Creating content that puts smiles on the readers’ faces can be very challenging. Not only is humor very subjective but you also need to know how to use just the right dose. This doesn’t mean that you are facing an impossible task. It means that you’ll need to add a bit of strategy to your creativity.
Depending on the type of content you want to produce, there are different ways of incorporating humor. For some inspiration and motivation, the following five ways of incorporating humor in your writing will give you some helpful ideas.
How to do it without overdoing it?
What you need to understand about humor is that not everyone finds the same jokes funny. That is actually not your problem, but what can be your problem is if you cross the line and offend your readers.
So, how to avoid such an inconvenience?
Here are some don’ts that you should keep in mind before you risk getting chased with pitchforks and torches:
Racism
Sexism
Putdowns
Dark humor
Corny, used-up jokes
Bashing your competition
Now that we know what type of humor should be avoided, let’s get to the useful tricks.
1. The joke is on you
Show your readers that you are not a sensitive little flower and that you can handle a good joke. According to a study (HSQ; Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003), people who make themselves the butt of their own jokes actually demonstrate greater levels of happiness and self-assurance.
Self-deprecation is a safe choice, meaning that you won’t risk offending anyone and you’ll portray yourself as a confident individual.
Who knows you better than yourself? Take all those funny and cringy stories, stereotypes, and flaws and use them in your writing.
There is more to it than just making people laugh by joking about yourself. Readers will be able to relate and create a connection with you if you open up. It shows that you are honest and willing to accept your flaws.
Of course, if you don’t feel comfortable with this type of humor don’t force it. It is important that you truly feel good about yourself and are ready to share with the world some of your embarrassing stories and insecurities.
This stupid hospital gown is riding up my ass. I try to pull it down and it snaps right back up like a window shade. I cross my legs and suddenly I’m Sharon Stone.
When using comparison it is crucial that you use situations that are generally known or popular. Like Robert did with Sharon’s famous scene in Basic Instinct.
Writers are used to using comparisons and metaphors in various styles so this shouldn’t be a difficult challenge.
Just think through what depicts the situation that you want to describe. Is it painful, sexual, embarrassing? Then brainstorm and wait until something valuable comes to your mind. It should just come instinctively.
3. Get playful with words
Jazz up your writing with simple word twisting or word tweaks. Whether you want to use the already existing ones or make something up, it is up to you. The choices are endless.
For example, what do you find to be funnier skedaddle or hurry? A promiscuous man or a mimbo?
Using simple but funny words will give a humorous tone to seemingly ordinary sentences.
You can even make some of your own word combinations. Go wild and come up with new words that can add that something extra to your writing. Who knows, maybe it will even end up in a dictionary one day. Dare to dream!
4. Go big or go home
A little exaggeration can’t hurt anyone, can it? This has always been a popular technique among comics and humor writers and for a good reason.
There are writers who base their work on exaggeration. Just look at the work of Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize winner for humor writing. He is the master of exaggeration, but don’t take my word for it. Let his work speak for himself:
Eugene is located in western Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything.
I have been a gigantic Rolling Stones fan since approximately the Spanish-American War.
If you were to open up a baby’s head – and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should – you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.
It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells … to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.
Is this enough to convince you?
5. Get down to details
Besides helping the readers to really picture what you are describing, including all the small details can sprinkle some humor on any situation.
Think about these two examples:
She was holding an old, rag doll.
She was holding what seemed to be an old, rag doll. However, it was more like a yellow ball of fabric with two black-ish patches for the eyes and a crooked smile (maybe it had a stroke, who am I to judge).
The more details you give, the scene will look more absurd and comical. Really picture all the little things that make that specific thing what it is.
I’m not saying that generalization can’t be funny, but when you really get down to specifics that is when things get spicy.
Joke ahead!
Hopefully, the above-mentioned tips have given you some inspiration and ideas on how to add that humorous effect to your writing.
It is up to you in which direction you will go, but as long as you don’t hold back, I’m sure that you will manage to create something great and worthy of every laugh.
What’s the funniest piece you ever wrote? Is it published on a website or on your blog? If so, link to it and share it with us in the comments below!
How intimately do you know the blank, virginal screen?
Do you have a love-hate relationship with it?
On the one hand are many writing options, waiting to unfold.
On the other, a dread of the unknown that freezes your fingers.
And always, that vast, nagging question: what shall I write about?
Take heart!
You’re surrounded by brilliant writing ideas waiting only for you to grab them and transform them into riveting pieces.
Whether you write a blog, fiction, or non-fiction, inspiration is all around you. Here are some ways to make your daily life an endless source of writing ideas.
1. Mix Up Topics
Interesting things happen when you choose a topic you care deeply about, and then combine it with something completely outside your experience.
For example, perhaps you are pro-life, with strong opinions about abortion. Let’s combine that with something you know absolutely nothing about. Say, motorcycles.
You could write a book about the member of a motorcycle gang whose girlfriend is pregnant. She doesn’t want the baby; he already visualizes it developing in her womb.
When the baby is born, she disappears into the smog, and the biker is determined to raise the child himself. He wants his son to experience the world as he never had the opportunity to do. So he sets off on a journey across the country with his toddler.
This can be a heartwarming novel, a hopeless tragedy, or even a comedy. It’s up to you. The possibilities are endless, even within this one scenario.
2. Be a News Hog
The news offers exciting possibilities.
Make a habit of reading about what’s going on around you, especially the slice-of-life articles. You can build on these stories, making them your own.
Some ways of doing that are:
Imagine where the story could go next, and create a new ending of your own.
Imagine alternative beginnings to the story. What could be the background of the characters involved?
Change one major detail in the story. How would it impact the story? What new possibilities would that create?
Last week I read about two burglars who broke into a private residence and stole jewelry worth thousands of dollars. Did they get away with it?
No.
They were quickly apprehended because one of the felons was caught staring straight into the house’s security camera, revealing his unmasked face.
This seems to be an open-and-shut case. And yet, it made me wonder…
The burglars were obviously experienced. They broke into the house without a problem, and they searched it systematically for valuable goods. It was clearly not their first job.
So what caused the rookie mistake of not wearing face masks?
Could it be that the burglar caught on camera was distracted as he was making his preparations for the robbery, and so forgot to cover his face? What could have distracted him? Was it a subliminal desire to quit this dark line of work?
What made him go into house-breaking in the first place? And how did he feel when he looked directly into the camera, and probably realized he was in trouble? Why not try to deactivate the camera or find out where it was transmitting to?
Don’t get me wrong.
The true answers to these questions are probably boring: he was becoming overconfident after a long run of successful jobs and forgot to cover his face, or some such thing.
But the possible answers are much more interesting. I can almost feel the conspiracy thickening around this man.
Or maybe it’s a comedy of errors?
What would you make of his circumstances?
3. Capture Your Dreams
Dreams can be a fertile ground for inspiration. They are the essence of imagination run amok.
Your sleeping mind thinks up ideas that your waking mind might reject before you’ve even had a chance to register them.
These ideas can be precious writing material.
Your dreams are a gold mine, but so are other people’s dreams. When friends, family and strangers tell you about their dreams, that’s your chance to listen carefully.
A friend of mine received the inspiration for her entire novel from a dream her husband had. (Her story wasn’t based on his dream, but relied on the unreal atmosphere it created.)
Children’s dreams, in particular, are rich and free of filters. For example, your son’s dream about purple, diesel-drinking plants may inspire you to write the environmentally sympathetic version of The Day of the Triffids. How cool is that?
4. What If?
This is probably my favorite question ever. I turn to it whenever I’m out of ideas.
What if time travel were possible? Where would my character go?
What if three sisters decided to assassinate a tyrannical African despot? How would they do it?
What if my husband decided that we should buy a motorhome and live on the roads for a year?
Try it!
Put together a long list of what-ifs.
There’s nothing more liberating for the imagination than that little two-word phrase.
5. Journaling—The Straight Way
Keeping a journal of your thoughts, feelings and experiences can help you capture great ideas from your own life.
These will set you on the road to journaling success. And great story ideas.
6. Journaling—With a Twist
What if you hate journaling? What if you think your life isn’t interesting enough to write about?
Well, make your life more interesting!
What is a writer if not an astute liar, at the end of the day?
Start with the truth—always a good place—and then embroider.
Suppose you stood in a long checkout where the sales person was rude and obnoxious. In truth, you may have done nothing but await your turn, bear it, gather your groceries, and leave.
But what would you like to have done?
Don’t write the truth. Fantasize, fabricate, lie. Re-create yourself as a character you’d like to read about.
And think how surprised and impressed your children or grandchildren will be when they discover your journal!
Life is full of opportunities. Don’t let them pass you by!
Try one of the exercises above and see where it takes you. Make it a habit to do a few exercises every day and you’ll never again lack writing inspiration.
What do you do when you’re looking for fresh writing ideas? Share in the comments, please, and help inspire others as well!
The biggest enemy any writer faces is one’s self and often appears as writer’s block.
If left untreated, it can be devastating to your output and your writing career. Nobody wants that, so let’s solve this problem!
Maybe you’ve heard of writers who get up every morning and put paws to the keyboard for an hour or two before breakfast. These are the people who churn out three or four novels a year like it was nothing (it’s not, of course). If you’re not doing the same, your gut reaction is likely to be jealous – crazy jealous.
How do they do that anyway? Do they add a magic potion to their morning coffee? Do the writing gods live in the spare bedroom of these high producers? Are they directly related to King Midas so every book they publish turns to gold?
It’s an entertaining notion to think successful people are born with innate talent that you don’t have. That lets you off the hook and justifies your complaining.
But it doesn’t get your book written.
If you suffer from any kind of writer’s block, you know all too well it’s a real thing. Sometimes it feels like a writer’s wall that is so high all the ideas on the other side are trapped there, forever out of your reach.
Unleash the genius one block at a time
Writer’s block doesn’t have to be forever.
Seth Godin makes the bold assertion that he never has writer’s block. To him, writing is another form of talking, and he is never at a loss for words.
If you’re an introvert, that might not comfort you much.
The truth is, words are readily available. You just have to reach out and grab them. The Muse loves the chase, and you can’t catch her by complaining about not being able to catch her.
In this post, you’ll learn how to hunt her down and make her do your bidding.
First, let’s identify the common blocks we writers face every time we sit at our desks.
Perfectionism. “If it’s not perfect, it’s not worth doing,” you might say to yourself.
Really? What is “perfect” anyway? Compared to what?
Everybody’s definition of perfect is different.
Aim to be effective instead.
Procrastination. “I’ll get started writing the moment this episode of Game of Thrones is over.” Or right after you unload the dryer. Or as soon as you wake up tomorrow.
The longer you wait, the easier it is not to start at all.
When you finish reading this post, you’ll face every blank page with confidence.
Fear. Someone might criticize you. Someone else might leave a nasty comment. Or worse, nobody will read your work at all.
Fear makes you freeze. Breathing is hard, and thinking becomes impossible. Except for worst case scenarios. Amazingly, you can come up with an endless supply of those.
What if you could blast past all your fears and tap into the writing genius inside you? What would that do for your production? Your confidence? How would the quality of your writing improve?
Forget about fear for 30 minutes a day
When we don’t want to do something, we do something else.
The dishes are piled up in the sink. But it’s been a long day and you’re tired. So you watch an episode or two of Black Mirror on Netflix. After that, you’ll feel more like dealing with the dirty dishes.
But you fall asleep on the couch instead.
What if you just went into the kitchen right after dinner and loaded the dishwasher before you plop onto the couch? Sure, it’s not fun dealing with the dishes. But it won’t be later either. Just get it over with.
When you’re done, you can rest in peace.
Dorothea Brande taught writers to get up and spend the first 30 minutes of the day writing “as fast as you can.” She gave that advice in 1934 and it as sound today as it was then.
Why did she recommend writers do this?
Because for those 30 minutes, you’re focusing on writing and nothing else. You’re ignoring everything in the universe besides putting words on paper. Call it freewriting, a stream of consciousness, a brain dump, or whatever you want.
How to make freewriting work for you today
It might sound crazy to have rules for “free” writing. But there are a few important ones.
And don’t worry, they won’t hamper your creativity at all.
First, set a timer. It can be for 5 minutes or 5 hours. You choose. If you’re just starting out, 5-10 minutes is plenty of time.
You might want to use the first 5 minutes to warm up your writing muscles. You can write about anything you want:
What you dreamed about last night.
The weather yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
How sleepy you still feel.
How stupid this seems.
How much you enjoyed watching Black Mirror last night.
The point is you’ll be putting words on paper. Set the timer again for 10 or 20 minutes and you can get more focused. Start with a prompt and write whatever comes to mind about it.
Second, don’t edit as you go. Please. You’ll be using both sides of your brain at once. That’s like drawing a picture, and erasing it at the same time.
The main reason you don’t want to edit while you write is that you risk wiping the flavor out of it. Try this instead. Write for 30 minutes or an hour. Take a break. Go walk. Load the dishwasher. Watch an episode of Breaking Bad. After you’ve put some space between you and your writing, then come back with a less critical eye.
Maybe you can even pretend your best friend wrote it.
Third, make sure you’re totally isolated when you write. Turn off the internet. Don’t answer the phone. Turn off the TV. Let your loved ones know not to bother you because it’s “writing time.”
If you need noise, listen to your favorite music. Just make sure it puts you into a peak state so you write something awesome.
When the timer stops, you have to stop, too.
If you can’t, I say keep going until you exhaust your idea mill.
If there’s one rule you can break, this is it.
Fourth, set a time limit for editing, too. Why edit forever? The more you slice away, the blander your writing becomes. Decide what you want to achieve and edit for that. Leave the spice in.
Proofreading doesn’t count as editing. Of course, you should do that, too. Fix the typos and read your work aloud. Does it sound human and conversational?
Perfect.
And I mean perfect by anyone’s standard.
Especially the reader’s.
In the end, the reader’s opinion is the most important one.
Now go pour out your soul on paper
We don’t want another “me, too” writer. We want you at your gloriously imperfect best. Entertain us with your wit. Dazzle us with your insights. Be bold in your creativity and share the story only you can tell.
If you’re not freewriting already, today is the day to begin.
If you are, share your experience in the comments. Pass this post to your friends who struggle with writer’s block. Let’s start a movement of creative geniuses changing the world with their words!
One of the most challenging parts of being a writer is keeping things fresh. You always need new ideas and new things to write about.
Staying inspired can be tough.
Thankfully, you have access to unlimited writing inspiration when you look to your own life. Your life is full of inspiration, you just have to know how to uncover it.
Before you read the rest of this post, I highly recommend you grab a notebook and a pen. You’re going to start digging right now.
Ready?
Here are 5 ways to mine your life for writing inspiration:
1) Write A Sentence A Day
You’ve heard of keeping a scrapbook or photo book of memories, right? Well this is a similar thing, only you write the memory down.
Grab a notebook or journal and put it by your bed. Then right before you go to sleep every night, write one to two sentences about your day. Be sure to add the date for reference purposes.
This is an opportunity for you to reflect on your day and keep track of key moments in your life.
Here are some ideas for what to write down:
The best thing that happened to you that day
The worst thing that happened
What you learned
Your favorite moment of the day
A memory from that day you want to remember
What you did that was fun
Something that inspired you
Do this consistently for several months and when you look back you’ll have a collection of memories you can expand on for your writing.
2) Keep Track of Your “Most” Moments
You know your “most” moments? Everyone has them.
The most inspiring thing that’s ever happened to you. The most fun you’ve ever had. The most afraid you’ve ever been. The most happy. The most loved you’ve ever felt.
I can keep going, but I think you get my point. We all have “most” moments in our lives and these moments are ripe for writing inspiration.
Grab your notebook and write “My Most Moments” at the top of the page. Then make a list of all the “most” moments you can think of from your life.
Add to the list when another “most” moment happens or when something bumps another “most” moment from its spot on the list.
Refer back to this list anytime you need writing inspiration.
3) Recall the Transformations You’ve Made
If you’re alive, you’ve grown at some point in your life. Growth is the basis of making a transformation.
And transformations are perfect inspiration for your writing.
When you make a transformation, there’s always something you learned or got out of it, and that’s what makes good writing. There’s also a potential “how to” in there.
Get your notebook out, open to a new page and then divide the page into three columns, vertically.
At the top of the left column write, “Transformations I’ve made.” At the top of the middle column, write, “How I did it.” At the top of the right column, write, “What I learned.”
For example, did you lose 100 pounds? What specific steps did you take to do that? What did you learn from making that transformation? Write that all down in the designated columns.
Readers want to be inspired, entertained, educated or all three. Writing about a transformation you’ve made, how you did it and what you learned is a great way to deliver all three of those things.
4) List Out the Lessons You’ve Learned
Piggybacking off the transformations you’ve made, I’m sure there are all kinds of lessons you’ve learned over the course of your life from what you’ve experienced and been through. Well, that’s all writing inspiration too.
Grab your notebook again. Open to a new page and then draw a line down the center of the page, vertically.
At the top of the left column, write “Lessons I’ve Learned.” At the top of the right column, write “How I Learned This Lesson.”
Take some time to brainstorm the lessons you’ve learned, along with how you learned them.
For example, did you learn that “you have to stand up for yourself” after being in a relationship where you never stood up for yourself? Write that lesson in the left column and the specifics about “how you learned it” in the right column. Now you have a lesson along with a story you can write to inspire your reader.
I recommend spending some serious time on this one. We often forget how much we’ve learned in our lives and how we learned it. This is a simple way to keep track of that stuff and have a well of inspiration for your writing.
5) Think Back On Experiences You’ve Had
The final way to mine your life for writing inspiration is to think back on the things you’ve experienced. You’ve done things, been places and met people who are worth writing about.
Grab your notebook one more time. At the top of the page, write: “Experiences I’ve Had.” Then make a list of all the experiences you’ve had that stand out to you.
For example, maybe you met the love of your life while standing in line for coffee. Write that down. Maybe you traveled the world for a month and experienced a wide array of places and cultures. Write that down.
We often discount our experiences and consider them “normal” or “average” because we’re the ones experiencing them. Yet so many people have never done what you have, which means your experiences are worth writing about and sharing with others.
Whether you’re writing a blog post, a memoir, a personal essay or even fiction, mining your life for inspiration is the perfect way to always have something to write about.
Now that you have a few ideas on how to mine your life for writing inspiration, well, then, let’s get to it!
Jobs are as important for our characters as they are for real people. A character’s career might be their dream job or one they’ve chosen due to necessity. In your story, they might be trying to get that job or are already working in the field. Whatever the situation, as with any defining aspect for your character, you’ll need to do the proper research to be able to write that career knowledgeably.
Enter the Occupation Thesaurus. Here, you’ll find important background information on a variety of career options for your character. In addition to the basics, we’ll also be covering related info that relates to character arc and story planning, such as sources of conflict (internal and external) and how the job might impact basic human needs, thereby affecting the character’s goals. It’s our hope that this thesaurus will share some of your research burden while also giving you ideas about your character’s occupation that you might not have considered before.
Occupation: Professional athlete
Overview: Professional athletes play a sport for a living. They make money off of ticket sales, medals and top placements they receive in sporting events, endorsements, corporate sponsorships, grants, merchandising, book sales, and by working part-time jobs to cover the bills. While most athletes don’t reach the millionaire level of fame and fortune that star players do, many can make a living as long as they stay healthy and on top of their game.
While much of an athlete’s time is dedicated to practicing their sport, their workday might also be spent reviewing footage of past performances, analyzing an opponent’s practices, working out, adhering to a fastidious diet regime, participating in promotional activities, and attending meetings with agents, coaches, and team members. Players of certain sports can live where they want and travel to and from sporting events. Athletes who can be traded at the whim of management may need to relocate multiple times throughout their career.
Necessary Training: Professional athletes only reach their level of skill through extreme discipline and years of diligent practice. Many work with private coaches to speed up the learning curve. Most athletes begin playing their sport as a child and continue honing their abilities through high school and college. While some athletes begin their professional careers directly after high school, most are drafted out of college, so they must have the academic foundation to get into a university and succeed there as they wait for the right opportunity to arrive.
Sources of Friction: A nagging or career-ending injury, having a bad day when an important scout is present, negative social media interactions being resurrected and tainting one’s reputation, trusting the wrong people (a greedy agent, friends who are only interested in one’s fame or money), failing a drug test, being replaced by a younger and more talented athlete, pressure (internal and external) to perform and succeed, a crisis of confidence, being traded and having to move one’s family to a new location, falling into temptation while on the road (one night stands, drugs, etc.), an unfavorable change in management or coaching staff, a coach that plays favorites, making poor choices with one’s vast amount of money, being accused of sexual harassment or fathering someone’s child, being sexually harassed on tour, losing a key sponsor or endorsement opportunity
People They Might Interact With: Teammates, competitors, coaches, agents and managers, personal trainers, nutritionists, doctors, physical therapists, fans
How This Occupation Might Impact One’s Basic Needs:
Esteem and Recognition: An athlete who is unable to deal well with the constant criticism inherent with this career may quickly find their self-esteem bottoming out.
Love and Belonging: Athletes who have to travel a lot or move away temporarily from family members may find it hard to maintain loving and loyal romantic relationships.
Safety and Security: Most career athletes last less than 20 years in their sport due to injury (this varies, depending on the sport). Career-ending and dangerous injuries, such as concussions and the like, can present a safety threat for professional athletes.
Physiological Needs: Athletes have been killed while competing, so while it’s unusual, it is a possibility.
Common Work-Related Settings: Airplane, airport, archery range, black-tie event, bowling alley, fitness center, golf course, green room, gymnasium, hotel room, house party, mansion, marina, outdoor skating rink, penthouse suite, skate park, ski resort, sporting event stands
Twisting the Fictional Stereotype: Stories about athletes typically involve the underdog hero going up against the well-funded, well-connected, legacy-type antagonist. Keep this in mind and switch up your characters to bring something fresh to the page.
Also consider the sport your protagonist will pursue. Popular sports are, well, popular for story fodder, but what about the less-romanticized activities? Sports like skeet shooting, equestrian dressage, fencing, wrestling, rowing, and paralympic events can provide the same competitive and stressful environment while allowing you to cover new ground for readers.
Writers Write is your one-stop writing resource. Writers can use this list of 101 sci-fi tropes to add some Zap! to their writing.
Science Fiction is the computer geek of the fantasy genre. It is also filled with tropes.
What is a trope?
A trope is a commonly used literary device. It can be a cliché and it can be used well.
Sci-fi tropes are everywhere. For example, “beaming” up to the Enterprise in Star Trek is a Trope used by the writer of the show, Gene Roddenberry, to save money on expensive space shuttle sets. It has become iconic and people would miss it if it was taken out of the show.
How is it used?
Tropes are used as shorthand to explain complicated things. For example, Light-Speed is used to explain a complicated way of travelling through space very quickly. If you do this you don’t have to waste words trying to educate your reader when you want to get on with the plot.
101 Sci-Fi Tropes Writers Should Use
These are very common Sci-Fi tropes used in successful books and series. I have taken them from TV shows you may know and 100-year-old books you probably won’t. Regardless, many of these are used every day to make the books and TV we all love to read and watch.
By reading these, you will be inspired to create your own work. You should add a twist to any old idea to make it seem new. But, old tropes die hard and that’s because they are too good to be forgotten.
Faster than light is the bread and butter of all space travel in Sci-Fi. Breaking the rules of physics is often the best way to get your character from planet to planet.
Techno Babble is speaking in high-tech tongues and it solves any problem the crew is currently having. “Reverse the polarity, the Glib-Glops are weak to theta radiation!”
All artificial intelligences are evil. Especially the good ones.
Chekhov’s Egg is like Chekhov’s Gun but directed by Ridley Scott. If you introduce an alien egg to the story it must hatch and eat someone by the third act.
Alternative universes want to invade our own.
Alternative universes contain evil versions of your characters.
Alternative universes warn your universe of a devastating threat.
Travelling to distant stars is very difficult and takes generations.
Travelling to distant stars is very difficult and requires Cryosleep to get there.
Travelling to distant stars is very difficult and is done by AI and robots while the humans sleep.
Someone always wakes up to early from Cryosleep. Asteroids are usually involved.
A ship is found with people who have been in Cryosleep for thousands of years adrift in space. Because they crashed into the asteroid.
A ship is found where people have forgotten how their technology works and must be saved.
The people who wake up are evil, but seem nice at first.
The people who wake up are the last survivors of a once great civilisation and impart wisdom.
The survivors of the once great civilisation die from the common cold before telling anyone the meaning of life.
Space travel is very easy and takes no time at all.
Space travel is very fast, but is very dangerous.
Space travel is dangerous because it passes through an evil realm filled with monsters.
Space travel requires a navigator to have magical powers to plot a course. Possibly, to avoid deadly asteroids.
Space travel requires a navigator to take drugs to see the future. These drugs only come from one planet. Everyone is fighting over them.
Space travel needs a special kind of computer or droid to plot a course and it takes time to calculate.
Ships travel faster than light speed through real/normal space.
Ships travel though hyper-space which is another dimension.
Ships use Warp gates to travel through wormholes.
Warp Gates were created by a long dead civilisation.
Humans discover these gates and have adventures through them.
Aliens are kind, intelligent push-overs and humans are destroying their worlds.
Aliens are evil, brutal godlike beings trying to enslave humans.
Aliens want to eat humans.
Aliens want to lay eggs in humans.
Aliens want humans to help them with a problem they are too “evolved” to solve.
It turns out humans were the aliens all along.
Humans were the aliens all along but they evolved into a different species.
Humans use technology to evolve into a post-human civilisation.
Humans use technology to ascend to a state of pure energy.
Humans use spiritual nonsense to become beings of pure light and love.
Humans use psychic powers to become one godlike over-mind.
Humans once had these great powers, but lost them when the war with the robots/aliens happened.
They now live under a god emperor keeping them from evolving too fast.
The god emperor was an alien all along and the humans must rebel!
The god emperor was a super-computer the humans forgot they made and they must figure out why.
The super-computer had to do whatever the humans wanted it to do all along.
The super-computer was keeping them safe from aliens.
The super-computer was built to keep aliens safe from humans.
Two species of humans evolve and are at war.
They are fighting over ancient crimes.
They are fighting over philosophical points.
One is racist.
One eats the other.
One is technological and the other is super-religious.
Space is empty and humans are the first species.
Space is empty and humans start filling up the galaxy.
Humans make aliens.
They must fight these aliens. Possibly because they didn’t do a good enough job making them.
Space is filled with aliens.
Most are like humans with funny ears.
Most are horrible eldritch monsters humans can’t even begin to understand.
Turns out the humans are the real monsters. The aliens were just trying to save our environment.
Humans and aliens hate each other and do nothing but have never-ending wars. Usually for the god emperor’s glory.
Humans and aliens live together, drink together and have mixed species children. He becomes the captain’s pointy-eared best friend.
Humans are less advanced then other races and are treated like children.
Humans resent aliens for treating them like children and start a galaxy wide genocide using the aliens own technology.
Humans work hard to be as advanced as the other species and become accepted as part of them. Perhaps in some sort of commonwealth?
Space is full of Pirates.
And Smugglers. The Important difference is that smugglers make better anti-heroes.
Space pirates are a plague and the heroes must fight them.
Space pirates are cool and help the rebels fight the evil Empire.
Humans use nano-technology to make very small useful robots that can do anything.
Oh, No! They became sentient.
They want to replicate, consuming all matter they come into contact with.
They want to be more human and build human bodies and start pretending to eat avocado toast.
The humans defeat them using an ancient weapon left by a long dead race.
The humans program them to be nice and become friends.
Humans make copies of their minds.
Humans clone themselves.
Humans put their minds in the clones to live forever.
Something goes wrong. Humans can’t have children anymore because of too much cloning.
They must find non-clone humans to fix this. But that was thousands of years ago.
They need time travel to fix this.
They go through a wormhole/black hole to go back to the past.
They recalibrate the deflector dish to emit tachyons to travel back in time.
They can only send their minds back in time.
Going back in time cannot change the future and they can do whatever they want.
Going back in time means they have to be careful not to change the future.
They change the past and come back to a different future.
They must go back and fix their mistake.
The space senate has blockaded all time travel.
The heroes must get past the blockade in a stolen ship.
The stolen ship turns out to be alive.
It’s also pregnant and needs their help to save its child.
The heroes must argue about the ethics of what they are doing until they are forced to take action.
They turn out to be right and everything works out.
They are wrong and they just helped an evil space wizard start a galactic civil war.
The heroes spend the whole show arguing about ethics and nothing happens.
The heroes decide that other races have different ethics and they should not interfere.
They say ‘Screw their ethics. Ours are better!’ and interfere.
This fixes the problem and the space people are happy with their new American constitution.
The space people start a holy war to kill all humans.
The space people and the humans fight until they have destroyed each other and nobody left alive remembers what happened.
The war between the space people and the humans turned out to be a cold war allegory all along. They eventually make up over some red space wine and a plate of gross space worms.
I hope you had fun reading this list of sci-fi tropes and that it gives you ideas for your books.
“It was a pleasure to burn.” The first line of Fahrenheit 451 is a zinger, and it sets the tone for the entire piece of dystopian fiction. It gives us, in five words, all we need to know about Montag, our protagonist turned unlikely hero.
Understanding Tone, Mood, and Literary Voice
The concept of tone, and its sister element mood, can be hard for new writers to capture, and this often can lead to inauthentic writing, i.e. It was a dark and stormy night. Mastering these elements allows writers to develop their own personal style or literary voice.
Word Search: Learn about Tone and Mood from Good Writers
I often tell my students (who range from 6th graders just beginning their writing journey in a middle school reader/writer workshop, to adults in the creative writing workshops I teach) to look at the words and phrases an author uses. This is where we’ll find the tone. How do those words and phrases make you feel? That’s mood. These elements join together to create an atmosphere. Atmosphere becomes part of the author’s literary voice, or personal style.
Let’s dissect Bradbury’s opening line, “It was a pleasure to burn.”
The key words here:
#1 – Pleasure
#2 – Burn
Holy smokes, no pun intended, but let’s just let those key words sink in. Say the key words out loud, paying attention to where your mind goes.
This is what happens for me: Pleasure – I see images of contentment, happiness, even rapture. Burn – I see fire, smoke, destruction.
In this short line, I am momentarily content, then quickly drawn toward imagery of flames; a pull that leaves me feeling conflicted, maybe a little icky.
This, for me, is how a writer gets tone and mood right. Bradbury both intrigues and disturbs his reader in one sentence, which is just perfect.
Bradbury continues: “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”
At this point, I would ask my students to underline the words or phrases that evoke the tone. Answers may vary here, but generally, their work should look something like this:
“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”
Again, Bradbury starts with the word “pleasure,” and not just any old pleasure, but a special pleasure. Then he jumps back to a dark place; destruction and danger, images of snakes and pounding blood, but also power, with the choice of the words “conductor” and “ruins of history.” I read this passage, and I feel like I’ve had a shot of espresso.
Let’s look at another author. This passage is from Marie-Helene Bertino’s 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas:
“Madeleine stares through the window into the courtyard. On most days she feels something staring back: a God or a mother-shaped benevolent force. Today, nothing reciprocates. The streamers on the chained bicycles lift in the indifferent breeze. She is alone in old stockings she’s repaired twice but still run. Life will be nothing but errands and gray nights.”
Bertino’s somber tone brings us inside the mind of her lonely protagonist. Though Madeleine often sees comforting images when she stares out the window, through the key words I’ve underlined in the second half of the passage, we feel her utter loneliness, and in the final key words, her hopelessness about the future.
Finally, Tim O’Brien expertly captures the secrets and deceit of a troubled marriage in In the Lake of the Woods:
“All around them, the fog moved in low and fat off the lake, and their voices would seem to flow away for a time and then returned to them from somewhere in the woods beyond the porch. It was an echo. partly. But inside the echo there was also a voice not quite their own – like a whisper or a nearby breathing, something feathery and alive.”
Something is coming for this couple; it’s wrapped in fog and echo, and it’s not going to be good.
Use Your Words: Applying What We’ve Learned
Try these exercises to strengthen tone and mood in your own fiction.
Exercise 1:
Select a short passage from something you’ve written. Read it over. What words and phrases jump out to you? Circle or highlight them. What tone is evoked? What feeling do you get from this tone?
If you prefer not to analyze your own writing, you can complete this exercise with a peer.
Exercise 2:
Listen to a piece of atmospheric music of your choice and jot down 5-10 words or phrases that come to mind. Then use one of the words or phrases to create an opening sentence. Write a few paragraphs, trying to incorporate your chosen words/phrases into your writing.
You might also add a photo. I paired a photo with a piece of music in order to introduce tone and mood to my sixth graders. The photo prompt I gave them featured three pre-teen boys skipping rocks on the surface of a pond. I asked students to look at the photo while listening to a happy instrumental tune I found randomly on Spotify, a piece with jingling piano keys playing high notes.
One student wrote down the following words: “calming, relaxing, damp, trickle, water.” Check out the opening paragraph from her story about bird brothers, Perry and Stu:
“The leaves were still damp from the morning dew as Perry awoke from his nest bed high in the treetops. He leapt from branch to branch until he reached his brother, Stu. Stu was sleeping peacefully. Perry and his brother Stu lived with both parents in the depths of a rainforest, but it wasn’t always as relaxing as it sounds. There was always the hustle and bustle of everyone trying to get where they needed to go before the morning downpour, and every animal had to learn their place. Today was the students’ turn to earn their wings. Perry flew his little brother down to a clearing in the forest where all the other birds had gathered. ‘Settle down now. Settle down,’ said their teacher Mr. Cloud. ‘You’re all here to earn your place in the rainforest by graduating from flying school. Today you’ll be flying around this forest. Our volunteers will show you the way. Good luck! On your mark. Get Set. Fly!’”
Two things I’ll point out about this student’s writing: the first is that the story doesn’t have anything to do with the photo prompt. This isn’t the intention of the exercise; the students use the words that come to mind to create the story. If the photo were to creep into their subconscious, that’s fine too, but in this case the story took a whimsical turn. The second point I’ll make is that this student recreated the lighthearted atmosphere of the photo and the jovial piece of music just by incorporating the words she’d written down. Other words she used, like “peacefully,” “leapt,” and “fly” contribute to the tone she’s set.
Exercise 3:
Watch a no-dialogue short film like this one and recreate it in short story form. Pay special attention to the background music, props, setting and the movements of the character. How do these elements come together to create the tone? How can you capture that tone and the overall mood of the piece?
Final Word: How Is This Going to Make You a Better Writer?
The act of being aware of your words is what gives the words power. I’m not saying that you have to write this way all the time, hyper-aware of your feelings and anticipating the readers’ reactions. Not at all. But atmospheric writing comes with practice, and will often happen in the revision process; this is all part of how you develop your distinctive literary voice.
You’ve probably heard this one before: Your character must change throughout the course of your story.
I see a lot of confusion over this concept. Writers can normally nail the change (weak to strong; bad to good; cynical to optimistic) but it often comes from a weird place that doesn’t sit quite right with what we know about the protagonist. Or it’s too big of a change (or too much of a “fairy tale ending”) to be believable.
Let’s take a look at how writers should deal with character change.
No one likes change
In real life, people change in small ways, but they’re resistant to that change. Change happens slowly, in a sort of cocooned metamorphosis, like a caterpillar to a butterfly. It doesn’t happen overnight, it rarely happens without lapses into previous behavior, and there better be a good reason for it to happen to begin with.
The thing that makes change in stories so fascinating for people is that, despite loathing change, humans want to believe we’re capable of changing, preferably for the better.
So your characters must change in order for the story to be worth reading. But they don’t have to like it.
Think of this: Your character changes because of the things happening around him/her. Not because they want to. Your character is forced to change by circumstances they can’t control. To survive and/or thrive, they must change to combat those circumstances.
Events trigger change
Character change is triggered by an event. A big one. It doesn’t have to be “big” as in a death or massive explosion (but it definitely can be!). It can be something smaller, like hearing your friend’s parents are getting divorced or your oldest child graduating from preschool.
Note that your character doesn’t choose this event. It’s an outside force that’s thrust upon them.
Then more events happen throughout the second act that force your character forward in a struggle toward transformation.
The triggering event is proportional to your character’s change. Something small shouldn’t send your character completely overboard. Something large shouldn’t have them shrugging and going back to normal.
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People don’t like change. Your character won’t choose to change because they want to. Make sure your story includes an event that triggers a transformation, something that requires them to change whether they want to or not.
Change should be believable
Do I really believe Scrooge woke up with a personality completely opposite from the one he had when he went to sleep? Not quite. I tend to think ole Scrooge went back to his miserly ways right after the shock of the ghosts wore off. Maybe not quite as miserly, but still.
That’s why aiming for a more subtle change often makes more sense within the confines of your character’s personality.
If a timid man is forced to defend his friends and family, that doesn’t mean he’s going to start playing a superhero all over town. That means he now knows he’s capable of stepping up with the going gets tough.
A grumpy teen might change her attitude and treat people with a little more respect, but that doesn’t mean she’ll suddenly become a do-good saint. It most likely means she’ll just stop snapping at her parents.
Of course, maybe the opposite is true. Maybe your timid man becomes the new Batman. Maybe your surly teen goes off to build houses in Haiti. It’s possible. But remember, the more massive the change in your character, the more important and life-altering the triggering event must be to them.
You should know your character better than anyone, so make sure their change happens in a way that’s realistic for them and proportional to the size of the trigger.
Realistic is better than drastic
You know your character has to change, but your readers aren’t going to empathize with that change if you step outside of bounds. Keep your change realistic and in line with your protagonist’s personality. And be sure to check out this article for details on moving your character through each step of change throughout your story.
What’s the protagonist’s change in the story you’re currently working on? Let me know in the comments!
f I had to pinpoint one trait that all successful freelancers have in common, can you guess what it’d be?
It’s not intelligence… Or experience… Or a high degree of skill… Or even education.
The one trait I’m talking about is: Confidence.
It’s incredibly simple: If you think you can’t do something — you can’t.
Without confidence, you may be able to make some headway, but it’s like paddling upstream… At best you end up working too hard to achieve too little — and at worst you end up exhausting yourself and going backwards.
Ultimately, no amount of effort or skill can fully compensate for not believing in yourself. Your subconscious mind — the director of the “movie” you call life — will find ways to help you sabotage yourself and turn those deeply held negative beliefs into reality.
This is what Carl Jung meant when he said, “Until you take what’s in your subconscious, and make it conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it ‘fate.’”
As someone who’s been on both sides of the fence — having gone from having very little confidence, to understanding how to feel confident in many situations (even if that confidence sometimes seems “unwarranted”) — I’m in a unique position to give you a good insider’s perspective that might help you turn things around.
1. You don’t need to reprogram yourself
A lot of people put time and energy into trying to “reprogram” their brain to be more confident.
But you don’t need to do that.
You just need to deprogram it.
You came into this world pre-equipped with an enormous amount of confidence. You don’t need to add any — you just need to remove the mental junk that’s currently blocking it.
This is great news! Instead of rewriting the code in your brain, you just need to delete some, which is infinitely easier.
Think of when you first learned to walk…
You had no “proof” you’d be successful.
In fact most of the evidence pointed in the opposite direction of success — you’d spent weeks or months crawling on your hands and knees, even falling right on your ass.
Did you beat yourself up about it?
Did you hire a coach? Do affirmations?
Did you think about quitting because it wouldn’t work?
Obviously you didn’t do any of those things. You kept on smiling and having a good time because you knew it was going to work.
As you got older, the people around you helped condition you to be less and less confident over time through criticism, presenting their opinions as “facts” you needed to abide by, and even pushing their preferences onto you as the “right” way to be, do, or live.
In spite of everything that’s gotten in the way before now, it’s still relatively easy to get your inborn confidence back any time you want to. You can probably even do it fairly quickly if you’re focused about it.
You just need to erase, and from now on tune out, the critical noise that started blocking it in the first place.
2. Choose to be responsible for your own confidence
Let’s start off with a simple decision you can choose right now, this minute.
It’s just a choice — I’m not asking you to suddenly be confident, or even to picture yourself as confident — only to decide that you are going to take responsibility for your own confidence.
Allowing your confidence to be dictated by other people’s behavior towards you, or by the circumstances and events that happen around you, ultimately leads to misery (usually sooner than later).
That’s because you have no control over those things — you’re reduced to being a helpless passenger along for the ride (which usually doesn’t go where you want it to).
If you want strong, lasting confidence, you need to decide that it will come from you, and only you.
That way, it’s no longer at the mercy of what’s going on around you. You are always in control of your own fate.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to do to get your confidence up and running again just yet. All you need to do right now is take responsibility for it. By doing so, you’re giving yourself a solid foundation to build on.
3. Realize confidence (or lack of it) comes from your thoughts
People sometimes say to me, “But Danny, how can I be confident when my boss is a jerk? Or when my spouse yells at me right before a big presentation? What then?”
If you look for reasons to not be confident, you will always find them.
But the opposite is also true: If you seek out evidence of your own awesomeness and personal power — regardless of what others are doing — then that is what you’ll find.
For example, imagine if, after being yelled at by your spouse right before a big presentation, you decided that their lashing out was just a result of them having a stressful week at work and a few sleepless nights.
In other words, it had nothing whatsoever to do with you.
Notice how nothing has changed, other than your own thoughts.
Yet if you consistently practice reframing techniques in the way I just showed you, over time you’ll notice that instead of taking other people’s behavior personally and letting it decimate your confidence, you become impervious to it and let it all roll right off your back.
If this seems like some sort of mind trick, or intellectual dishonesty, consider this: I promise you that there is nothing more dishonest — and no bigger piece of mental trickery — than letting someone else’s mistreatment of you make you feel bad about yourself.
4. Give yourself more credit
There’s a reason I’m always telling people “my story” — that I have no college degree, held menial dead-end jobs until I was 34, and so on: If I could be a total screw up for decades and still turn it all around, why not YOU?
But even though I tell these stories all the time, people still email me in disbelief, arguing that I must have had experience, must be exceptionally organized, must have been born with a high IQ, etc — even though none of those things are true.
This is a weird thing that humans do. We project advantages and amazing qualities onto people we see as “experts,” even when we have no idea if those observations are real or imagined. Psychologists even have a name for this behavior: the halo effect.
The truth is, even the smartest people know surprisingly little.
For example, I once watched two Harvard law professors arguing about whether something was illegal.
Just think about that! Two of the smartest legal minds in the world — from the same Ivy League school, no less — holding literally opposite views on whether something is legal or against the law.
Do you realize what that means? It means that the world’s dumbest person can choose either side of that debate, and still have the exact same chance of being right as both of the two legal geniuses who are arguing about it!
The line between average and great is much, much thinner than you think. It’s mostly just a choice you make.
5. Be nice to yourself
Imagine having one or more employees working under you… Would you expect them to do amazing work if you were verbally beating them up all the time?
Not only would they be miserable, and produce poor work — they’d probably walk out on you.
Yet we beat ourselves up all the time … and then we wonder why we’re not getting to where we want to be in our careers, our fitness, our relationships, or our finances.
The key to stopping this self-defeating behavior is to realize that doing it doesn’t just feel bad… it’s also standing in your way of making progress.
It might seem like you can beat yourself into being better, but I’ve never found that to work, especially in the long term.
You can absolutely succeed regardless of what others do to you, but you cannot succeed without YOU in your own corner. If you want to be confident and successful, constant self-criticism is a behavior you cannot afford to keep.
6. Starve what you want to die
Sometimes a negative thought pattern has picked up so much momentum over time that it’s hard to stop.
It’s a lot like putting the brakes on a train that’s been moving full-steam ahead for a while — it takes some time and effort to bring it to a full halt.
Similarly, if you’ve been beating yourself up about something for months or years, it’s hard to change your thoughts about it on a dime.
If you find yourself in that kind of situation, you can at least distract yourself from the negative mental loop
In other words, while you may not be able to change the negative thought into a positive one right away, you can at least “starve” it by not giving it as much attention.
You can do that by adjusting your thoughts about it a little at a time, or even distracting yourself from it completely.
For example, if you’ve been struggling to lose weight, you can adjust your mental story from “I’ll never lose weight” to “Maybe I’ve just been too down on myself — I think I can make this work if I start small and build up my confidence. This week I’ll take the stairs instead of the elevator…”
There’s also nothing wrong with avoiding the mirror or the scale for a while, if those things only seem to lead to negative thoughts that keep you programmed for failure.
Over time, that negative thought pattern will become weaker and weaker, and you’ll be able to notice a negative thought and change it to a positive one with very little effort. And if you keep practicing that habit, you can even eliminate the negativity completely.
7. Don’t listen to “realists”
People love to try to convince you you can’t do something because it’s not “realistic.”
But have you ever thought about what reality actually is?
The word “reality” is just a way of describing what has been true up until this point.
It says little — or nothing — about the future.
By definition, growing and improving means that you’re doing something you’ve either never done before, or that no one else has ever done before.
If everyone listened to the “realists” about what’s possible, everything would always stay the same.
We probably wouldn’t even be here since the world as we know it likely would not have developed. Nothing good in this world was created by a “realist.”
Steve Jobs explained this very well in a short video that completely changed my life when I watched it for the first time about 7 years ago — I suggest you check it out too:
8. What you say is as important as — and maybe more important than — what you do
This is controversial, but in my experience it’s absolutely true.
In the Netflix special Miracle, Derren Brown coaches a woman through her first time eating glass.
His advice to her would shock most people: He spent a few seconds on the technical instructions of how to chew up the glass — and the rest of the time focusing on positive self-talk.
This scene illustrates a fascinating phenomenon: When you say something to yourself (whether out loud, or even in your thoughts), your subconscious mind can take it as a sort of “command.”
If the glass-eater had “prepared” by telling herself it would hurt, do you know what would have happened? It would have hurt.
Whenever, and I mean whenever I get an email from someone who has repeatedly failed at freelancing, despite having “tried everything,” I always look for — and virtually always find — sentences like this within their email:
“I’m very frustrated…”
“I’m so overwhelmed…”
“It seems like nothing works for me…”
“I can’t make it work…”
Feeling this way is understandable. And everyone needs to vent sometimes.
But I’m telling you right now that talking this way repeatedly for prolonged periods of time — whether out loud to others or in your own head — is the same as asking for more failure.
I know it doesn’t feel that way, but that’s what’s happening.
You need — need — to find a way to start to turn those thoughts around.
I’m not suggesting you outright lie to yourself, since pure denial can backfire.
For example, waking up one morning and saying to yourself “My confidence is soaring, I’m sure I’ll get a promotion today!” — after years of telling yourself you’re the worst employee at the company — probably won’t work.
Your subconscious mind is a tricky thing, and it can reject ideas that are too far off from what you’ve been telling it for so long.
However, you can start to soften these thoughts, and over time you can replace them completely.
It’s a lot like taking a blow torch to metal: First you have to heat the metal up, then you can bend it, and eventually you can mold it into whatever you want it to be.
I’ll leave you with a few examples of how you might start to soften your thought pattern:
“This has worked for others. Maybe it can work for me too.”
“I can find a way to do it.”
“I’m worthy of success and I deserve good things to happen in my life.”
“I’m sure there’s a better way to do things I haven’t thought of yet. I’ll read some blogs to see what I might be missing.”
“Maybe my negative attitude has been affecting me more than I realize. A good night’s sleep can help me feel more confident in the morning.”
These are just a few examples off the top of my head — you can use whatever thoughts feel good to you.
More importantly, do you feel the relief in those statements?
That relief is your original self-confidence — the same amazing confidence you were born with — starting to reset to its original factory setting.
If you re-create this confident state of mind by making a habit out of being nice to yourself, before you know it you will feel damn near invincible.
When I started running a small publishing business years ago, I had to teach myself advertising and marketing. I read some classics on the subject, such as How to Write a Good Advertisement by Victor O. Schwab and Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples.
My favorite, though, was Ogilvy on Advertising by the legendary ad man David Ogilvy. This volume made me appreciate what goes into successful ads, and just how hard they are to pull off. It also made me realize that some of the same elements of a good ad can be applied to our stories.
One of my favorite campaigns was “The most interesting man in the world” commercials for Dos Equis beer.
A typical spot featured “vintage film” of this man in various pursuits, while a narrator recited a few facts about him. A few of my favorites:
• He lives vicariously through himself.
• He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.
• The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.
• He once taught a German shepherd to bark in Spanish.
• When he drives a car off the lot, its price increases in value.
• Superman has pajamas with his logo.
At the end of the commercial we’d see him—now a handsome, older man—sitting in a bar with admiring young people at his elbow. He would look into the camera and say, in a slight Spanish accent, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.”
And then, at the end of each ad, comes the man’s signature sign off: “Stay thirsty, my friends.”
What was so good about this campaign?
It was risky. Having a graying man as the lead character in a beer ad was, as they say, counter programming.
It was funny without trying too hard. The understated way the deep-voiced narrator extolled the man’s legend was pitch perfect.
It had a complete backstory, revealed a little at a time in the mock film clips.
These are qualities of a good novel, too: risky, in that it doesn’t repeat the same old; a bit of unforced humor is always welcome; and its backstory renders characters real and complex without slowing down the narrative. All that we can learn from “the most interesting man in the world” campaign.
And from the man himself we can learn, as writers, to live life expansively and not just lollygag through our existence. Not waiting for inspiration but going after it, as Jack London once said, “with a club.” Believing, with Jack Kerouac, in the “holy contour of life.”
We ought to be seekers as well as storytellers, a little mad sometimes, risking the pity and scorn of our fellows as we pursue the artistic vision. Then we park ourselves at the keyboard and strive to get it down on the page. Why go through it all? Because the world needs dreams rendered in words.
Writer, keep after it and someday this may be said of you as well: “His charisma can be seen from space. Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number.”
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