Fear of being buried alive is called taphephobia. Also known as live burial, premature burial, and vivisepulture, it’s been around forever—and is with us still! Those buried alive often die of asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or hypothermia. If fresh air is available, the buried person can last days.
Fear of being buried alive reached a peak in 19th century England. More than 120 books in at least five languages were written about it, as well as methods to distinguish life from death. (See below.)
Harry Clarke’s illustration for Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe
The Sullen in Level 5 are kept just below the waters of the River Styx, forever near drowning.
The Heretics in Level 6 are trapped in flaming tombs.
Murderers in Level 7 are covered by a river of boiling blood.
In Level 8 (where all types of fraud are punished)
Flatterers are encased in human excrement.
Simonists are buried head-first while flames burn their feet.
Fraudulent Counselors are encased in flames.
The Treacherous in Level 9 are buried in ice of varying levels depending on their sin.
Accidental or Unintentional Burial
It’s easier to handle if you bring a buddy along.
Reports of being buried alive date back to the fourteenth century. In spite of hype and hysteria, as late as the 1890s patients have been documented as being declared dead and accidentally sent to a morgue or encased in a steel box, only to “come back to life” when the coffin is dropped, the grave is opened by grave robbers, or embalming or dissection has begun.
“Life preserving coffin in doubtful cases of actual dead,” a safety-coffin model by Christian Eisenbrandt
During centuries when embalming wasn’t common practice, coffins were mostly for the rich, and rapid burial was the norm especially during major pestilences such as cholera, bubonic plague, and smallpox. In these cases, rapid burial was an attempt to curb the spread of the disease.
Several medical conditions can contribute to the presumption of death: catalepsy, coma, and hypothermia.
How to Know When Someone Is Really Dead
Snoring is a pretty good sign. (This is actually the Fourpence Coffin flophouse, the first homeless shelter in London.)
Jan Bondeson, author of Buried Alive, identified methods of verifying death used by 18th and 19th century physicians. (Personal reaction: shudder!) The methods were any acts the physician thought would rouse the unconscious patient, virtually all imaginatively painful.
Soles of the feet sliced with razors
Needles jammed under toenails
Bugle fanfares and “hideous Shrieks and excessive Noises”
Red hot poke up the rectum
Application of nipple pincers
A bagpipe type invention to administer tobacco enemas
Boiling Spanish wax poured on patients’ foreheads and warm urine poured into the mouth
A crawling insect inserted into patient’s ear
A sharp pencil up the presumed cadaver’s nose
Tongue pulling (manual or mechanical) for at least three hours
The traditional Irish wake was (and is) an occasion for family and friends to celebrate the life of the deceased while watching the body for signs of movement.
Most agreed that the most reliable way to be sure someone was dead was to keep an eye on the body for a while. To that end, waiting at least 72 hours from apparent death to burial was mandated. In the mid-1800s, Munich had ten “waiting mortuaries” where bodies were stored awaiting putrefaction. Each body was rigged to bells to summon an attendant should the corpse come back to life.
Waiting morgues, like this one in Paris, were often left open to the public for macabre entertainment
We presume that modern science has surpassed this sort of mistake, defining death as brain death. Even so, earthquakes and other natural disasters often result in people being accidentally buried alive.
Sometimes live burial is a method of execution. Documented cases exist for China, German tribes, Persia, Rome, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Brazil.
Confucian scholars were buried alive while their books were burned in 3rd century BCE
Vestal Virgins were sealed in caves for breaking their vow of chastity, as shown in this painting by Pietro Saja
When death was not enough, often a spike was driven through the body of the person executed by live burial, perhaps as a way to prevent the person from becoming an avenging, undead Wiedergänger.
In some parts of the world, live burial is still practiced as a means of execution. Often, the victim is buried upright with only their head above ground. In these cases, death is very slow and painful, often the result of dehydration or wounds caused by animal scavengers.
And sometimes live burials are another horrific act of war.
There are accounts of Khmer Rouge using live burials in the Killing Fields.
Live burial was a form of execution during Mao Zedong’s regime, particularly during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution..
Codice Casanatense, a Portugese artist, recorded this scene of a Hindu widow being sent alive to her husband’s grave.
Very rarelypeople willingly arrange to be buried alive, for any number of reasons. Sometimes it is to demonstrate their ability to survive it. The Indian government has made voluntary live burials illegal because the people who try it so often die. In 2010, a Russian man was buried to try to overcome his fear of death, but was crushed to death by the weight of the earth over him.
Four “lucky” contest winners
There are even performances in which people have an opportunity to be buried alive for fifteen or twenty minutes. As a publicity stunt for the opening of the 2010 film Buried, a lottery was held for a few fans to have a very unique viewing experience. Four winners were blindfolded, driven to the middle of nowhere, and buried alive in special coffins equips with screens on which they could watch the film. (A 2003 episode of “Mythbusters” demonstrated that, even if a person buried alive was able to break out of a coffin, they would be crushed or asphyxiated by the resulting dirt fall.)
Irish barman Mick Meaney remained buried under Kilburne Street in London for 61 days in 1968, mostly to win a bet. Tubes to the surface allowed air and food to reach him in his temporary, underground prison.
Parents are often unwillingly volunteered for vivisepulture on the beach.
Bottom line for writers: consider a character being buried alive—or being threatened with it—as a way to up the tension.
Live burial isn’t the only attention-worthy aspect of dead bodies. For more, check out books such as these.
Engraving by Gustave Dore. from Milton’s Paradise Lost
Satan, also known as the Devil, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. In Christianity and Islam, he is usually seen as either a fallen angel or a jinn who used to possess great piety and beauty but rebelled against God.
In Judaism, Satan is typically regarded as a metaphor for the yetzer hara, the evil inclination (or as an agent subservient to God).
The Christian figure of Satan is viewed as a horned, red, demonic human figure with a pointy tail and sometimes hooves. Sinners are sent to the domain of Satan after death—to hell, an underground world of fire and sadistic demons under Satan’s command.
Engraving by Gustav Doro of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno
Other versions of Satan appear as a Zoroastrian Devil and Jewish Kabbalism, but the name “Satan” first appeared in the Book of Numbers in the Bible, used as a term describing defiance. In the Book of Job, Satan is an accusing angel. In the apocryphal Book of Enoch (written in the first century B.C.) Satan is a member of the Watchers, a group of fallen angels.
The Watchers, as described in the Book of Revelations
Early on, satan was simply a word meaning adversary. In the Book of Samuel, David is depicted as the satan of the Philistines. In the Book of Numbers, it is used as a verb, when God sent an angel to satan (oppose) Balaam.
King David With His Harp at the entrance of his tomb in Jerusalem
In the New Testament, Satan is established as a nemesis of Jesus Christ and the final book of the Bible, Revelations, he is the ultimate evil.
The Devourer of Worlds (and bones)
The words “Satanism” and “Satanist” appeared in English and French during the 1500s, when the words were used by Christian groups to attack other, rival Christian groups. For example, a Roman Catholic tract in 1565 condemned the “heresies, blasphemies, and sathanismes [sic]” of Protestants. Anyone who didn’t follow one’s own “pure” Christian views was condemned.
Gradually, it morphed into meaning anyone leading an immoral lifestyle. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that it was applied to those suspected of consciously and deliberately venerating Satan.
Eugene Vintras, inspiration for the Golden Dawn, levitating in Tilly-sur-Seulles
According to online sources, during the early modern period, fear of Satanists took the form of witch trials (1400s to 1700s, which doesn’t seem all that modern to me, but hey, witch hysterias, and the inquisition). Across both Protestant and Catholic regions, witch trials emerged. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people were executed as Satanic witches.
Skipping lightly past offshoots and variations, prior to the 20th Century, Satanism did not exist as a real, organized religion. Satanism is a modern, largely non-theistic religion based on literary, artistic, and philosophical interpretations of the central figure of evil. It wasn’t until April 30, 1966 that the Church of Satan was formalized.
Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible was published in 1969. His teachings promoted indulgence, vital existence, undefiled wisdom, kindness to those who deserve it, responsibility to the responsible, and an eye for an eye code of ethics. In his view, a Satanist is carnal, physical and pragmatic, enjoying a physical existence, propagating a naturalistic worldview that seems human as animals dieting in an amoral universe. The ideal Satanist should be individualistic and noon-conformist. He encouraged an individual’s pride, self-respect, and self-realization by satisfying the ego’s desires. Self-indulgence is a good thing. He said hate and aggression are necessary and advantageous for survival. Bottom line: he praised the seven deadly sins as virtues.
By the 1970s, groups were splintering off to form alternative churches. In 1978, the U.S. Army included the faith in its manual for chaplains, “Religious Requirements and Practices.”
The most successful of the church divisions is The Satanic Temple, opened in Houston in 2015. The Temple calls itself a non-theistic religion embracing the Devil as a symbolic form of rebellion in the tradition of Milton. It devotes itself to political action focused on the separation of church and state, religious equality, and reproductive rights.
It was recognized as a religion of the U.S. government in 2016, receiving tax-exempt status.
Statue of Baphomet erected by the Satanic Temple to protest Ten Commandments statues on public grounds
Note: Practitioners of LeVey’s version of Satanism do not believe that Satan literally exists and do not worship him. For them, Satan is an archetype for adversary, who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment. The Devil is a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths that “suppress humanity’s natural instincts.”
However, Theistic Satanism (Spiritual Satanism or Devi worship) holds the primary belief that Satan is an actual deity to revere and worship. They believe in magic and ritual, often focusing solely on devotion.
Bottom line for writers: Satanism isn’t a unitary thing. If Satanism figures into your plot or character characteristics, do your homework, particularly for any historical setting.
A friend recently told me that the horror villains we fear are subconscious stand-ins for things we’re afraid of in real life. Vampires stand for a fear of change; zombies for a fear of crowds or strangers. Fear of clowns is a sign you’re a normal, well-adjusted, perfectly rational person.
The anthropomorphic personification of EVIL!
Inquiring minds want to know! I started with vampires—and I never got past vampires!
When I went online to learn what it means if we fear vampires, what popped up was an article by Ralph Blumenthal, “A Fear of Vampires Can Mask a Fear of Something Much Worse.” He was writing in 2002 about villagers in Malawi believing that the government was colluding with vampires to collect human blood in exchange for food.
At the time, Malawi was in the grip of starvation, a severe AIDS epidemic, and political upheaval. He cited Nina Auerbach, author of Our Vampires, Ourselves, to the effect that stories of the undead embody power ”and our fears of power.”
In nearly every culture in the world, there is a legend of some variation of vampire-like creatures—the dead who reanimate and come back to feed on the living. And there is general agreement that the roots of vampire legends are in the misunderstanding of how bodies decompose and of how certain diseases spread.
In an October 26, 2016 article in National Geographic titled The Bloody Truth About Vampires, Becky Little wrote, “As a corpse’s skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark ‘purge fluid’ can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living.”
Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, made several telling points in the introduction to his book. One is that there is little similarity between the vampires of folklore and the vampires of fiction.
Modern images of vampires are pretty stereotyped: fangs that bite the necks of victims; drinking human blood; can’t see themselves in mirrors; can be warded off with garlic, killed with a stake (or silver nail) through the heart; are aristocrats who live in castles and may be sexy. This image was popularized by Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1931 film adaptation of the Broadway show of the same name. Unlike Bram Stoker’s description of the monster in the 1897 novel Dracula as a repulsive old man with huge eyebrows and bat-like ears, Lugosi showed audiences a mysteriously elegant gentleman in evening dress.
The 1922 film Nosferatu (on left), though an unlicensed adaptation, portrayed the vampire as described in Stoker’s novel.
In European folklore, vampires typically wore shrouds, and were often described as bloated, with a ruddy or dark countenance. Specific descriptions varied among regions: sometimes male, sometimes female, might have long fingernails, a stubby beard, the mouth and left eye open, a permanently hateful stare, red eyes, no eyes, etc. Fangs were not always a prominent feature, and blood was generally sucked from bites on the chest near the heart rather than the throat.
Polish strzyga
But perhaps the most important theme of Barber’s book is that, lacking a scientific background in physiology, pathology, or immunization, the common response of ancient societies was to blame death and disease on the dead. To that end, the interpretations they came up with—while wrong from today’s perspective—nevertheless were usually coherent, covered all the data, and provided the rationale for some common practices that seemed to be otherwise inexplicable.
Should you ever be pursued by a vampire, fling a handful of rice, millet, or other small grain in its path. The vampire will be compelled to stop to count every grain, giving you time to escape. I found no information on how vampires came to be associated with arithmomania, but it endures: remember The Count von Count on Sesame Street?
He’s the color of a rotting corpse, but cloth fangs are pretty harmless.
At this point, I realize that getting into methods of identifying vampires, protecting against vampires, ways to destroy vampires, and cross-cultural variations on vampirism is way beyond the scope of this blog. Instead, I refer you to books such as this:
Seeing a vampire in your dream symbolizes an aspect of your personality that is parasitic or selfishly feeds off others.
Alternatively, a vampire may reflect feelings about people you believe want to pull you down to their level or convert you to thinking negatively in a way similar to theirs.
To dream of being a vampire represents a selfish need to feed off others.
To dream of being bitten by a vampire represents feelings about other people using you or feeding off you and being unable to stop it.
Vampires may be a sign of dependence, problems with addiction, social pressure, or ambivalence.
A dream vampire might be telling you that you need to start being more independent and relying less on others resources or accomplishments.
To dream of killing vampires represents overcoming dependence on others.
Repeated dreams of vampires hovering over your shoulder and correcting your spelling or suggesting topics for research and expansion is almost certainly a sign that you are writing a blog entry about vampires.
The yara-ma-yha-who in Australia drains a victim of almost all blood before swallowing and regurgitating the body, which then becomes a copy of its killer.
Bottom line for writers:consider whether a vampire is a fit metaphor for your character.
The soucouyant appears in the Caribbean by day as a harmless old woman, but she sheds her skin at night to hunt as a ball of fire.
Prejudice is generally defined in one of two ways:
1) A preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. This is the broadest definition and allows for being biased in a positive direction (such as assuming that harpists are poised and elegant). Wikipedia goes a step further, saying an affective feeling towards a person based on that person’s perceived group membership.
2) An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reasons; unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature (like thinking all wrestlers are vulgar and uncouth), regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group.
Prejudice is one of the root causes of human conflict. Conflict, in turn, can result in crime, war, systemic repression, and mass murder. Writers note: anything that creates conflict between characters or between a character and society can be used in your writing.
Where prejudice comes from:
1) We tend to take on the attitudes—including prejudices—of the social groups to which we belong. Social groups include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession, etc., etc., etc. Adopting the attitudes of one’s social groups, including family, is often a means of fitting in and being liked. Thus, prejudice may serve a social adjustive function.
Zebras always vote the same way in local elections.
2) Sometimes assuming a host of characteristics based on knowing one is cognitively efficient. We don’t have to spend time gathering information or even stopping to think.
3) And sometimes, prejudice serves an ego-defensive function. If simply by being who we are we can feel superior to whole groups of people—e.g., all women, all blacks, all immigrants, all yellow ducklings—it helps counterbalance negative information about oneself (such as being chronically unemployed, ugly, or unpopular).
Like other attitudes, prejudice has cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.
Cognitive: overgeneralized beliefs or stereotypes. E.g., Yankees fans are arrogant and obnoxious.
Affective: prejudice, feelings about people that could be positive but are more often negative. For example, I hate Yankee fans. They make me angry.
(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
Behavioral: the treatment of others. When negative, it is discrimination, and may lead to excluding, avoiding, or biased treatment of group members. Example: I would never hire or become friends with a person if I knew he or she were a Yankees fan.
Although people can hold positive stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory actions based on group membership—for example, giving preferential treatment to people who are like themselves—it behooves us to focus on the negative because that is what is most problematic.
First impressions: When meeting new people, we automatically note race, gender, and age because these social categories provide a wealth of information about the individual—albeit, based on stereotypes.
Categories of bias: Racism, sexism, ageism, sexual orientation, nationalism, class-ism, religious discrimination, linguistic discrimination, and more.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy: An expectation held by a person about how another person will behave, which leads to treating the person according to our expectations. The treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming the original stereotypic beliefs. (Think teacher expectations, employer expectations, etc.)
Confirmation Bias: Paying more attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations than to information that is inconsistent with our expectations..
In-groups and Out-groups: An in-group is a group we see ourselves as belonging to, involving a strong sense of belonging and emotional connection that leads to in-group bias and preferences. Out-groups are seen as different in fundamental ways, less likable, often resulting in discrimination. When an in-group’s goals are delayed or thwarted, an out-group is often blamed. This is scape-goating.
Bottom line for writers: stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination can define characters and situations. Think thoughts, affects, and actions and how each can work with POV and plot.
Attitude is a favorable or unfavorable reaction toward something or someone (often rooted in one’s beliefs and exhibited in one’s feelings and intended behavior). It is tempting to assume that there is a direct line between these favorable or unfavorable reactions and behavior. Good news for writers: people’s expressed attitudes seldom predict their actual behavior. This is because an attitude includes both feeling and thinking, and both affect behavior.
I don’t FEEL wet. I THINK I’m walking on water. I must have an uplifting ATTITUDE!
Attitudes predict behavior when these conditions are present:
Social influences on what we say are minimal (little social pressure, fear of criticism). For attitudes formed early in life (e.g., attitudes toward authority and fairness) explicit and implicit attitudes often diverge, with implicit being a stronger predictor.
I’m a good boy. I’m a good boy. I’m a… that treat is mine!
Other influences our behavior are minimal: situational constraints, health, weather, etc.
I’m supposed to stay in my cage, but that open window is right there…
Attitudes specific to the behavior are examined: e.g., expressed attitudes toward poetry don’t predict enjoying a particular poem, but attitudes toward the costs and benefits of jogging predict jogging behavior.
You’re getting up early tomorrow to go running. Sure. I totally believe you.
Attitudes are potent: stating an attitude and an intention to do something makes the attitude more potent and the behavior is more likely (recycling); asking people to think about their attitudes toward an issue also increases potency.
Someday, I WILL be taller than you.
Attitudes that are developed through direct experience are more accessible to memory, more enduring, and have a stronger effect on behavior.
Once a diva, always a diva.
Behavior affects attitudes when these conditions are present:
Actions prescribed by social roles mold the attitudes of the role players. (Think prisoners and guards.)
What we say or write can strongly affect subsequent attitudes. (Think being assigned a side in a debate.)
Doing a small act increases the likelihood of doing a larger one later. (Think foot-in-the-door technique.)
Actions affect our moral attitudes. We tend to justify whatever we do, even if it is evil.
We not only stand up for what we believe in, we believe in what we have stood up for. (Think adopting a rescue animal or donating to a food drive.)
I adopted this pet hippo. You should adopt one too. All turtles should have a hippo companion.
The question of whether government should legislate behaviors to change attitudes on a massive scale is compounded by the question of whether it is even possible.
Every day, I come a little closer to my dream of being a balloon.
Why does our behavior affect our attitudes?
Self-Presentation Theory says people (especially those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to make a good impression) will adapt their attitude reports to appear consistent with their actions. Some genuine attitude change usually accompanies efforts to make a good impression.
I meant to do that; I really wanted a lettuce hat.
Dissonance Theory explains attitude change by assuming we feel tension after acting contrary to our attitude or after making difficult decisions. To reduce that arousal, we internally justify our behavior. The less external justification we have for undesirable actions, the more we feel responsible for them, thus creating more dissonance and more attitude change. (Think threat or reward.)
This color looks spectacular on me, and blue is a perfectly normal color for a sheep.
Self-Perception Theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we simply observe our behavior and its circumstances and infer our attitudes (correctly or incorrectly) rather than the other way around. “How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?” And conversely, rewarding people for doing something they like anyway can turn their pleasure into drudgery—the reward leading them to attribute their behavior to the reward rather than the enjoyment of the behavior itself.
I like grass because I have a lot of it.
Bottom line for writers: to present a character’s attitudes to the reader, write what they are doing, thinking, and/or feeling. And note that each of these affects the other two and is affected in turn. Dissonance among the these creates lots of opportunity for tension, conflict, and misunderstanding!
In Friday’s blog, I outlined the factors that influence/promote liking:
Repeated exposure
Physical appearance
Similarity (the more similar two people are on a number of dimensions, the more their liking endures)
Reciprocal attraction
Relationships that offer more rewards than costs
Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of love
Surprise, surprise: these are the underpinnings of love as well! And although liking and loving share roots, people seldom confuse the two. The difference is largely a matter of degree: love is more intense than like. It’s more personal and more important to one’s well-being.
Love comes in many guises.
Love for dearest friends
Love for family, one’s children in particular
Romantic love
We use the word loosely and often. We love chocolate, theater, gardening—whatever we feel strongly about. But no one seriously confuses these feelings with love.
Although beloved friends and family are direct extensions of liking, romantic love is in a category largely by itself.
Eros, the embodiment of romantic love
A key ingredient of romantic love is arousal. According to Psychologist Elaine Hatfield (1988, and not contradicted since), emotions have two ingredients: physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal. Arousal from any source can enhance any emotion, depending on how we interpret the cause of the arousal.
Note for writers: at least part of the arousal from any source (fright, heavy duty workout, viewing erotica, listening to humorous or repulsive readings) will be attributed to a suitable object of affection.
Aztec goddess of love and beauty Xochiquetzal
Intense romantic love per se doesn’t last. Romantic love reaches a fever pitch of obsession—infatuation, if you will—early on. This is the period of constant calls, texts, letters (whatever fits the time period), exchanging love poems, giving personally meaningful gifts, etc.. For one thing, it gets exhausting! But a case can be made that continued total focus on one’s partner/mate bodes ill for the well-being of any children they might have.
Men focus more on physical attractiveness. Although interested in appearance, women generally value their potential mate’s status/ financial security over physical beauty. These findings hold cross-culturally and even when someone is seeking a same-sex partner.
Age also matters: men value youth more than women do.
Men are much more willing to engage in casual sex than women are, and their standards for sex partners are lower.
Gender differences in mate preferences may be accounted for by social norms and expectations. The different socio-economic status of women and the level of gender equality within a society is also a factor in what attributes are prioritized when seeking a mate.
Margaret Mead, center
I’ll start with the Mating Gradient. As long ago as the mid-1950s, Margaret Mead wrote about the propensity for couples in which the men were older, taller, smarter, better educated, higher earning, and of higher socio-economic status than the women. Decades later, I conducted an experiment in which I had men and women respond to a hypothetical love relationship with either the traditional pattern (as outlined) or the opposite.
As expected, people in the traditional hypothetical relationships were comfortable and positive.
When men responded to a loved one who was two years older, two inches taller, better educated, higher earning, more intelligent, and higher socio-economic status, they were surprisingly okay with it! A typical response was, “If a babe like that loves me, I must be pretty hot stuff!”
When women responded to a loved one who was lesser on all these dimensions, they were generally negative. A typical response was, “I couldn’t respect a man like that. How could I love him?”
One interpretation of all this is that, traditionally, women are supposed to be taken care of by their mates and men are (perhaps) threatened when of an inferior status. But the upshot of men marrying down and women marrying up is that, overall, the least marriageable men are at the bottom of the heap while the most capable, successful women remain unmarried at the top.
The Sumerians were all equally shorter than the king.
Consider the implications of the traditional relationship. Feeling constantly inferior leads to depression and feelings of inadequacy. Feeling constantly superior leads to lack of respect and perhaps a power grab.
True friendship is built on equality of hat ridiculousness at Ascot.
There is research evidence that enduring relationships are based on equality. So how can these things be reconciled? One way would be for the man to be “superior” on at least one dimension while the woman is “superior” in one or more of the other areas.
And speaking of the relationship of respect to liking and loving: Zick Rubin introduced the concept back in the 1970s, published as Measurement of Romantic Love in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Rubin created scales to measure liking, loving, and lusting. Each item was rated on a 5-point scale from “not at all true” to “very much true.” Examples of these statements are below:
Liking scale items: I have great confidence in X’s judgment. X is one of the most likable people I know. I think that X and I are quite similar. I think that X is unusually well-adjusted.
Mitra, an Indo-Iranian god of friendship
Loving Scale items: I would do almost anything for X. If I could never be with X, I would feel miserable. I feel responsible for X’s well-being. When I am with X, I spend a good deal of time just looking at him/her.
Frigg, a Germanic goddess of marriage
Lust Scale items: I can’t stop thinking about having sex with X. The best thing about X and my relationship is that we let our bodies do all the talking. X’s attitudes and opinions don’t really matter in our relationship. The best part of my relationship with X is the sexual chemistry.
We tend to like people more when we are in a good mood, and we like them less when we are in bad moods. As partners stay together over time, cognition becomes relatively more important than passion. Over time, close relationships are more likely to be based on companionate love than passionate love.
Bottom line for writers: if you’re writing a love relationship, be clear on what kind of love it is!
Think about two people: a close friend and someone you are attracted to romantically. How are these attractions alike and how are they different?
Both platonic and romantic love have been extensively studied by psychologists, including myself when I was earning my PhD in experimental social psychology. Though there will likely always be more to explore, psychology has a huge breadth and depth of information available. I’ll start with liking. The information provided here is a summary drawn from Psychology (10th Ed.) by David G. Myers.
Caution: all of this research relies on group data; the behavior of individuals varies widely.
Proximity (geographic closeness) increases the likelihood of
Meeting
Interacting frequently
The mere exposure effect: more frequent exposure to anything and virtually any person increases attraction: nonsense syllables, photographs, music, geometric figures, etc., etc., etc.
Kin-san and Gin-san, the oldest twins in the world (age 108)
Familiarity increases attraction
We prefer the mirror image of our faces to the one other people see.
We prefer others who share some facial characteristics with us.
We seem to be hard wired to bond with the familiar and be wary of those who are different.
An extraordinarily attractive Frigatebird from the Galapagos Islands
After familiarity, physical appearance is the most important factor in attraction
Physical appearance matters to both men and women, although women more likely to say it doesn’t.
Physical appearance predicts how often people date and (no surprise here) how popular they feel.
Attractiveness does not affect how compassionate we think someone is.
Physical attractiveness is statistically unrelated to self-esteem
Attractiveness is unrelated to happiness
People generally don’t view themselves as unattractive
Attractive people are more suspicious of praise for work performance; less attractive people more likely to accept praise as sincere
Culture and beauty
Beauty is culture bound: think piercings, tattoos, elongated necks, bound feet, dyed or painted skin and hair, ideal weight; body hair, breast size
Cultural ideals change over time; for example, consider the feminine ideal in the U.S.: 1920s was super thin and flat chested; 1950s, the lush Marilyn Monroe look; currently, it’s lean but busty
Those who don’t fit the ideal often try to buy beauty: Americans now spend more on beauty supplies than on education and social services combined, not to mention plastic surgery, teeth capping and whitening, Botox skin smoothing, or laser hair removal
Tibetan, Cambodian, and Bulgarian bridal costumes as drawn by Aakansh Pushp
Cross-cultural beauty
Men in many cultures judge women as more attractive if they have a youthful, fertile appearance (the latter suggested by a low waist to hip ratio).
Women are attracted to healthy-looking men. When ovulating, women are more attracted to men who seem mature, dominant, masculine, and affluent.
People everywhere prefer physical features that are “normal”—i.e., not too big, too small. Average is attractive.
People prefer symmetrical faces—even though virtually no one actually has one.
Across cultures, women are 2-18% more likely than men to say they “Constantly think about their looks.”
Women have 91% of all cosmetic procedures.
Women recall others’ appearance better than men do.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Sophie Hunter are not actually siblings
Similarity is greater among friends/partners compared to randomly matched pairs
Common attitudes
Beliefs
Values
Interests
Age
Religion
Race
Education
Intelligence
Smoking behavior
Economic status
Opposites virtually never attract
The more alike people are, the more their liking endures: similarity breeds content.
People like people who like them
True for initial attraction
Self-fulfilling loop: A likes B, who responds positively, making A like B more, etc.
Especially true for people with low self-esteem
The effect is enhanced when someone moves from disliking to liking us
Atoms are also attracted to other atoms that reward their behavior
The reward theory of attraction: we like people whose behavior is rewarding to us, and we continue relationships that offer more rewards than costs.
BOTTOM LINE FOR WRITERS: if you want to write a realistic relationship, follow the principles above. If you choose to go against the norm, take care to make it believable to the reader.
Writing from life isn’t a novel idea. Indeed, there are whole books on the topic. For many (if not most) people, writing from life conjures thoughts of memoir, autobiography, or biography. But opportunities to mine your life to enrich your fiction are virtually limitless. This blog explores ways to tap into your life experiences. It’s a long but not exhaustive overview. Here’s hoping you’re inspired!
PEOPLE
1) Maybe the most obvious: you lift a character whole cloth from an acquaintance, friend, family member, or neighbor. Virtually the only thing you change is the name. (You may want to get permission or change just enough so that you can still show your face at parties.)
Totally unrecognizable
2) Choose a habit, quirk, characteristic gesture, favorite word, etc. from someone you know (maybe yourself) and make it a character note. This could be a private, unmentionable behavior (see my recent blog on the topic) or it could be quite public (think Rafael Nadal touching forehead nose, and both ears before every serve). My story “Solid Line” (in “Chrysalis Reader”) drew on my husband’s habits of food shopping and breakfast cooking (alternating eggs and cereal six days a week, pancakes on Sunday).
A consistent lack of pants could be a very inspiring character trait
3) Choose one or more factually true things about a real person and graft them onto a fictional character/story. For example, my story “Family Man”(published in Distillery) started with three true facts about my father: he had great eye-hand coordination, was stationed in Texas with the Army Air Corps in WWII, and he was a winning pitcher for the Old Timers Softball League in his later years. In “Belle” (Compass Rose), I used my maternal grandmother’s true story of having thirteen children to craft a fictional piece in which the character leaves after naming the thirteenth and heads west.
PLACES
1) Draw on a familiar neighborhood for the setting of a story or scene.
2) Take details from a place you have worked, lived, or visited often. I wrote “The Old Home Place” based on the hardscrabble farm where I visited my paternal grandmother for two weeks every summer.
If your setting is as important as a character, you will need to return to it often and provide lots of detail. Otherwise, don’t dwell on it, but use it to describe color, furnishings, feel, etc.
THINGS
A sculpture by Anne Truitt and the house of a hoarder
1) Give your character a familiar object to love or abhor. Think skull, Tiffany vase, worn baseball glove, cast iron skillet, whatever. Consider whether the character inherited it, received it as a gift, or chose it for him- or herself. “Pictures Not Displayed” (Storgy Magazine) is fiction based on a box of photographs I found under my mother’s bed after she died.
Great Aunt Tillie is now a family heirloom
2) Give your character a collection of objects. Here again, it could be anything—teacups, cloisonné napkin rings, antique farm implements, fake Christmas trees. If you choose a collection you are familiar with, you might also want to incorporate some of the characteristics of the collector.
3) Consider objects around your home that could contribute to your plot: be damaging or even lethal (think beyond knives and pokers), be used in defense or attack, or used in unconventional ways (think cast iron griddle used to hammer a nail).
EVENTS
1) Use repeated events to establish the rhythms of a character’s life. For example, attending every home game, square dancing, hang gliding. In addition, sometimes very different repeated events can be combined to form a new whole. Think holiday traditions, anniversaries, birthdays.
German Christmas customs
For example, I’m a devotee of massage. In “Beautiful Bones” (Connecticut Review), I combined the behaviors of many massage therapists with a formerly abused widow getting a massage during a hurricane and becoming paranoid about the massage therapist killing her.
2) Sometimes an event sticks with you just because it’s quirky. Once I was visiting family over Christmas and my granddaughter, who was enamored of special effects makeup at the time, had received a kit as a gift. Simultaneously, she was looking up imaginary diseases for a writing project with friends. The upshot was that she made up herself, her mother, and me to look like three generations suffering from hanahaki disease and I wrote “Lethal Love” (Good Works Review), in which suffering unrequited love resulted in growing flowers in your lungs and throat.
3) Perhaps more often, it will be one time only events that have made a huge impact on you. For me, driving from upstate New York in winter in a whiteout led to “White Out” (Happy) involving a case of road rage that never happened.
When my husband had eye surgery, I used descriptions of his treatment, treatment, restrictions, and the aftereffects to write a magical realism story, “Her Husband’s Eyes” (Midway). After the surgery, a superstitious wife thinks her husband’s eyes are haunting her. My exposure to Chinese culture via a trip to Singapore and Taiwan resulted in “Good Works” (descant).
4) Use a single event that isn’t quickly over to display coping skills. For example, having breast cancer. “Beast and the Beauty” (Clare) was a magical realism story spawned by radiation therapy following surgery, in which a woman suffering radiation poisoning turned to alternative healing methods.
ATTITUDES
1) Draw on how you were taught values, your moral compass. For example, in “The Pig Sticker” (Chelsea) when Uncle Earl calls a dirty rag doll “Nig” Mommy tells him not to talk trash in front of her babies. Of course, sometimes the lessons are much more explicit, as in being told throughout childhood that your word is your bond, or being exposed to church doctrine. Consider how you came by your values and whether those lessons relate to how your character came to his/her values and morality.
Most people inherit a blend of attitudes
2) Sometimes attitudes transfer in elliptical ways. In my family, “waste not, want not” was a maxim. Several friends and I agreed to share our Lady Finger mold, fish poacher, turkey frier, and other seldom used cooking equipment. That led me to write “The Darwinian Co-op Lending Library” (Clackamus Literary Review). I created a post-modern library in which people could borrow everything from Valentine’s decorations to turkey basters to a husband and children for the holidays.
EMOTIONS
This is perhaps the richest minefield of all. Remember emotional reactions in as vivid detail as possible, both your physical feelings and behaviors. Rememberwhen you felt joy, guilt, loss, bereavement, excitement, embarrassment, regret, inadequacy, love, sexual arousal, awe, helplessness, fear, being tipsy—any emotion at all.
If your POV character is experiencing this emotion, describe how it felt. If otherwise, staying in the POV character’s head, describe what the POV character can see, hear, etc. of emotional character”s behavior.
The thing to keep in mind here is that you can transfer an emotion to a very different situation/even. For example, if you’ve experienced the death of a loved one, those feelings can be written into your fiction as a character’s reaction to the death of a spouse, a sibling, a parent, a friend, even a beloved pet.
Bottom line for writers: your life is gold. Mine it!
When someone says something that isn’t true, it’s a lie—except when it isn’t!For writers, any untruth can be a tool for building character, plot, tone, etc. I can think of three situations when an untruth isn’t a lie.
1) The person telling the untruth is incapable of discerning what the truth is. Very young children will often lie because there is no real difference between fantasy and reality in their mind. The cardboard box really did become a rocket ship. A mermaid and a kracken really did come to play in the bathtub.
Depending on the age of the child, this may extend to what seems to adults to be attempts to get out of trouble or deflect blame. Because a child’s sense of reality is not concrete, what an adult sees as a lie a child may simply see as very effective wishful thinking.
Grandmom said I can play with power tools!
Children may also respond with the first answer to come into their mind that they think an adult wants to hear. This is true both for extremely young children who simply try to give an answer they think the adult wants to hear and for children who have trouble concentrating or remembering, such as those with ADD or ADHD.
Of course I took a bath!
Dr. Kang Lee, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, sees lying as an indicator of developmental status. I’ll skip the research methodology and simply cite the findings. When asked whether they had peeked behind a screen: of those who had peeked, 30% of two-year-olds, 50% of three-year olds, and about 80% of eight-year-olds lied about it.
I saw everything!
2) The person telling the untruth suffers some form of dementia. For example, an obvious case would be a woman in a memory care facility who tells visiting relatives that she baked a chocolate cake and everyone at the party said how good it was, and Paul Newman came in through the window and danced with her.
Another version, often harder to detect, is the person who has temporal confusion. For example, a man who says that his son came to see him yesterday and it was actually last week. (Think false alibi!)
white text
3) The speaker believes something is true that isn’t. In other words, the speaker is mistaken. It could be a misunderstanding of something seen, read or heard—but it could also be that the speaker was intentionally deceived so that s/he would spread a lie.
Which brings us to real lies as opposed to untruths: to make an untrue statement with the intention to deceive. But writers, go beyond the direct lie and use, half-truths, exaggerations, or pertinent omissions.
Not a rare behavior for people or characters. Indeed, Kendra Cherry writing on verywellmind.com pointed out that actual research about lying is relatively recent, and data replications are hard to come by, but some surveys suggest that as many as 96% of people admit to lying at least sometimes.
In 1996, Bella DePaulo, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, published the results of a study in which 147 people between the ages of 18 and 71 kept a diary of all the falsehoods they told over the course of a week. She found that most people lie at least once or twice every day! Over the course of a week, people lied in approximately 20% of social interactions lasting 10 minutes or more. They deceived about 30% of those they interacted with one-on-one.
Although she didn’t find gender differences in number of lies, there were relationship differences. Parents and teens interactions are often deceitful: “College students lie to their mothers in one out of two conversations.”
Little white lies. These lies are typically meant to do some good—or at least do no harm. For example, complimenting a friend’s shirt when you really think it looks dreadful. Coming late to a meeting and saying you were held up by an accident on the interstate when you really overslept.
Although pretty much everyone is told from a young age that it’s always best to tell the truth, the fact is that telling the truth (about oversleeping, for example) may be punished (for example, by a poor performance review). Thus, society often encourages or even rewards lying.
Illustration by Boyd Wilcox
Some lies may serve as a social lubricant. DePaulo (above) found that 25% of lies were “fake positives” intending to make the other person feel better about someone or something. These were 10 to 20 times more common than lies in which people pretend to like someone or something less than they actually do (fake negatives).
But beware: according to Wanda Thibodeaux on Inc.com, telling lies to spare someone’s feelings is not good in the long run. Yes, we do take the liar’s intention into account, but it also raises doubts about whether a person willing to lie to us actually has our best interests at heart. These lies can cause doubt, uncertainty, suspicion, and trust issues.
White lies made up to excuse being late, unprepared, unwilling to do something, etc. bring into question a character’s ultimate trustworthiness.
Also, telling little white lies can desensitize the liar, making it easier to tell bigger/more serious lies.
People lie for the same reason they do everything else: a lie is the best perceived alternative at the time. Thus, lies are a means to an end, and those ends can be broadly grouped into four overlapping categories; to get what they want, to take the easy way out, to avoid criticism, to build a positive self-image. The likelihood of lying increases when someone is “pushed into a corner” or needs to react quickly.
1) To get what they want. This could be almost anything. In relationships, it might be to attract a partner, to hide cheating, to get a partner to agree to sex, to avoid an argument—and these are just a few possibilities.
In the workplace, lying to get ahead, discredit the competition, get even with a colleague, take credit for someone else’s work, cover up procrastination, avoid being fired, etc.
Mr. Fluffers does not tolerate tardiness.
In any relationship, people lie for quick financial gain, to avoid taking responsibility or unwanted chores, to be liked/popular, or nearly any other objective that the liar sees as more important (at the moment) than the truth.
2) To take the easy way out. This overlaps with the good Little White Lies above, not wanting to deal with hurt feelings, for example. It also includes plagiarizing and making up data in a research project.
Fixed it!
3) To avoid criticism. When people aren’t comfortable with some aspect of their behavior, character, or past they are prone to deceive in any of the ways mentioned above (lie, half-truths, exaggerations, intentional omissions). Closely related to inflate one’s image, to cover up for a mistake, or to excuse doing something wrong.
4) To build a positive self-image. Basically, this is lying to oneself. The liar wants something to be true and pretends that it is until eventually s/he believes it. Making excuses for behavior or thoughts or wishes that at some level are unacceptable to the self.
Other reasons people lie
One lie has led to another, especially good for writers. (Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.—Walter Scott)
To be malicious and hurt other people
To take control of a situation
To hide a disorder such as an eating disorder, compulsive gambling, alcoholism, etc., which goes beyond avoiding criticism
It is integral to certain occupations
Pathological lying. A person who feels compelled to lie, and will do so with no apparent benefit to self or others is a pathological liar. This is often part of a diagnosis of a mental health disorder:
Antisocial personality/sociopathy (no regard for right or wrong, no remorse, often become criminals)
Borderline personality (varying moods and behavior, often impulsive, conducive to unstable relationships)
Factitious disorders (acting as if s/he has a physical or mental illness but does not)
The severity and frequency of lying, and the reasons for lying are what point to a psychological problem.
How to tell when someone is lying. (As summarized by Kendra Cherry, above.)
Folk wisdom is wrong. It says that liars tend to fidget, squirm, avoid eye contact or have shifty eyes when lying. Research indicates that these are virtually useless as indicators. (Looking away, for example, is more likely to indicate the person is trying to access long term memory.)
Some of the most accurate (although still weak) indicators of lying:
Being vague, offering few details
Repeating questions before answering them
Speaking in sentence fragments
Failing to provide specific details when a story is challenged
Grooming behavior, such as playing with hair or pressing fingers to lips
More active ways to uncover lies
Ask the person to tell the story in reverse. Increasing the mental load makes lying more difficult—although telling a lie is more mentally taxing than telling the truth anyway.
Trust your instincts. We may have an unconscious, intuitive response to lying that gets drowned out if we spend too much time focusing on the non-verbals stereotypically associated with lying.
Consider an individual’s tells
Successful card players learn to hide when they are bluffing and to identify what the other players do when they have good or bad hands. The same might be true for your characters. Does she blush? Does he stutter? Does he rub his chin? Does she bounce her knee? Does your character have a poker face? And if so, is s/he on the side of good or evil (so to speak).
If your burger keeps walking away, that could be a sign that it is a liar. And not a burger.
Bonus info about lying
The closer the liar is to the deceived, the more likely the lies are to be an altruistic (fake positive) one
Women are especially likely to stretch the truth to spare someone’s feelings
Men are more prone to lying about themselves: conversations between two guys contain about eight times as many self-oriented lies as they do falsehoods about other people
Bottom line for writers:
Lying is rampant, so there ought to be at least a little of it in your story
Lying can abet virtually any goal
Lies can be of virtually any size or seriousness
Pay attention to age, relationship, and gender differences
When Jesse Sheidlower wrote this book, he was the Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary. The book was published by Oxford University Press, one of the most prestigious academic presses in the world. The 49 pages of front matter and the 269 pages in the body of the book deal exclusively with the F word. Seeing this started me thinking. Ultimately, I concluded that the F word is one of the most important words in the English language. And therefore writers should consider its many uses.
One indicator of importance is the number of euphemisms coined to express the F word without tipping into the vulgar or obscene. A woman born and reared in North Carolina once told me that when a Southern Lady wants to say the F word, she says “Fine!”
That one wasn’t familiar to me, but we’ve all heard many others. These are what is sometimes called a “minced oath.” Here are some examples:
Effing
F-bomb
F word
F*ck
F**k
F***
F-ck
F—k
Flaming
Fracking
Fricking
Freaking
Frigging
FUBAR
Fudge
WTF
Flipping
Fork/ Forking
Foxtrot Uniform
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
Smurfing
Frelling
Bleep/ Bleeping
Fark (not to be confused with FARC, which might add unintended political themes to your work!)
fiddle-faddle
fiddlesticks
fug
cotton-pickin’
I could keep going, but the internet would eventually run out of pixels…
Although listeners know exactly what the euphemism stands for, many feel that the impact of the euphemism loses much of the cathartic value of the original and may come across as tepid, ineffectual, or just plain namby-pamby.
The original namby-pamby himself, poet Ambrose Philips
William Shakespeare was one of the most creative users of minced oaths and euphemisms to describe everything from copulation to defecation, writing some of the most vividly imaginative phrases to avoid the censorship of the age. Juliet may have had the sheath to make Romeo’s dagger happy, but no children’s ears had to be covered.
Miniature, Jean de Meun, The Roman de la Rose, Couple in a bed, Chantilly, musee Conde, Miniature. (Photo by: Christophel Fine Art/UIG via Getty Images)
Of course, this still wasn’t clean enough for Dr. Thomas Bowdler and his sister Harriet. In 1818, they announced the publication of a G-rated book of Shakespseare’s work, in which “those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” The Family Shakespeare didn’t sell particularly well (and was a pretty short book), but “bowdlerise” became a term for overdone, fussy, prissy censorship.
Note to writers: consciously decide whether to use a euphemism or the original. There is a time for vulgarity and a time for bowdlerising.
The F word is so prominent in English that the basic entry for fuck in Slang and Euphemism runs a full half page, followed by 60 entries directly involving the word, and surrounded by acronyms that take the place of actually saying the word. Though the origins are unclear, it dates back at least to 1475.
Basically, it refers to a sexual act, an act of copulation. It’s universally characterized as obscene or at least vulgar. However, over time, much of the resistance to the original word has been diluted by long and frequent use.
And it is arguably the most versatile word around. In modern usage, the F word and its derivatives (such as fucker and fucking) can be used as a noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, conjunction, interjection, or adverb.
Verb:
A sexual act in its most straightforward form, as in “Let’s fuck.”
Transitive: John fucked Mary.
Intransitive: Mary was fucked by John.
To cheat or mistreat someone, as in “She totally fucked me.”
No matter your use of the verb, taking inspiration from spiders is probably not a good idea.
Noun:
Referring to the act itself, as in a specific event being “ A great fuck.”
Referring to a partner, as in “A great fuck” referring to the other person involved.
Referring to an incentive or strong feeling on any subject.
Note to writers: make sure the context clearly specifies ambiguous meanings.
Pronoun:
Used in place of his/her, as in “Tell the fucker at the end of the bar that I buy my own drinks.”
“…and tell him I prefer not to drink fire.”
Adverb:
A modifier to a verb as in
That was some fucking dancing out there!
or
He was fucking sleeping on the job!
2. A modifier to another adverb, as in “The Broncos played fucking well out there.”
3. A modifier to an adjective, as in “Fucking beautiful.”
Adjective:
A modifier to a noun, as in “That was some fucking speech!” or “I had a fucking good time.”
Conjunction:
Connecting two parts of a sentence, as in “I left, fuck the boss’s order.”
Exclamation or intensifier: fuck can express innumerable emotions. Most often, as a single word, it expresses joy, despair, surprise, or anger.
But fuck can intensify virtually any emotion, depending on surrounding situation or text.
Ignorance: Fuck if I know.
Trouble: Mary returned and I’m fucked now
Fraud: I got fucked in the real estate deal.
Aggression: Fuck you!
Displeasure: What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
Difficulty: I can’t understand these fucking data!
Incompetence: You fuck-off!
Stupidly or incompetence: You really fucked up that negotiation.
The F word has a long and varied history. Though its origin remains somewhat obscure, it most likely derives from an early Germanic root, such as peuk (to prick), fokken (to thrust), or peig (hostile). Though linguists can’t seem to agree on the etymology, most agree that “fuck” has been a vulgar or taboo word for most of its very long history, which contributes to the difficulty of tracking down its history as it was not officially used or written down often.
Is this frelling or fracking?
It has a Wikipedia entry that runs to 19 pages, which goes into the history and gives examples of modern usage in politics, marketing, and literature. And as the Urban Dictionary says of it, “The only fucking word that can be put everyfuckingwhere and still fucking make fucking sense.”
Bottom line for writers: The F word is useful, versatile, and becoming ever more acceptable. But should you decide to use it, use it sparingly as the narrator, and limit it to one or a few characters. It loses its impact with repetition (see The Wolf of Wall Street).
