- Yes, I know things have been scattered and lame around these parts lately. Chalk it up to spring-that-feels-like-winter fever, or just being incredibly busy. I’m attempting to keep up with email, but am still running a few days behind.
- Meg Rosoff applies the lessons she learned in her advertising day job to writing. (Via Literaticat, who rightly identifies the commenters as mostly boobs.)
- Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast interviews John Green.
- Thoughts on science fiction as (not being) the literature of ideas and the work of Ted Chiang.
- Freshly banned words in the capitol. (Via Maud.)
- Meghan on the implicit assumptions underlying NYT articles about sex.
- The fabulous Betsy has Ellen Klages’ Scott O’Dell speech. Being a writer is all about shiny things. It’s true.
2 thoughts on “Friday Hangovers”
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What I find most interesting about Meg Rosoff’s lessons learned from advertising is number 8: “Lie about everything except emotions.” Do advertisers really stick to emotional truths? It seems to me that a lot of advertising is about creating desire where none existed before, which I think qualifies as lying about emotions.
(Which is not to say that the ability to create desire where none existed before might not be a useful skill for fiction writing. But that’s a different lesson.)
I think maybe she’s saying something similar to what you are here. Coincidentally enough, there was a piece on NPR this evening on my way to the grocery store about pharmaceutical ads and the thesis was that people remember emotion and the most successful ads were about that — not about facts. One of the ads actually contained a bald-faced lie about the product and how long people taking it slept for, but the portrayal of how not sleeping made people feel was accurate enough to convince them they needed it.
So, yeah, you’re right, but I imagine she’s saying that people know if the emotion is wrong that makes them want something — that’s why some ads don’t work? — but if the emotion feels right they’re then also willing to believe they need the thing in question… ?