As a continuation of my previous post on Happiness, I’ll talk a little bit about Positive Psychology (PP) and the lessons we can learn, as writers, from this emerging field (perhaps in a way you might not predict, though.)
In 1998, the American Psychological Association’s then-president, Martin Seligman, used the term “Positive Psychology” to describe a new trend in Psychology research: the study of how humans become and stay happy. Dr. Seligman was tired of mental illness being the sole purpose of Psychology research and practice; He wanted Psychology to study more of what makes and keeps people happy instead of only mending the sick. PP has been the trending topic in Psych since then. Graduate students are clamoring to study topics like resiliency, decision-making, sense of control, character strength and uplifting traits. Journals publish more and more studies about the effects of “learned optimism.” Books like Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert are topping New York Times’ bestseller lists.
Like with all emerging fields, PP has its critics. The biggest and strongest critique of PP is that the field isn’t regulated. Any person can stick the term “Positive Psychologist” on the end of their name and claim to know how to apply the concepts that certified scientists and counselors developed. This means that every “life coach” kook is all over the Web promoting themselves as a “PP Counselor,” and no law or national certification program is barring them from doing so.
Another critique that is of lesser strength but more relevant to us as writers is the type of personality PP seems to attract. Those kooks on the internet and late-night infomercials are the most slimy of the bunch, but from an outsider’s view it does seem that the PP people have drunk the kool-aid. PP people are very gung-ho and tend to be exuberant evangelists for the field. The majority of them are do-gooders at heart; they want people to be happy and they think they’ve found science that can help.
Do you know a person like that? A person who stresses the positive so adamantly that it becomes unbelievable or in the very least, annoying? Your answer to this question will probably have more to do with your own place on the cynical scale than with the PP-type you’re remembering, but nonetheless let’s take a look at that character more closely. This person isn’t a snake-oil salesman; they are what I call a Believer. For reasons they usually aren’t too familiar with themselves, Believers truly feel that their solution is the answer to many people’s problems. How does a first encounter with a person like this go? What are you thinking? What would by-standers think as they listened to your conversation?
One thing about people who are enthusiastic about life is that they are usually magnetic. They light up a room, they are always surrounded by a crowd. People naturally gravitate toward other people who are happy and seem in control. But what happens when you get close enough to see that they are just trying a tiny bit too hard to be legitimate? What if the consistency or substance isn’t there? How does that character keep up the charade? How do you see it? How, if there is truly no substance, do you as a reader discover it? Will it be in the Believer’s frayed pant leg or missing button? Will it be in the quick glance down she makes after every human encounter? Just like the emerging field of PP, every character must have cracks in the armor. Even the Truest-Happiest-Believer-of-All-Things-Positive has a ding in the shield. What is it? Does the critique of that person’s belief-system hold water? Could the character make a journey over time to mend the damage?
You need both positive and negative forces in opposing characters for your novel or work of fiction to be memorable. Chart which side, positive or negative, your character will fall on. No middle ground. You can make a sliding scale (using a common measurement tactic from Psychology), but you still must divide the scale into two halves. The scale can have two of any extremes (e.g. Grape Jelly Fan vs Strawberry Jelly Fan), but you need to put each of your characters on that spectrum.
If PP had its way with your characters, they would test them on a variety of scales to diagnose current states and predict future behaviors. PP would look at self-efficacy (which is like “agency” – the ability and belief that one can accomplish tasks and goals on their own), resiliency (the ability to bounce back from trauma) and perhaps even sense of humor and daily laughter rates. The science behind PP is the same as a lot of Personality, Developmental, and Behavioral Psychology, they are just choosing to measure different traits. As writers, we tend to go into the dark sides of characters; It’s almost easier to write drama than it is to write pleasantries. But having no happy characters, or people who are optimists that promote achievement and satisfaction in others, isn’t giving your novel the opportunity for some significant conflicts.
***Wacko Wednesdays: Each Wednesday, I’ll outline a human quirk or phenomenon in the study of Personality Psychology, or perhaps talk about a specific type of research into personality. I’ll provide information, links, and my own experiences to help you along in your goals of writing memorable characters.***
Writers don’t write about mothers much. I was at a writing conference where the speaker asked the audience to call out something they’d read that examined the mother-child relationship. No-one spoke up. The speaker had made her point. The mother/child relationship is very complex and close to the heart. Even Disney likes to kill off moms so they don’t have to deal with trying to navigate those murky-mommy-issues waters. Fathers, on the other hand, abound in fiction. Father’s Day is this Sunday. Because we know all psychosis comes from our parents (not!), for today’s Wacko Wednesdays, let’s talk about at writing about the father/child relationship, or writing a character as a father.
For decades, psych research focused on the mother’s parenting as pathology for mental illness in children. More and more, researchers are looking at the father’s influence (especially with the area of girls and eating disorders). The father’s attitudes and behaviors toward parenting would influence your main character (MC). The father’s raising of your MC will probably all be backstory that happens offstage (i.e. not in the novel), but it is perhaps the most important character detail that fuels your MC’s current motivations. Let’s take a look at how some psych research examines how a father’s behaviors influence his children.
In the book, “The Role of the Father in Child Development” (.pdf of intro here), Editor Michael E. Lamb outlines the 3 areas that many researchers concentrate on when researching the father/child relationship: Engagement, Accessibility,andResponsibility.
“Whether and how much time fathers spend with their children are questions at the heart of much research conducted over the past three decades. In the mid-1970s a number of investigators sought to describe—often by detailed observation and sometimes also through detailed maternal and paternal reports—the extent of paternal interactions with children (Pleck & Masciadrelli, this volume; Lamb & Lewis, this volume). Many of these researchers have framed their research around the three types of paternal involvement (engagement, accessibility, responsibility) described by Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine (1987). As Pleck and Masciadrelli note, researchers have consistently shown that fathers spend much less time with their children than do mothers. In two-parent families in which mothers are unemployed, fathers spend about one-fourth as much time as mothers in direct interaction or engagement with their children, and about a third as much time being accessible to their children. Many fathers assume essentially no responsibility (as defined by participation in key decisions, availability at short notice, involvement in the care of sick children, management and selection of alternative child care, etc.) for their children’s care or rearing, however, and the small subgroup of fathers who assume high degrees of responsibility has not been studied extensively. Average levels of paternal responsibility have increased over time, albeit slowly, and there appear to be small but continuing increases over time in average levels of all types of paternal involvement.”
Engagement, Accessibility and Responsibility are the three things you can think about when forming your character.
Engagement: How “hands-on” was your MC’s father when she was small? Was he a good guy but had a job that took him away often? Did he just seem like he was yelling everytime he spoke to his kids, but he was just trying to encourage them?
Accessibility: Could your MC bring any question under the sun to her dad or was she relegated to communicating with him through his secretary? Did he send the MC off to boarding school and say “See ya at Christmas?” Was there always a DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door, but he was very attentive at dinner time?
Responsibility: Did your MC’s father support his family well? Was he a good earner but a fierce disciplinarian? Was he a drinker but loved his family with all his heart? Was he a drifter that constantly told his kids to reach for the stars?
Look for ways you can build in contradictions in each of these areas, then think about how a kid would reconcile those inconsistencies. How we judge people is a lot of our character. A father’s personality greatly influences our sense of judgment. In flat characterizations, fathers are either no-good bums or unsung heroes, drinking louses or quiet loyalists. Usually a main character (MC) comes to acknowledge the father’s cheating ways or learns to appreciate the constant wisdom that they couldn’t recognize before. It’s all so cheesy and cheap. Try to go for some more depth. What kind of roles does the father character in your book play? What kind of parent is he? Is he a stand-offish, everyone-has-to-learn-for-themselves kind of guy or is he a soccer dad that is with his kids every step of the way? How can he be both? What generation is he in? Is he a 70-year-old but a modern diaper-changing/sling-wearing dad? Was he raised to think he’d let the kids grow up before he had any kind of relationship with them, even though he’s just 20 years old?
Take those three aspects of measuring fatherhood, Engagement, Accessibility and Responsibility, and mix and match good and bad characteristics of each. Make the father character a conflicted, true-hearted, complicated being that marked your MC with distinctive world views. Happy Father’s Day, to all of those dads out there!
***After a long hiatus, Wacko Wednesdays are back! Each Wednesday, I’ll outline a human quirk or phenomenon in the study of Personality Psychology. I’ll provide information, links, and my own experiences to help you along in your goals of writing memorable characters.***
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -United States Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 4th 1776.
Happy Muffin!
Happiness research has taken the Psychology world by storm. If you search any book site for the word “Happiness,” you will see a plethora of books written on the subject. Lately I’ve been reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It’s academic research and theory about attaining happiness and how our judgment about what will make us happy in the future is ridiculously skewed by our present thinking.
This book and the advent of other titles in the positive psychology area have inspired me to think about how we, as writers, paint the picture of our characters’ states of happiness. By looking at your MC and her goals in terms of her motivations and methods of attaining happiness, you can paint a deeper picture of what drives us all.
I’m sure you are familiar with the basic story arc: Main character (MC) starts out with a status quo, then challenges galore are thrown at the MC, lots of roadblocks stand in the way of achieving the new happiness goal, MC overcomes, is a changed person. The end. Today for Wacko Wednesdays I’ll run down two phenomena that researchers, namely David Myers, have identified as influencing a person’s happiness, namely Relative Deprivation and Adaptation.
Phenomenon #1: Relative Deprivation
“when we compare ourselves with those less fortunate, we can, however, increase our satisfaction. As comparing ourselves with those better-off creates envy, so comparing ourselves with those less well-off boosts contentment.” -David Myers
Lately I’ve been reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a classic piece of American literature that portrays a devastatingly poor family and their survival struggles in 1900’s New York. It’s actually making me feel quite good.
Yes I know that sounds bad. But here it is: My husband, my two kids and I live in the smallest house in our neighborhood. We live on my husband’s salary as I’m a full-time mom, but we truly have more than enough. Still, this suburban life and the American consumerism gets to everybody. We are inundated with ads to buy more stuff, we read stories of neighbors’ huge home improvements, we hear kids describing their African safari vacations. It’s an affluent area and it seems, at times, that we aren’t keeping up with the Joneses.
The unfortunate Nolan family portrayed in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, truly has nothing. When they mention clothes, they mean one pair of pants and one shirt for a man and one dress for a woman. Can you imagine? I look at my closet full of plain, solid-colored Old Navy t-shirts and feel loaded (wealthy, not drunk). When the Nolan family mentions meals, they mean oatmeal with no milk or fruit. I open the freezer each morning and lazily wonder which hunk of meat I have to make that night. While they want for decent immune systems, we struggle to fight our ever-expanding waistlines. This book makes me feel so fortunate that I may start it all over again once I’m finished! This is Relative Deprivation at work. How rich you feel is totally dependent on who you are comparing yourself to. Compared to the Nolans (or many real people in this economy), my husband and I are doing great! Compared to our friends the doctors, with their big house and insanely lavish vacations, we’re struggling.
photo by Drawsome on Flickr
What do most good ol’ Amurrricanz do when they feel like they are poorer than everyone else? Apparently they buy lottery tickets. Recent research has shown the Relative Deprivation phenomenon in full-swing in lottery ticket buyers. If people are feeling deprived, they make the trip to the local bodega to pick up their Pick 6’s. If they feel better off than their neighbors, they don’t buy lottery tickets.
Here are the questions you can ask yourself about your MC’s Relative Deprivation feelings: Is she better or worse off than her neighbors, peers, family members? When does she feel better off and when does she feel worse? What makes her feel superior? What kinds of behaviors result from those feelings? How does she make herself feel better in the short term? Does she eat? Does she steal their watches? Does she retreat into her packed charity-ball schedule? How does her current state of feeling deprived influence her dreams for the future? Does she coast when she feels affluent or better off in some other way? Coasting is what most of us do once we achieve a certain goal or milestone. That brings us to Adaptation.
Phenomenon #2. Adaptation
“I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.” ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly
Adaptation is what happens when a person has hit a windfall, achieved a goal, or just plain got lucky when that Good Samaritan pulled him out of the path of that oncoming bus. We adapt to having an inheritance, being a college graduate, or being alive to wander into the bus lane again. The “new” becomes the “same old.” Lottery winners, on average, aren’t significantly happier than the rest of us when they are surveyed 5 years later. We dream about California living but apparently Californians register on the same levels in happiness scales as the rest of us. (See Daniel Gilbert’s book). We adapt to the new status quo.
When my husband and I moved from Center City to the house in the suburbs, we didn’t see it as the smallest one in the neighborhood. We saw it as huge and wondered how we’d ever fill it with furniture. We had just moved from a trinity on Naudain street, banging our heads each time we came down the skinny and treacherous spiral staircase. The kitchen in that all-stacked-on-top-of-each-other house was tiny and there was no room for the baby I was carrying. But that house on Naudain was a palace compared to our 3rd-floor walk-up at 18th and Pine. Now we are here in the suburbs for almost 10 years, we’ve lost our coveted and elusive guest bedroom to a second child, and we’d like to upgrade to a food processor and a breadmaker if we had the space in our now-tiny kitchen. We’ve adapted. I can read a thousand tragic poverty books (Angela’s Ashes is next), but try as I might, I can’t roll back my “want” clock to the days when we were two grad students living in a 1st-floor alley apartment. Since that hole-in-the-wall had no light, I simply dreamed of having a view of the street.
Here are some questions about Adaptation that you can ask yourself about your MC: Has she had a windfall of luck lately (e.g., landed that dream job, attracted a super-hero boyfriend, or inherited large sums from an obscure aunt)? What happens to her after? Does she adapt and want more? Does desire for more turn into a disease that will be her undoing? When is the exact point where she takes her new life for granted? Does she ever grow enough to notice? Does she freak out, donate her lottery winnings to a bald-cat nursing home and flee to the Himalayas to live a life of solitude? Or, like most of us, does she just treat herself to a 1-million-calorie Frappuccino that week?
In their very basic structure, all of the archetypes and character journeys center around some kind of resolution, some little bit of happiness. Characters are going after a goal; the pursuit and the accomplishment will, they think, make them happy in some way. The goal could be revenge, it could be love, it could be fifty-two cents. They achieve the goal. Everything is coming up roses and they are turning up noses. But then they adapt. Showing your character’s general state of happiness before, during and after the accomplishment of her main goal will help to give life to her and her story. In daily life, we may overlook details, but in general we are conscious to our own state of happiness. The pursuit of happiness drives us. It will drive your character, too. Show us her struggles to reach her personal happiness. Be brave and show us what life looks like for her after she gets all she (thought she) wanted. Be honest with yourself and your characters. As writers, we are obligated to speak the unspoken truth, especially in our fiction. Mix in a little rough Relative Deprivation and astonishing Adaptation, and your writing will come alive.
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And of course stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Have no fear if your IQ score in 2nd grade was less than ideal! Don’t worry if your main character is a dud! Below are some interesting skills that can liven up any party, fictional or non!
My husband Gary and I have a friend (who we haven’t seen in a while) named Dave. We met Dave in college. Dave was a very short and slight guy with a personality bigger than a house. Dave was bubbly and he loved everything and everybody. Besides the incredible penchant for enjoying life, Dave seemed like your typical college student. He hung out with us, drank beer, played pool (and lost miserably but never cared) and stressed over term papers. Everything was copacetic.
Until one day Dave announced that he was getting a part-time job at the McDonald’s on campus. That in itself didn’t seem so bad, but then Dave enthusiastically announced that he asked for the first shift. A cry of disbelief rose from the room of friends. “DUDE! That means you’ll have to get up at like, 4 AM in the MORNING!” Dave brushed off our warnings of sure failure and happily started his job at MickeyD’s, sometimes leaving the house before the sun rose. We all gave him a week.
(this is a re-write of a post I did back in November of 2007, which was deleted)
Researchers love to look at deviant behavior. These are the things we do that fall outside the “normal” range of how most people usually act. Sociology and Psychology scientists eat up odd human behavior like the desert does rain: they can’t ever get enough of it.
Sometimes your fiction needs a character with a secret. Deviant behavior is a great place to start building that secret life for your character. A deviant behavior with a lot of potential is Body Modification. An abundance of research exists about body modification, so there are many different character traits to consider. Many forms of body modification can stay hidden to your character’s family and friends. The modification can add a plotline that can go many different ways. E.g., if you are stumped because your choir girl Bess is too straight-laced (and boring) to steal the church collection plate (which you need her to do), then give her a secret life (a.k.a. subplot) filled with tattoo parlors and hidden piercings. An Iron Maiden tattoo just above her genitals would add a bit of flavor to Miss Frumpy Solo Soprano now wouldn’t it?
Originally used solely for tribal rituals around the world, tattoos and piercings have leaked into the mainstream culture. But it’s still a minority of people in that avidly participate in the sub-culture surrounding body modification. This makes tattoos and pierces perfect fodder for secretly scandalous Bess.
People who engage in body manipulation are saying something about who they are and how they want to be seen, even if the tattoo or pierce is in a place where the sun don’t shine. Bess knows the story behind the Maiden tat and it’s up to you, the author, to decide whether or not she reveals it to Reverend Bobby (who was *ahem* expecting a virgin) and your readers.
Is one of your characters a closeted body manipulator? Perhaps a tattoo scene is warranted in one of your plotlines. It can be humorous or serious, just make sure it gives your reader some insight into your character’s views of herself. Even a slight mention of a tattoo or extra pierce when you are describing your character’s physical appearance may lend just enough mystery and depth to your character to keep your readers engaged. Everyone loves to hear a good tattoo story, so they’ll keep reading if they think one is coming.
But be warned: If you mention the tattoo, you MUST tell the story behind it. There’s an old adage credited to the Russian writer Anton Chekhov: “If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.” A character’s tattoo is the present-day version of Checkov’s gun. In other words, don’t focus your reader’s attention on something unless they need to know it in order to figure out the story (or psychoanalyze the character). Disobey this law and your deserted inbox will be drowning in aggravated reader emails for 40 days and 40 nights.
Speaking of which… Bess’s Maiden tattoo: what do YOU think the story is?
For three years, I lived in a third floor walkup apartment in a lovely 7-unit brownstone building at 18th and Pine. Most of us renters were in our twenties and early thirties except “Ellen”, a woman in her late 50’s. Ellen seemed a bit strange but she was friendly and a good neighbor. We all knew each other pretty well.
Ellen, like me and half of Philadelphia, worked at the University of Pennsylvania. One night we both had worked late and ended up on the same Center City shuttle. I sat down with her and began chatting away. Ellen was more shy and reserved than normal.
Our stop came and Ellen hustled to get out of the shuttle (which, I understood perfectly – those shuttle drivers think South Street is the Autobahn). After tugging my bag free from the overstuffed masses on the shuttle, I had to jog a bit to catch up with paunchy, middle-aged Ellen, who was booking it and clutching her purse the same way I hold Peeps at Easter. Just quirky Ellen being Ellen, I thought. It was pretty dark. To help her feel more comfortable on the 2 block walk home, I continued chatting in lower tones. Ellen would nod nervously.
We arrived at the front door. Ellen’s knuckles were white around her keys. I could feel her anxiety skyrocket when I stepped up behind her, readying myself to hold the very heavy door for her. That’s when she said it.
As a continuation of my previous post on Happiness, I’ll talk a little bit about Positive Psychology (PP) and the lessons we can learn, as writers, from this emerging field (perhaps in a way you might not predict, though.)
Tags: annoying optimist, book, character, fiction, how to write, is positive psychology a cult, learned optimism, novel, posi, positive psychology, Right-in, writing character, Writing Exercises 
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