character motivation

FUNNY FIXATION OR OCD?

Posted on by vlaw759

OCD, like love and hate, is a label thrown around pretty loosely, often for humorous effect. People with fixations on organization, precise routines, hygiene, perfectionism, etc. are frequently referred to as “acting so OCD” or “showing their inner OCD.” Marketing campaigns turn OCD into a punchline to sell products like Obsessive Christmas Disorder pajamas or Khlo-CD organizational apps.

Hilarious, no?

There is a significant difference between people with odd quirks and people who have a diagnosable mental illness. Both can be useful characters for writers, albeit in very different ways. Characters who have fixations, quirks, rituals, or habits that interrupt a scene or cause awkward situations can be a source of amusement for writers. Characters who actually have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be a source of tension, tragedy, or demonstrated compassion for writers, but the actual mental illness is not amusing.

Confusing retail workers is a sign of having too much time on one’s hands rather than having a debilitating mental illness. (Disclaimer: This blog is not affiliated with any retail chain or candy brand.)

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, recurring thoughts (obsessions) and/or behaviors (compulsions that s/he feels the urge to repeat over and over). The line between having a personality quirks and a mental disorder can be hard to find, but it generally comes down to quality of life. Dr. Steven Brodsky points out that actual OCD will “impair social or occupational function or involve frequent excessive distress” in the lives of those suffering from it.

  • Obsessions—repeated thoughts, urges, or mental images—are private, and thus no one knows about them but the person unless they’re talked about. These uncomfortable thoughts cause anxiety.
  • Compulsions are typically (but not always) public, as is any behavior that happens the presence of others. The repetitive behaviors are an attempt to deal with the anxiety the obsessive thoughts create.

Could you benefit from an O and/or C character? Although people/characters can exhibit symptoms of obsessions, compulsions, or both, thoughts and behaviors typically occur together. See the end of this blog for specific prompts.

Detective Adrian Monk from Monk, Physicist Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, and Chef Monica Geller from Friends

Consider Monk, The Big Bang Theory, and Friends. All three shows feature characters who exhibit signs of obsessions and compulsive behaviors, usually to the sound of the laugh-track. All three characters are referred to by others as “obsessive,” “OCD,” or some variation thereof, but none experience the pain that comes along with mental illness (which I can only imagine would be heightened by hearing laughing crowds).

Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors become part of a vicious cycle in the minds of people with OCD. Most people with OCD realize that their thoughts and behaviors are irrational, but they are unable to break the cycle. Children often don’t perceive their abnormality; symptoms are noticed by parents and/or teachers.

In contrast, “neat freaks” and people with fixations often enjoy performing the behavior in question (such as alphabetizing books), enjoy the results (such as having a tidy apartment), have had the behavior drummed into them (such as rewinding video tapes after working at Blockbuster for years [I realize that I’m dating myself]), or out of practical necessity.

An over-organized closet may be a necessity for a working mother of two, saving endless headaches on school mornings.

Most People with OCD Fall Into One of the Following Categories (in no particular order)

  • Washers are afraid of contamination. They usually have cleaning or hand-washing compulsions. Many refuse to wear anything someone else has worn, take their own sheets to hotels/motels, etc.
    • Washing your hands before and after eating is just being extra hygienic; washing your hands until they are raw and cracked is a probable sign of OCD.
Artwork by NeverStayDead
  • Checkers repeatedly check things (motion-sensor lights turned on, car locked) they associate with safety. They might keep guns or other weapons that are checked for accessibility, condition, etc.
    • Jiggling the door handle after locking it could be a funny quirk; checking the lights, the thermostat, the window latches, and everything else repeatedly until you’re late for work is a sign of unhealthy compulsion.
  • Doubters and sinners are afraid that if everything isn’t perfect or done just so something terrible will happen or they will be punished. Dressing, undressing, bathing, eating must be done in precisely the same way, for example. Or furniture cannot be moved. Cars must always be the same make.
    • This can also take the form of rituals that must be completed regardless of convenience or safety, such as always taking seven steps at a time or touching every surface in a room, including the hot stove top.
  • Counters and arrangers are obsessed with order and symmetry, perhaps including superstitions about certain numbers, colors, or arrangements. For example, counting all the angles in a room, or the number of furniture legs.
    • Being unable to enter rooms painted blue or walk without counting sets of four steps sounds amusing… until the door out of the burning house is in a blue room five steps away.
  • Hoarders keep things they neither need nor use. They fear that getting rid of anything will cause something bad to happen, or it will be needed later. These people are often co-diagnosed with other disorders, such as depression, PTSD, ADHD, compulsive buying, or kleptomania. They might engage in skin-picking.

OCD symptoms may come and go over time. Added stressors increase symptoms.

It’s a vicious circle: obsessive thoughts trigger anxiety, which leads to compulsive behavior to try to curb the anxiety, and the behavior is followed by temporary relief.

Writers consider the following:

  • A person who actually is threatened in some way while others dismiss the anxiety and precautions as being silly fixations
  • A character whose compulsive behaviors are humorous and the source of derision/ joking among coworkers or friends/ acquaintances
  • A character whose compulsive behaviors embarrass children or other family members
  • A person whose compulsive behaviors put the family in financial jeopardy
  • A person whose compulsive behavior leads neighbors, classmates, and others to ostracize the person AND his/her family
  • A character who keeps obsessive thoughts private, doesn’t act on them, and the strain leads to withdrawal from intimate relationships
  • A character whose obsessions get them into medical or legal trouble
  • A character whose OCD has become so severe that they are unable to leave the house or keep a job

Bottom line for writers: OCD characters can provide tension, tragedy, and plot development; fixated or quirky characters can provide humor. There is a big difference.

BURIED ALIVE

Posted on by vlaw759
 
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.

 

This guy seems pretty happy about the situation.

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

A Fine Literary Tradition
 
Consider Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” The Fall of the House of Usher, and Berenice.  More recently, Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery includes Paul Sheldon’s Misery’s Return, a book within a book.

Farinata and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti in Level 6 of the Inferno, painted by Suloni Robertson

Dante’s Inferno references several classes of sinners punished with some form of eternal burial:

  • 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.

 

The Great Plague by Rita Greer

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.

 

Victims of the 2018 tsunami in Nepal were not so fortunate.

But Wait: Sometimes People Are Buried Alive on Purpose!

From the Museum of Torture in Venice

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

Interestingly, most of the laws demanding live burial as a form of execution were for crimes committed by women.  Men convicted of comparable crimes were more likely to be beheaded.

 

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.

Codice Casanatense, a Portugese artist, recorded this scene of a Hindu widow being sent alive to her husband’s grave.

Very rarely people 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.)

There is now a monument to Mick Meaney on Kilburne Street.

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.

LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES

Posted on by vlaw759

Are you sure I can believe you?

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)
  • Histrionic personality (exaggerated emotions, demanding attention seeking behavior)
  • 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
  1. 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.
  2. 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

Do You Need a Gossip?

Posted on by vlaw759
do you need gossip
In discussing toxic gossips, Lillian Glass says, “They are good at letting the cat out of the bag. They pick up more dirt with the telephone than they do with a vacuum cleaner. They have a keen sense of rumor.” Consider how such a character could advance your plot.
 
S/he could overhear something and pass it along because that’s what gossips do. Depending on your needs, what was overheard could be true or false. Depending on your plot, either could increase tension, and true gossip could provide a vital clue. Enough said.

 

A gossip often makes the hearer feel like a special confidante, getting privileged information—until and unless the hearer discovers s/he is only one of many.

 

Consider how the gossip disseminates the information: word of mouth, in person or by phone; email or text; Facebook or other social media. The spoken word is, of course, the most deniable—also the most vulnerable to alteration or exaggeration in the retelling.

 

do you need gossip
Consider the character of the gossip. The one basic truth about the character of the habitual gossip is that s/he needs to feel important. In addition, the gossip does not truly disclose information about him/herself. But beyond that, what typifies him/her? Some possibilities include insecure, belittling, competitive, hurtful, self-righteous, sneaky, mean-spirited, angry, lonely—and the list goes on. Depending on what you choose, the gossip could be an object of humor, pity, or dislike to your reader.

 

Consider the gossip’s relationship to your protagonist. The likelihood is that a gossip would be a secondary character in your story. Is s/he a friend, neighbor, coworker, family member, employee? Is s/he a one-off or a recurring character in a series?

 

Last but not least, remember that s/he who brings, carries. The gossip could be a great channel for passing information or misinformation among characters by telling A about B and then telling B about A.
do you need gossip
These are only some of the ways a gossip could enrich your cast of characters. Can you think of others?

Writing Relationships: Why Not Get the Hell Out of Dodge?

Posted on by vlaw759
Writing Relationships: Why Not Get the Hell Out of Dodge?
In recent blogs, I talked about toxic mother-daughter relationships, toxic relationships in general, and toxic people.Toxic anything is good for writers! But once you’ve introduced these negative relationships and people, you cannot—satisfactorily—leave your reader wondering why s/he puts up with that. After all, there are planes, trains, and automobiles—not to mention boots that are made for walking!

Even if your characters don’t recognize their motives, you—their almighty creator—should know what they are AND should let the reader know.

 

So, why does s/he put up with it? The short answer is, it’s the best perceived alternative! People are very rational creatures, and they always make that choice. The complexity here is in the word perceived. Not everyone sees a situation the same way.

 

For example, the objective reality might be that a battered woman would be better off out of that marriage. But if she doesn’t see that, it ain’t gonna happen. So consider what her point of view might be. Suppose she came from a family with spousal abuse and accepts it as part of the package. Perhaps she fears for her life, or the safety of her children, if she leaves and he finds her. What if he threatened to commit suicide if she leaves and she couldn’t stand the guilt? Maybe she thinks it’s her fault—and/or, her self-esteem is so low that she thinks she deserves it. Maybe she doesn’t see a way to keep a roof over her/their children’s heads and food on the table single. Perhaps she loves him and lets him beat her because for his own twisted reasons, he needs to do so. Perhaps leaving/divorce goes against her religious beliefs. Etc. All of these reflect beliefs or values not universally held—and beliefs or values not universally held often apply to perceptions about leaving a toxic situation or relationship.

 

Additionally, consider the legal constraints on minors, military personnel, prisoners, employees, etc.

 

Perhaps your character is highly motivated to avoid conflict, criticism, gossip, embarrassment, rejection by family or peers—or even fears the unknown.

 

Takeaway for writers

Show the reader your character’s perspective.