also, most of the Robots Read News experimental comics will appear there as well in case your corporate firewall is blocking this blog.
My Best Tweets (according to Twitter users)
0 CommentsTwo Wrongs Don’t Make a Right (You need way more wrongs than two)
Can a system convert bad thinking into good?
Have you seen the experiments in which strangers try to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar? The individual guesses are terrible, but when you take the average of those terrible guesses you end up with an estimate that is surprisingly accurate. Apparently that test can be repeated in a variety of ways.
0 Comments
