Shouts From Down Under

Tone of "voice"...what is yours...?

What if people are offended with our stories, blogs, titles, comments, reviews, opinions, emails and even chat sessions?

Has this happened to you, and you realise you've been completely misunderstood, because they couldn't see your body language, your face; couldn't hear your real tone of voice?

You know the new problem that is now getting a little old, in the use of social media and any dialogue exchange online?

It's misrepresenting, or misinterpreting each other's tone of voice, intended mood, expression, body signals and other factors our brains overlay, when we make those necessarily discerning calls on what exactly the person meant.

I've been a very late comer to any of this stuff. And no, I'm not talking about being aware of online misinterpretation of communication, but way before that problem.

I lagged in realising there was this underlying world. I'm not stupid, ok? But sometimes I do feel like a tenth of my brain was missing since birth. Seriously.

The part that is labelled Social Awareness.

You see, I don't know what happened in your life, but in mine, I was raised in the bush. Yes, there were my cousins, but only for a few years, and then not perhaps that much more skilled in that awareness than I was.

I'm not blaming. It's not that sort of blog entry. No way.

What I'm saying is, I never became aware, until much later, that there was this thing, this sort of secret signal thing going on between people.

Even before puberty, there are a host of things happening that are only fleetingly visible on the surface at best. People's interactions in a social setting appear to be just talking, some hand waving, sitting, standing, and yes, emotions.
I was aware that there were differing levels of friendship.

I suppose most children, perhaps even autistic ones feel that typical "need" for friends and / or feel the conflict that comes as we learn about the world around us. We learn that people display hostility, domination, strength of opinion, fear, and all those things that we can so easily misinterpret as defining "unfriendly" people.

Well, that's one level I was keenly aware of, and coming from an essentially lone existence, on an isolated bushland farm block, miles from town, miles from other farms with children, and miles from enough time for meaningful contact, I felt the negative side of people's social attitude very keenly.

It was frightening, unwelcome and traumatising. And I probably was a one eyed, proud child who wasn't that great at sharing either.
If someone wanted stuff I was playing with, I'd just hand it over, but walk away and never talk to that fellow toddler again.

These things may seem laughable in later years, but to children in those learning moments, I think it can affect the growth and "gelling" or "concrete-setting" of our future psyche. Perhaps our current condition of mind, years later, stems from things that happened back then.

So, this was one level of human interaction that I understood, existed.

But it was years later, and way past my puberty age, that I suddenly saw with clarity a whole different world of social interaction, right there in front of everyone, but not everyone aware of it. At least, I thought not many were aware. Now I think most people are aware of it except rare ones that will never "get it".

These are the tiny few, who other groups of people privately shake their heads about; these collective group's kindest comments about the odd one out person, are something like "he / she is a gem eh?" or "you have to be kind to em, don't ya?" or "poor thing, he/she will never realise how the world works".

Yes there was this deeper level of human interaction; I'm talking about the intricacies of body language, the expressions on faces, the flicker in people's eyes when they glance, the sparkle or the deadness, the roller doors coming down in exclusion, the private nods, private smirks, the ceasing of conversation when the person joins the group, the lack of interaction of the person, people's false overdoing of kindness - sometimes openly malicious.

It's not all bad. And I'm not saying all of this has happened to me, not crying poor me, or making some sort of appeal for help.

What I'm saying is, that this world of flirting, of secret bonding, secret opinions, secret exclusion, secret inclusion, sexual tension, hatred, calculating, assessing; it's mostly hidden or at best only visible by accident; this partly visible and interpretive "language" or "connection" is even more unnoticeable, or completely missing, when dealt with online.

If people choose to show their personal habitation of this underlying world, in a real and tangible setting, they may do it on purpose to manipulate or for some other purpose.

But online, like this, we are calculating what people mean, their mood, their everything, merely from their use of words, emoticons, timing between replies, and what they may or may not have shared in their Bio.

I have taken the attitude that I'll just try to be myself. In other words, not try to be someone or a facade where I have to keep up an act.

But then, there's another side to this that's relevant to writing. Recently I had a review about my piece The Reviewer; Murdered for a low rating! where the reviewer complains about my early lack of personality for the main character, stating that it was completely flat line, too stereotypical, and did nothing to grab their attention as a reader.

Well, I re-read the piece - one of those that you write for fun - never intending it to be taken seriously, and yes; the beginning is flat line. The guy is a slob and totally lacking in personality.
The fast food he eats has more personality.

And that's just how I attempted to write this part of the piece. I exaggerated stuff, and features of my characters into impossible realms, hoping all readers of this would recognise this technique to be purposeful.

Surely, I mused, people wouldn't take this story seriously, and feel that I had a secret opinion myself, that reviewers sit around eating fast food, having no life, only thinking of themselves, and having no social skills whatsoever, but do have a talent for reviewing. This sounds uncomfortably like myself (except the talent bit).

There is a TONE OF VOICE that has been put up on a pedestal, that authors should have in their works.

And I have seen, in the many books I have read over the years (not enough and not current, and sadly, I don't read much these days at all) there have been some authors who use the literal words, the setting out of the published pages, the font, the spacing and all that stuff, they use / used it to good effect to influence the readers interpretation of TONE.

Seriously, I despair sometimes, when people, and yes I know it's just a review / reviews, but people just think that we all have to abide by the rules of 2014.

Well, what if Rembrandt, Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Chopin, Bell, Einstein, Pasteur and for that matter, Sir Richard Branson, what if all these people had obeyed "rules"?

Ok, I'm not advocating throwing away spelling, grammar and punctuation, and the deeper basics of story writing foundations. There has to be order.

But folks, when you read someone's piece, for crying out loud relax a bit will ya?

Could it be (my eyes wide open and innocent) that an author may deliberately set a tone of "boring!" for a character. Then change that person's oh so real life personality, pivot their experience around a life changing event or incident so that they are not the same person?

And what if the author meant that change to be such a contrast, that a reviewer thought the beginning was pathetic.

Ok. I won't swear. I won't. I'll open my mind to other's opinions of my work that my ego bangs the gavel down, and shouts, it's perfect as it is, and I don't WANT criticism!

Ah, but there's the thing hey.

We / I DO want reviews, and criticism. And strong opinions and feedback are exactly what I do want.

As all of us know, that's what disclaimers are for, and you know, sometimes we can all get things wrong about another's work in reviews we write.

And I'm here to tell you, that I don't want to be a cry baby about people's scrutiny and what they feel when they read my stuff.

One thing about a very strong review is, it's so much more encouraging if you sit back (they may even state it in the review) and realise that they are treating you as a competent person who has SKILL. They know there was something lacking, and then you kicked into gear.

They don't know that you deliberately attempted to make it so.

I draw attention to authors who use the layout of a book to influence their tone of voice. Do you understand this?

Michael Crichton's SPARES is one such book, that I've mentioned before in an entry.

It's like he'd pulled out the enter key on his keyboard with pliers, and threw it away. The entire book is just one big block of text. No paragraphs, for most of it anyway; I can't remember the dialogue etc, how he did that.

But what I know is, the frantic pace, the mish-mash of the future era, the chaos, the drug induced kaleidoscope of a story at cyclonic speed was just so effective, if you looked past the assumed "bad layout design mistake".

You felt so immersed in the story, the technology of a future time, felt you could hardly keep up, breathless, constantly shocked, bombarded with too much information, psychedelic camera flash scenes piling on top of one another until the last freaking words.

Then the novel is over. You are left drained and dry lipped in the sudden cessation of sensation, silence deafening as you take in the story you've just read.

One day I hope to be a pain in the #$%@# novelist with enough "pull" that publishers have to publish my work, with huge risk taking such as Crichton's SPARES, and yet have enough skill, talent and restraint, to make it succeed, to break the rules, to find that niche of even, dare I say it?

A brand new Genre, or type of Novel?

Is it possible?

Well, people like Isaac Asimov didn't seem to think so, when they wrote their books?

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Well, to get to that goal point, the first step is to take criticism on the chin, coupled with enough resilience not to be knocked flat.

I KNOW WHAT I MEANT.


On a totally different subject. (?)

Every heard of extreme drought?

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Today I saw a post on Facebook where they are considering evacuating the town of Cloncurry, near Mt Isa in Queensland, because the town has run out of water, and they haven't' had any rain for over 2 years.

That's getting dry... Even their driest humour, even their Dad jokes must be pppretty parched.

Even weather is open to interpretation.

I'm wondering if there's room on Writing dot Com for a Forum where people write pieces for Fun.

Brace yourselves people. I think I'll stop procrastinating and make this happen, create an Item; Writing for Fun!

Woah, woah, woah, woah...hang on a sec. Isn't that what the whole site is about?

Writing for fun, and enjoyment? Yes, but perhaps most of the time we should rightly display our best stuff, not the stuff where we try to break the rules, invent knew genres, or reinvent the wheel in a different shape.

Perhaps there is a need for a special Forum especially created for those who seek to push the boundaries, find the new frontiers.

Sounds like utter chaos...

Ok, that's enough emoticons for now.

Sparky