Do Writing Contests Help or Hurt Creativity?

In the aftermath of the Genesis Contest results (contest for unpubbed writers sponsored by the American Christian Fiction Writers), I feel that it would be helpful for writers to talk about the creative writing process in general, and how a person's expectations upon entering any kind of writing contest can definitely effect their creativity afterward.

First, a few questions to keep you reading:

1. Have you ever taken a writing course in high school or college and had a far more difficult time completing assignments than you had hacking away at your work-in-progress on the side?
2. Have you ever signed up for NaNoWriMo to complete a novel in 30 days and had serious writer's block, but were able to knock a story out in under 30 days when not on a deadline?
3. Have you ever entered a writer's contest, received feedback, and never wanted to pick up that story again--or even write anything, for that matter?

These are classic examples of how sometimes our inner creativity can be stifled by things like contests. Rewards and evaluations are extrinsic motivations that can actually drive out our desire to write simply because we love it, which is called intrinsic motivation. (This is the intrinsic motivation theory of creativity in a nutshell, as published by Amabile in 1983.)

Unfortunately, the same things that tend to diminish creativity are the very things that increase competence and learning. Entering contests and receiving feedback and evaluation of our work will definitely help us in the future to do something in a more creative way--and certainly a more competent way--than is possible for us currently. So it's a catch 22.

Why should you concern yourself with this? Because you can't have both enhancing creativity and acquiring skills and knowledge, at least not at the same time. 

It boils down to your goals and expectations upon entering a contest as to what you will get out of it. If your goal is to develop better writing skills and knowledge of the craft, then entering a contest is perfect for you. You'll receive feedback, both positive and negative, and you will ultimately grow as a writer. Yes, your creativity could be stifled somewhat, but contests are for those writers who are in the industry for the long haul. A little speed bump won't amount to dropping out of the race.

If your goal is to increase creativity, then contests are not for you. Perhaps not even NaNoWriMo, which has the extrinsic motivation of receiving the coveted, cool "winner" button to put on your blog. Research has shown that anticipating evaluation, even positive ones (because you think your story is so fantastic that it will win), has a negative effect on creative performance.

Let's Analyze: Anyone want to comment on the three questions I asked earlier? Help me put some actual faces and names to the research.

Be sure to join me Wednesday as I discuss how the way that writers perceive evaluation actually determines its effect. You'll be able to look at your Genesis comments in a whole new light.

And HUGE CONGRATS to the semi-finalists!

Predating the MRU: Was Swain a Fan of Psychological Theory?

I love my job for the very reason that I get to do a lot of research online all in the name of "work." Lucky for me, I run a blog that makes very good use of this research. Cuts prep time down at least by a third.

At any rate, in my "studies," I came across a psychological theory that felt familiar to me. Like, MRU-familiar. It's called the James-Lange Theory of Emotion, and it's been around since 1884. William James and Carl Lange, 19th century scholars, developed this theory independently of each other.

Here it is in a nutshell:

Event ==> Arousal ==> Interpretation ==> Emotion

Look familiar? Here's the broken down version of Swain's MRU (since the second half of the MRU, Character Reaction, has four parts):

Motivating Stimulus ==> Visceral Reaction ==> Thought ==> Action ==> Speech                                             [  -------------CHARACTER REACTION-----------------  ]

If you take away the Action and Speech elements, which aren't part of the original theory, as the theory was focused on emotion, not action, they read essentially the same. James and Lange posited that the emotion came from the interpretation of the arousal. (You can read a bit more detailed explanation, including a quote from James, here.)

For example, My dog died and I'm crying, so I must be sad. This would be instead of the dog dying, feeling sad, and then crying. You gotta admit...it makes sense! Lange actually said that the vasomotor changes (arousal) was the emotion, essentially starting over a century-long psychological chicken v. the egg debate of which comes first, the physiological arousal or the emotional feeling.

Regardless, I have to think that Swain must have heard of these two fellas and tweaked their work to make it writing related, since writers definitely have to configure actions and speech into literary works.

Lends credence to Ecclesiastes 1:9 - "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

Q4U: What do you think? Did Swain lift a few principles from ol' James and Lange?

T3 - Motivation Reaction Units

Two weeks ago, I posted on the Rational Brain v. the Emotional Brain. In that post, I mentioned that a person can do things that seem to outsiders to be utterly crazy (one example I gave was Mike Tyson biting Holyfield’s ear). I explained the reason for this is that the emotional brain commandeers the rational brain.

This got me thinking about the Motivation-Reaction Unit popularized by Dwight Swain. I believe I can make them make more sense to you. My crit partner, Katie Ganshert (who has her first book coming out in May 2012 from Waterbrook Multnomah!) has a great explanation of a MRU on her blog, which I hijacked. (*waves* at Katie!)

What elements compose an MRU?

1. Motivating stimulus: the stimulus occurs outside your character
2. Character reaction: the reaction occurs inside your character

Four Components of Character Reaction:

1. Visceral reaction: the character has no control over this. This is a gut reaction that happens automatically.

2. Thought: what thoughts race through your character's mind after the visceral reaction?

3. Action: what does your character do?

4. Speech: what does your character say?

Important note about order: Don't get it wrong.

The motivating stimulus must come first. Your character can't react to something that hasn't happened yet. You wouldn't want to write: She yelped and jabbed her finger in her mouth after the hot water splashed against her skin. This reads funny--the MRU is out of order.

The components of the character reaction must stay in order as well. A visceral reaction always comes before action or speech. When hot water splashes against your skin, your nerve endings burn, then you yelp. It's not the other way around.

Get the order right and hook your reader. Get the order wrong, and your reader will know something is off, even though they might not be able to verbalize what's wrong. (End of Katie's explanation.)

So we know that our emotional brain (which is the amygdala) overrides the rational brain (prefrontal cortex) at times, even surprising us with our own reactions. Research has shown that the amygdala is not only faster, but it's more powerful. (Just believe me on this. It has something to do with many connections there are from the amygdala to everywhere else in the brain. Won't bore you with more.)

What does this mean? It means that our emotions have more influence in our life than our rational brain. Swain doesn't mention "emotions" proper in the actual character reaction, but it actually comes before the "visceral reaction" in the sequence. Let's look at an example.

If I'm walking to my car in the parking lot and a shadow rushes at me from the side, I will feel fear within a millisecond. The visceral reaction I have might be nausea, panic, blood rushing in my ears.  Maybe a few tenths of a second after that, I might experience an instinctive or reflexive action, such as clawing for my mace spray or grabbing car keys to strike out with. It's reflexive, and in times of danger, the standard reflexes are fight, flight, or freeze.

The rational brain is so far behind that a thought or attempt to speak hasn't even engaged yet. I haven't yet fully understood what is happening to me. I certainly haven't figured out that I might be either getting robbed or that some overzealous Brownie is just trying to sell me cookies. Even more interesting is that I might actually have the rational thought that this is just a Brownie selling Girl Scout cookies, but that won't stop my emotions and physiological reactions already under way (the cold sweat, labored breathing, rapid heart rate).

Anyway...hopefully you see how tightly interwoven the emotional brain is in the entire character reaction sequence. Swain instinctively knew this...and psychology and neuroscience back him up.

Motivation 101 via The Pawn

I finished reading Steven James' The Pawn and just have to hail the man as an incredible suspense writer. But he's also got some great psychological power behind his writing, and has clearly done a lot of research on disorders that he writes about (which makes them thrilling to read!).

FBI agent Patrick Bowers believes that there are only three primary motives, none of which are very helpful when it comes to solving a crime. (He's more into geospatial profiling rather looking at a criminal's motive and means.)

Desire: fame, sex, money, power, revenge, lust, greed, envy, jealousy, ambition
Anger: (a given, according to these FBI agents)
Guilt: regret, shame, remorse

Then the psychological profiler, Lien-hua, (who is all about determining motive), says that she thinks there are two additional--more important--motives that Patrick missed. She reveals the first one:

Fear. She says fear can turn you into a different person and make you do things you'd never do when you're pushed into a corner.

Patrick spends a lot of the novel trying to determine the fifth. I found myself highlighting all their interactions regarding this illusive fifth motive.

He guesses survival, to which Lien-hua responds is the desire to live. Then he tries betrayal. Lien-hua says that you betray someone because of desire, and you respond to betrayal with anger. Patrick's next guess is curiosity. Lien-hua says that curiosity is desire to know what the crime will feel like or how it will affect you. Patrick then guesses psychosis and depression, both of which Lien-hua say are conditions, now motivations. They might precipitate or increase the likelihood of certain behaviors, but they don't motivate the actual behavior.

Patrick then internally dismisses the idea of honor and vanity as forms of desire. He likewise dismisses duty as the desire to please and integrity as the desire to be virtuous. He next guesses remorse, to which Lien-hua responds, "That's just another name for guilt."

He never does manager to guess it correctly and Lien-hua ends up telling him. It rocks his little FBI world. but before I go further....

...can YOU guess the fifth motive?

Be sure to check back at the end of the day. If no one guesses Motive #5 correctly, I'll post the answer around 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST).

T3 - Emotional Brain v. Rational Brain

People do things out of character all the time. Donald Maass says that we should strive to create scenes in which our characters think, talk, or act the exact opposite of how they normally think, talk, or act in order to make them three-dimensional.

I totally agree with Maass, but the WHY behind your character's shocking behavior or thoughts is super important. A character has to reach a point of being pushed so far that they suddenly have motivation to act out of character.

I'd like to posit that the main reason a character does something like this is because their emotional brain commandeers their rational brain.

What does this look like in real life? Here are a few examples:

1) Zinedine Zidane: When he head-butted Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Soccer finals, he was kicked out of the game, France lost the World Cup to Italy, and Zidane’s career (and world-wide role model status) ended in disgrace.

2) Mike Tyson: When he bit Evander Holyfield’s ear in their 1993 title boxing match, his emotional brain commandeering cost him $3 million and lost his boxing license.

3) Bill Clinton: When he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," he got impeached.

4) Elliot Spitzer: New York governor Spitzer had to resign in disgrace when it became public knowledge about his involvement in a prostitution ring with prostitutes who charged over $3k an hour.

In each of these examples, we scratch our very rational brains and ask, "What in the world were they thinking?"

The answer is, of course, that they weren't.

Our emotional brain (amygdala) is the seat of a basest survival instincts: feeding, mating, fighting, flighting. The rational brain (prefrontal cortex) is the seat of executive function, rational thought, and judgment. Ordinarily, both parts of the brain work together: the rational brain adds subtlety and perspective to the raw feelings of the emotional brain and the emotional brain tempers the rational brain’s cool clinical judgments. But when out of whack, the emotional brain takes over and simplifies everything to black-and-white choices instead of subtle shades of rational gray.

I promise not to go into too much detail, but neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman found that when the amygdala (emotional brain) is active with blood and oxygen, there is less activation in the prefrontal cortex (rational brain). Our thinking power is disrupted and there are deficits in our problem solving because the blood and oxygen are present in the amygdala versus the prefrontal cortex. It is like losing 10 to 15 IQ points temporarily, which explains “What was I thinking?”

So this is happening to your characters in novels too! They think on the knee-jerk reaction of the amygdala, which hones in on potential dangers or threats and holds them up against previously stored emotional memories. (Good explanation found here.) This prompts them to basically lose some "smarts" and act in foolish, embarrassing, hot-headed, ridiculous ways that they most assuredly later regret.

Next week, I'll have a quiz for your characters to see if they are left-brained or right-brained...and how you can use this in your stories!

T3 - How to Determine Your Character's Motivating Need

This week concludes my month-long series on character motivations. I touched on David McClelland's Learned Needs Theory where he proposes that all people have a motivation driven by one of three main needs: Need for Power, Need for Affiliation, and Need for Achievement. (Click on the Needs to access previous posts in the series.)

Now that we've covered the needs, how can you be sure which motivation your character has? Easy! Take a part of the actual test McClelland used to solidify his theory and determine a person's need hierarchy.

It's called the Thematic Apperception Test. It's a set of 31 black-and-white picture cards that show emotionally powerful situations. You can see some of the examples I've provided. If I were to have your character in my office, I'd present these pictures one card at a time and ask him or her to make up a story about each situation. The spontaneous stories created by a person will give an indication which Need is greatest in their lives because the character would project that need into the story.

Sit yourself down, and, under the guise of being your character, think up stories for the following cards:

Card 1:

Card 2:

Card 3:

Card 4:

Card 5:

Card 6:

Card 7:

Card 8:

 

Card 9:

For an example, let's take the last card shown, a picture of a man and woman, the man with his face turned away. Let's say Character A looks at the card and says, "This is a married couple who just had a fight." Character B looks at it and says, "The man is mad because the woman got a promotion he thought he deserved."

The stories don't have to be long and convoluted. The above examples are one sentence long, but they clearly reveal a need tendency. Character A is high Need for Affiliation. How do I know this? The character mentioned the association between the two people as intimate--"a married couple." The character further mentioned that they had a fight, and what's a fight, but a barrier to affiliation and connection?

Character B is high on Need for Achievement. Very likely, were I to pry, this character probably got overlooked for a promotion himself, and was quick to project that experience into the picture. Achievement, measured by advancement up the corporate ladder, was something Character B highly desired, so therefore would be more prominent in his stories.

Honestly, you'll see a trend start to emerge and once you do, the really fun part happens: you take their motivational need and develop barriers (plot points) to thwart them from fulfilling that need. Needs affect a person's behaviors because they act in such a way as to meet those needs--it is their prime motivator. In order to ratchet up the tension, you'll know exactly what to throw their way once you determine how important Power, Achievement, or Affiliation are to them.

T3 - Character Motivations, Part 3

This week we're covering the Need for Achievement (N-Ach), the third motivating need as identified by psychologist David McClelland. If you missed the Need for Power or the Need for Affiliation, click on the names to read the previous posts.

People with High N-Ach want to excel at what they do and succeed at what they plan. They will go-go-go until they reach the top. They are driven by the challenge of success and the fear of failure. They want to win, master skill sets, be in control, and set new records. They want to "boldly go where no one had gone before."

They don't need praise or recognition of a job well done. Most likely they prefer to work alone or with other high N-Ach people, with a high degree of independence. (They absolutely do not like micromanagers!)

They need constant, specific feedback for them to judge where they are in their progress of meeting their own goals. This feedback ultimately should include advancing up the corporate ladder, with appropriate raises and bonuses. But let me be clear: it's not about the money. It's the achievement of making more money, where the money becomes a symbol of their progress.

They usually set realistic goals that are challenging and always--always--taking them in a forward direction. They are a big believer in calculated risks, preferring neither low-risk situations or high-risk situations. Here's why: a low-risk situation where success is easily achieved is not genuine achievement. If anyone could do it, that would nullify their sense of gain. A high-risk situation could mean success is more a game of chance (low internal locus of control) than the result of the N-Ach's own effort (high internal locus of control). It also carries a chance of failure, which N-Ach's avoid at all costs.

They might have too high of expectations of others, expecting them to be high N-Ach, as well, which could be problematic for them. They might think of people with low N-Ach as being slackers, content to get by with the bare minimum, or reckless cavaliers, choosing high-risk situations where failure would be not only unembarrassing, but also expected.

People with high N-Ach might have parents who encouraged independence in childhood and gave out praise and rewards for success. Positive feelings were associated with achievement (as well as the reverse), so that might help you with backstories.

Next week I'll wrap up this series with some suggestions of how you might best be able to determine what your character's deepest motivating factor is, and how to slam them up against their unstoppable force to create great tension in your novels!

T3 - Character Motivations, Part 2

This week we're looking at the second motivation as identified by psychologist David McClelland, the Need for Affiliation (N-Affil). 

If you missed the first part of this new series for writers, click here for the Need for Power (N-Pow).

This second category deals with the people who are social by nature. Affiliation can be defined as a positive, sometimes intimate, personal relationship. These are the people love being a part of a group and are friendly to others. They crave human interaction and want to be liked by everyone they meet. It drives them crazy when someone dislikes them and they don't know why.

They always want to be in harmony with others, so as a result, can often be conformist and reluctant to stand out. These are not competitive people. Most likely, they stick with whatever norms have been established by whatever group of which they are a part. They want approval, rather than recognition, and it's that approval which motivates them the most.

High N-Affil individuals prefer work that provides significant personal interaction. They perform well in customer service and client interaction situations and do best in a cooperative, cohesive environment where they can be a supportive team player. They often make poor managers or leaders because their ability to be objective is impaired by their high need to be popular and liked. A person with High N-Affil placed in a leadership role might avoid making unpopular decisions, permit exceptions to rules, and show favoritism to friends.

Some situations bring out the N-Affil greater than others. For example, take the weeks and months following the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. Americans put their differences aside and came together in a time of great distress. In general, situations that lead to fear cause people to want to be together, as well as events of high stress.

It should be noted that people who are high N-Affil don't necessarily have to be with other people all the time. Ideally, they strive for just the right balance between time to their self and time spent with others. If that balance isn't being met satisfactorily, then the person will be more motivated to adjust it one way or the other.

If you know someone who would blow off studying for an exam because they value a relationship more than the grade, they are likely High N-Affil. If you know someone who is uncomfortable socializing with others--minus close friends and family, perhaps--then they are low N-Affil.

T3 - Character Motivations, Part 1

Today starts a new 4-week series on character motivation. I'll be drawing from the Learned Needs Theory of psychologist David McClelland (1961). He developed a theory that, boiled down, essentially posits that humans have three types of motivating needs, acquired over time and shaped by experience and cultural background:

1. Need for Power
2. Need for Affiliation
3. Need for Achievement

There are many other theories out there, some espousing more needs than others, but they pretty much all boil down to these three, which should be music to a writer's ears! How much easier, then, to nail down the driving motivation behind your characters? Let's flesh out that "M" column from Debra Dixon's Goal, Motivation and Conflict.

If a person has a high need for power (N-Pow), they have a need to make an impact using influence and control. They are most satisfied when their environment and surroundings move in a direction due to their direct involvement. This need could find roots in the person's workplace, church, government or military.

These people are usually good speakers, like to be at the center of attention, demanding in nature, competitive, and ambitious in life. They aren't concerned with getting recognition or approval from others. They just want people to agree with them and comply with them, as that meets their power need.  People skills, compassion, and flexibility might not be their forte.

N-Pow can be expressed in two ways:

1) SOCIAL

Social power is also called institutional power. These people want to further the efforts of the organization they work for, root for, or invest in. They want to direct the efforts of their team, whether financial gurus, cheerleaders, or powerhouse companies, to achieve a greater good.

They want their efforts to be effective and tasks to be accomplished, so they seek the upper level management positions as a way to accomplish this, not because they want to contribute to their status and gain. These individuals are hesitant to abuse their power. They are less narcissistic and welcome consultation and advice. They don't stockpile status symbols to flash about.

2) PERSONAL

Personal power isn't viewed by others to be as desirable as social power. Why? Because a person seeking personal power wants control over people. They aren't necessarily interested in a greater good. They are after their own goals and just want to have power over others to meet those goals.

They aren't as concerned with being effective or making a difference, so they might not make the best managers or CEOs. They typically have less self-control and might exercise their power impulsively. They might be rude, manipulative, and drive about town in fancy cars and $3k suits. They want the people under them to be loyal to them, not the organization.

It might be important for you to note that men with a high N-Pow express their motive in different ways from women with high N-Pows. Men typically show higher levels of aggression. They are more susceptible to drinking heavily, participating in competitive sports, and being sexually exploitative. Women tend to channel their N-Pow in more socially acceptable ways, like being responsible, caring, and concerned.

I'll cover the Need for Affiliation and Need for Achievement in the next two weeks and then do a wrap-up for week four to discuss how you can "interview" your characters to determine which need is higher for them than the others. Till then!