Storytelling, Foreshadowing, and Reality Cooking

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay

One of my guilty pleasures is watching reality cooking shows. Not that I ever cook much, but it's really fun to watch other people cook. 

Recently while watching one on Netflix called Zumbo’s Just Desserts (seriously), I found myself thinking, “They’re talking about the lavender oil a lot. That means she added too much and it’s gonna taste awful.” And sure enough, a few minutes later, the judges were telling her that her cake tasted like potpourri.

I started paying more attention, and I realized that reality cooking shows are a really great place to see foreshadowing, clues, and misdirection in action. In any given episode, the filming and editing have already provided almost every clue you need to figure out the end result of the episode.*

These shows are also great at emotional manipulation. It was obvious pretty quickly in Zumbo’s, for example, that there was one particular character** who we were supposed to dislike. Everything this fellow said felt egotistical and just slightly sexist. And no one else spoke that way—at least not in the episode as it was edited. What is he like in real life? What are any of them like in real life? No idea. But we knew who to root for and who to dislike, just by their behaviors and speech. We didn’t have to be told.

Because of the editing, every clip they include matters, and they’re supposed to sway our perceptions. Does someone comment on how this weird flavor combination is definitely going to work? That will be important later in the episode—it’s either going to come back to bite them, or it’s going to turn out to have been absolutely brilliant.***

Which leads me to the subject of misdirection. Because it would be boring if every clue told you where to look. So they edit in specific comments and moments, but you don’t know if they’re going to lead to a flop or a fly. That lavender oil bit could have led to a fantastic success. What it couldn’t have led to? Nothing. Talking about it has signaled that something important is going on.

When a reality cooking show calls attention to a detail, that means it will matter. As an audience, we may not know if it will matter for good or for ill, but it matters. And that’s the way our writing should be as well. The details that we focus on should tell part of the story. The reader should be able to look back and say, “Oh, I see now why that mattered.”

It’s like Chekhov’s gun on the mantel. You can’t just put it there and then ignore it.

Analyzing the ways that reality cooking shows manipulate the audience and misdirect/guide us has been interesting to me, and I find myself actively trying to notice the clues as I watch. So if you need an excuse to watch your favorite cooking show, here you go.**** Call it research.

* In shows that record the whole season before the first episode has aired, you can sometimes see the clues for the finale right from the beginning.

** I say “character” because, let’s be honest, “reality” tv isn’t actually real. These are certainly characters or at least personas, not real people.

*** I just wrote “absolutely brilliant.” This means I’ve been watching The Great British Baking Show.

**** One caveat: American reality cooking shows do it far more than foreign. The Great British Baking Show feels a bit less manipulative of our emotions, although there are still plenty of clues to the results of each individual challenge.

Giving Google somethin' to talk about.

By Lacey Gunter

There are so many articles online about getting Google to pay attention to the writing on your blog or website so that other people can find you when they search a topic that relates.  I often wonder about the opposite end. How much is Google paying attention to what we write in our search engines?  If you are anything like me, a large portion of the topic research I do for a manuscript takes place online.

We should all know by now that Google and other internet giants are keeping vast personal records on each of us, based on our search, surfing and social media habits. Lucky for me, I write children's lit. So while my search topics can get wild, crazy and very random, they stay within safe legal and moral limits. Authors who write romance, suspense, criminal or horror may not be so lucky.

Being a wife of a lawyer, I hear how the information internet companies have on you can come up in a criminal case.  Sometimes things like this even get used in civil cases, like divorce. But it doesn't even have to go that far to affect most of us. Many of the adds that populate our web browsing are driven, in some part, by what we search.  But with the vast amount of information available in just a few clicks, it's seems almost archaic not to use the internet for research.

So what is Google saying about you behind closed doors? For most of us writers, I bet it is a pretty crazy message.

Know Your Audience

by Katy White

In February, I had the incredible opportunity to attend my first conference (through ANWA (American Night Writer's Association)).  I went to classes, pitched my novel to an agent and an editor (and got requests from both of them!  Woo hoo!), and met a bunch of really neat people whom I can't wait to see published one day.  It was a neat experience all around, and I'm still reviewing the notes from the classes I attended so I can apply the appropriate principles to my writing, my brainstorming, my marketing, etc.  

As I've gone through my notes, one message has stayed with me:  know your audience.

This message had one important caveat:  You are NOT your target audience.

Say it with me:

But wait, you may be thinking, I read YA voraciously!  I know and read all the best sellers, and I talk to my Young Women at church about every book we read!  I KNOW THIS GENRE, dang it!

   

Let me share an example about how you're not your target audience:  if you write YA (like I do), and you dislike Tumblr or Instagram or other like social media sites, don't assume that your readers feel the same way.  In fact, these very youth are probably so obsessive in their love for these things that they've been grounded from their phones and are quite possibly going through serious withdrawal of the very things you hate right now.  From a marketing perspective, if you write YA, you need to be active in social media.  You need to be annoyingly present on twitter and you probably even need to navigate the scary, yucky Tumblr waters to get your name out there.  So as much as you hate that junk, you have to remember that you are not your target audience.

When it comes down to it, we have to remove ourselves from the group for whom we're writing so that we can write the book or article or short story that will reach that group.  

What do you think?  How do you separate yourself from your audience when writing?  How do you know what your audience wants?

Saved By The Bell

Saved by the bell...what does that phrase really mean?

I saw a post not long ago on Facebook, entitled "Life in the 1500's", that talks about the origin of several (now) cliche phrases and traditions, such as the bridal bouquet, or it's raining cats and dogs.  I found the post interesting, and at moments, subtly amusing.  I even read parts to my husband.  A lot of the information seemed solid and reasonable, and I took it as truth at first glance (even though there were some parts that begged me to question their plausibility).

I read Anna's great post earlier this month, entitled Errors In Translation, and it got me to thinking more about the topic of research.

I decided to research more about the origin of different phrases, and I found the following article that totally debunks the info I had read, in such a humorous way that I can't believe I ever took a single part of it at it's word.

Life In The 1500's - Folk Etymologies

I guess it just goes to show how important research truly is.  Because if you don't have reliable and credible sources, and you don't do the proper research, you'll just end up looking foolish or fraudulent. And no bell is going to save you from that.

Oh, and I guess I've learned I can't believe everything I read on the Internet....right?