Canine Conversations

A speech language pathologist, Christina Hunger, claims to have taught her dog, Stella, to "talk":

Can That Dog on Instagram Really Talk?

The communication method depends on a soundboard like those used by some apes, with the animal pushing buttons that stand for words. They produce sound recordings of words such as "outside" and "play." According to the author of the above article, Jane C. Hu, a cognitive scientist, there's little doubt that Stella "understands" the meanings of some buttons in the sense that she knows certain actions, in terms of choosing a button to push, cause certain results. Was she deliberately combining words to form a message when she pushed "outside" followed by "Stella"? Maybe. I'm highly skeptical, however, that she combined "good" and "bye" to make "goodbye" or that "'Later Jake' (Jake is Hunger’s partner), in response to him doing a chore, meant 'do that later'," and Hu seems to agree. Granted, it would be big news to discover "a dog could plan future events and express those desires," but does Stella's performance prove her capable of abstract thought to that extent?

I'm neither a cognitive scientist, a linguist, nor a zoologist. Reacting as an interested layperson, though, I don't go so far in the skeptical direction as a critic of ape communication I read about somewhere who dismissed an ape's situation-appropriate use of "please" as the animal's having been trained to push that particular key before making a request. How is that different from a toddler's understanding of "please"? He or she doesn't start out knowing what the word "means." It's simply a noise he has to make to get adults to listen when he wants something.

Another catch in interpreting Stella's dialogues with her mistress, as pointed out by Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor and expert on dog cognition, is that the dog's "vocabulary" is limited by the available buttons. Also, it's possible that Stella, instead of acting independently, may be responding to unconscious signals from her owner. Yet we know dogs do "understand" some words in the sense of associating specific sounds with things, people, and actions. A border collie (recognized as one of the most intelligent breeds) named Rico is famous for his 200-word vocabulary. After being ordered to go fetch any one of the objects whose name he knew, he could get it from a different room, a procedure that eliminated the risk of his picking up cues from a human observer:

Rico

Psychologist Steven Pinker, author of THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT, takes a dim view of attempts to teach animals some form of human language, as if learning to "talk" would prove the animals' intelligence. He maintains that rather than trying to induce apes and dolphins to communicate like us, we should focus on understanding their own innate modes of communication. He may have a point. If IQ were measured by how many different odors one could distinguish, how would our "intelligence" compare to that of dogs?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

How To Learn To Write

I've been mentoring an advanced student into the giant leap from novel-length story writing to novella.

Yes, it's a giant chasm, a leap upward in skills as monumental as the leap from novel to screenplay. 

Just like so very many of my prior students, this one keeps reverting to PASSIVE VOICE when summarizing the story in order to pitch it to an editor for a specific anthology aimed at a specific market.

Hitherto, the one student has been writing stories in personally created worlds.  Now the pressure is on to meet a particular external set of requirements -- a specific "trope" if you will, the action/adventure trope for the 10,000 word max story form.

There's a terrific story, great material, fantastically valuable wide-audience characters and plights, and a rip-roaring adventure during which much of the worldbuilding can be shown without being tediously told. 

But though the writer has an intellectual understanding, and is absolutely personally convinced, that the point of view character must drive the plot, the description (the pitch) keeps turning passive voice.

Obviously, it's a major, huge, giant, incredible STRUGGLE to get the writer's hand inside the main POV character and dive into action.  We are on, I think maybe, the fifth iteration of my saying NO MAKE HIM ACT and the outline coming back to me saying "THIS IS DONE TO HIM." 

The first iteration of the outline was a couple pages of long, dense paragraphs with multi-syllable words, a complete brick wall between the editor and the pitch.

See my series on What Is an Editor.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html   has links to the previous 6 parts.

Don't make your editor struggle, and don't make your editor suspicious that you don't know what you're doing. 

The pitch outline must contain the information "I know how to write in this trope."  Whatever the editor needs, you can supply it, no sweat.  Really, the Hollywood truism holds in publishing, "Don't answer on the first ring, and never let them see you sweat.'

This raises 2 questions:
a) How do you create a pitch that shows-without-telling that you can write this particular trope
b) How do you write such an outline and such a story? 

WRITING IS A PERFORMING ART

That's the answer in a nutshell. 

This new writer is experiencing the learning curve for PERFORMING AN OUTLINE.

That's what a pitch is - a PERFORMANCE of an OUTLINE.

It's just what a pianist does when practicing scales.

All piano pieces contain some of the notes of one scale, but a pianIST can play all the scales.

Proficiency at scales goes hand in hand with proficiency at playing whole pieces.

An editor looks at a a pitch letter and assesses the skill of the writer from the form and mostly from the SEAMLESS EASE with which the pitch letter reads.

If you sit and sweat and strain, pondering each word you type, re-reading and re-editing and polishing and polishing your pitch, it will be summarily rejected across the board.

If you are asked for a "story" with certain parameters, and blink and write a 1 page pitch without thinking about it, without strategizing about whether it will be bought, without anxiety or effort, it will be bought instantly. 

Think about that.  Do you want to sit in a piano teacher's living room and listen to a 9 year old laboriously work their way through chopsticks?  (if it's not your 9 year old, that is)  Would you pay $100 to sit there for an hour?  But $100 to listen to a true master render a Chopin etude and some other pieces would be a bargain! 

In fact, one lifetime highpoint I remember was watching Victor Borge (a so-so piano player with pizzaz http://www.victorborge.com/ ) render Chopsticks in a concert hall.

Writing stories is just like that.  The story you are writing, however original, is not original.  It is a RENDITION of something everyone loves, and whether they want to read it again or not depends on how well you render it, how you perform THEIR STORY. 

If it's all about the ease with which you perform, how do you acquire that ease?  How do you get to where you aren't giving editors a hard time and making them teach you writing while they desperately try t save their job?

Just like piano playing, practice-practice-practice.

How do you live long enough to practice that much novel or story writing?

You practice by creating OUTLINES.

Yes, the power is in the outline.  That outline is not a "rendition" of the story, but a rendition of the trope, the scale behind the piece.

If you see a passive construction slip into your outline, you know your subconscious is fighting your purpose, that you are not well tuned inside yourself.

The objective of practice with writing is the same as the objective with the practice of music, or the martial arts! 

The part of you that does the actual work is not your hands, your eyes, or your conscious mind.

The part of you that does the actual work in music, driving a car, martial arts or writing is your subconscious mind.

The objective of practice is to train the subconscious, because it can not learn.  It's not conscious, it doesn't KNOW, it only FEELS.  But random, rambunctious, flashes of feeling can't perform a structured piece.

The subconscious mind does not "mature" at the same rate as the conscious mind.  Think of a teenager, 14 years old going on 5.  Blows hot and cold, bursts of insane jubilation followed by blasts of depression, absolute confidence and ten seconds later total terror.  Now think of a 35 year old who has actually matured.  The same sensitivity is there, the capacity for jubilation, depression, confidence and terror in response to changing situations, but the magnitude of the emotional blasts is tamed down, and the power behind those blasts is used not for sound-and-fury but actual, visible accomplishments.

The subconscious is like a rebellious little puppy, eager to please but easily confused.  The trained subconscious is like a mature professionally trained guard dog, sounding off only when there really is an intruder (e.g. a passive verb in your pitch).  The trained guard dog's tail wags with delight, but he sits decorously until released.  The emotions are there, but they don't take over and dominate the direction of events.

But how does a puppy get turned into a guard dog?

It's that consistent, kind, generous trainer who rewards good behavior and steadfastly ignores bad behavior. 

The trainer shows the puppy the task, over and over leads the puppy through it, then gives a treat for success.  As the puppy matures, the tasks get more demanding but anticipation of a treat keeps the puppy trying to perform.

The new writer's subconscious is a PUPPY ever so eager to please, dashing this way and that, pulling on the leash, jumping on the trainer with muddy paws, chewing on everything in sight. 

The writer's imagination incites that puppy to yap incessantly.

The one command the writer must first teach that puppy is NO.  Then "here, like this" -- that's reading other  published works, dissecting them, copying them.  Get a good copy, give the puppy a treat.  Eventually, with REPETITION (e.g. writing many story outlines though not the stories), with practice the puppy starts to perform well enough to go out in public on a leash (make a story submission to a paying market.)

So I have this writing student I'm taking out in public on a leash, and a pocket full of treats waiting for performance.

Know what?  Life is FUN! 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dog Training For Alien Characterization

My beach reads this summer included "It's Me Or The Dog" by Victoria Stilwell. I wasn't far into the book when I saw the potential for alien romance writing inspiration.

Dogs have different abilities and some of their senses are much better than ours. Take the sense of smell and the logic of sniffing, for instance. Dogs perceive events and behaviour differently. Just as a romance hero alien would.

In one passage of the book, Victoria Stilwell recounts what most humans think if they see a dog joyfully rolling in the grass. We (humans) anthropomorphise. We assume that the dog is enjoying the sort of experience that we would enjoy, if we rubbed our spines against fragrant, cool grass. In fact, wild dogs use scent the way human deer hunters dress up in camouflage. The dog is blending in, disguising his scent.

As I think about sniffing, and the useful social information dogs glean from where other dogs have "been", it occurs to me that a sexually lonely alien with dog-like senses would probably find the Ladies section of public toilets irresistible. What a great source of conflict!

One potentially hilarious part of the book discusses the qualities of leadership that are appreciated by dogs. These qualities include the ability (of the leader) to project happiness, also aloofness, also calm authority. What fun it would be to assess some of the world's most prominent politicians as if we were dogs!

Be warned, "It's Me Or The Dog" contains some very sad stories of how differently humans view dog behaviour and motivation, and how badly these misunderstandings can play out for the dog. It is certainly a thought-provoking tome, and I recommend it... not just to alien romance writers.