Do your know of any formally published process for making sure you have the most important feature—–novelty—–in the thesis of your essay? Thought so. Me neither.
Textbooks and teachers just show you pieces of writing that have something new in them and then tell you, “Do it like this.” Oh sure, they give you isolated examples of the forms you should use, like introductions, thesis statements, topic sentences, body paragraphs, and conclusions. But they never give you a specific and reusable process for creating any of them, right?
It’s like a cobbler showing an apprentice a box full of shoes and saying, “This is what they look like. Now make some like these.” Hey? Yes, Correct!
That is why I have written this—–to share with you a proven process for creating novelty for your essays.
The amazing thing about not being taught novelty in print is that novelty is all around us: on the Internet, in bookstores, in clothing stores, in car showrooms, in politics, and especially in movies. . Movies give us a new emotion, a new moving or heartbreaking story about a likeable or hateful character, a new view of the universe (science fiction), a new and interesting view of society or history, or a new combination of these patterns. novelty—–or we stay away en masse, right?
What fascinates me is what I see as the reason we are not taught to create novelty in writing. It seems to me that novelty is such a broad concept that nobody has handled it well, a good way to talk about it without having to refer to a million different people. new stuff. And none of us can really relate very well to a million different things. In short, what has been missing is a very short list of the categories of novelty that we can all face.
I have a solution for that. I’ve researched this for years and found that there are only five different types of novelty:
- Reverse
- Add
- Subtract
- Substitute
- Reorganize
Of course, that doesn’t make sense unless you realize that the new forever depends on what already old. everything new is new compared to something else that is old or already known and familiar. That’s a pretty big group of things—–what’s already known and familiar—–so it should also be broken down into a small, manageable set of categories.
So here is my manageable, small, painstakingly researched set of categories of that is old which can be converted to something new:
- Values
- Expectations
- Experiences
- Reasoning
- idiom
Pretty short but complete list, right? Can you think of anything that doesn’t fit on that compact little list? Me neither. I’m glad we agree on that.
‘Okay,’ you’re probably thinking, ‘sounds good—–but how does this little old-new thing work with those two short sets of categories, anyway?’ Good question.
The most important thing to start with is the Set Values. old view categories. Think positive and negative, good and bad, like and dislike – these are the essence of values because they are things we feel about, and the things we feel about are values.
Marketing people know all this by heart. They know that customers will buy things they feel good about, so marketers make ads that…
- add to the positive feelings of the client,
- subtract due to feelings of insecurity or mistrust,
- substitute good feelings and ideas for old negative feelings and ideas,
- reorganize old ways of sequencing things,
- reverse the negative feelings customers have about an idea or product.
I could spend a lot of time on all of that, but since you’re reading this, you’re probably smart enough to remember examples of advertising that use those new display options.
What I am going to discuss with you now are the cultural patterns that put some of those categories into everyday use. Once you have them in your writing toolbox, you can use them as templates to create thesis statements that have new features built in.
The kind of cultural patterns I am referring to are everyday sayings or stories that provide information about life and contain the element of novelty, like these two:
- The lion roars, but he has no teeth – “Something or someone may seem great or powerful, but they don’t work that way”, which means: The person with all the influence, all the brains, all the friends, all the power or the great past track record may not work as well. well as its trajectory indicates.
- Columbus breaking the egg- “It may seem very easy or very difficult, but the opposite is true”, which means: instead of something being difficult to do, it is actually very easy to do; or something seems very easy, but is actually very difficult to do.
Let’s look at that cultural pattern of The lion roars, but he has no teeth.
Remember the first two view categories above, Values and Expectations? They are the key. When they are reversed, then you have a novelty, a new view. And that’s exactly the pattern of The Lion Roars, But He Has No Teeth. Normally, we expect a roaring lion to have power to harm and kill, but when we discover that a roaring lion has no teeth, that expectation is overturned and reversed.
So let’s put it in very general terms: When people are aware of a great strength or a great talent, they expect the person or thing with that strength or talent to keep doing things using that great strength or talent. When that great strength or talent does not manifest as expected, then it is a new reverse view, like a lion that roars when it has lost its teeth and therefore has lost the power to back up that roar, the opposite of what normally wait. when any lion roars.
For example, a student had the experience of feeling disappointed on a date because he was not kissed. Expressed that way, that student’s disappointment has no sense of novelty. But he connected his experience to the cultural pattern The lion roars, but he has no teeth and expressed it as a reversal of old expectations. He ended up writing an interesting new view for his essay:
- I was asked out by one of the stars of the football team, a guy with a reputation among all the girls. I expected to have fun making out with him and getting him to behave. But we went to the movies and then straight home, where I got a kiss on the cheek and a limp, “That was fun, Wendy! Let’s do that again sometime. Goodnight!” What a coward!
Let’s see how things work with that other cultural pattern of Columbus breaking the eggwhich is in the form of a story that has become part of the thought pattern of our Western culture.
This is based on a popular story about Christopher Columbus. Columbus challenged some Spanish nobles to make an egg stand up without support. It was too difficult a task for them, and none of the nobles could do it. Columbus then simply banged one end of the egg on the table, allowing the egg to stand upright on its own crushed parts. So the task seemed difficult, but it was actually very easy to do, which is the essence of this cultural pattern.
A student wanted to write about learning how to get dates by talking to girls. Put like that, there was no sense of novelty in it. But when he found out about the Columbus Breaking the Egg cultural pattern, he came up with this for his essay:
- I used to think that getting a date was hard. I got rejected every time. Just like other guys, I thought girls wanted to date only athletes, high achievers, rich guys, or very handsome guys. But then I learned that a lot of girls like guys they can talk to, just talk! How simple! Now I am never turned down for a date!
There are many cultural patterns of novelty ‘out there’ for us to tap into, both to generate new ideas and pre-existing formats to convey our strongly positive or strongly negative ideas.
Can you think of others from your own experiences?
Here are some more cultural patterns in which you can connect your strongly negative and strongly positive experiences and viewpoints to create and convey novelty:
- David against Goliath—–The little one unexpectedly beats the big one.
EXAMPLE: The IRS took my meek, uneducated aunt to court last year to take her car and pay her back taxes. He only knew that she would lose. Was everyone surprised? My sweet little mouse aunt got mad and beat the IRS!
- chicken or egg—–Cause and effect are reversed or interchanged.
EXAMPLE: Does my boyfriend like science fiction movies, books and other things because he has a creative mind? Or does he have a creative mind because his whole family spends a lot of time on all things weird and sci-fi?
- All work, no play —Wrong!—–Topics don’t always work well in real life.
EXAMPLE: Two nights before finals, I went to the movies and relaxed, like they say you should. Bad advice! I bombed it! Next semester, I studied for two weeks AND the two nights before finals—–and I passed them!
The big idea here, of course, is that novelty is all around us, particularly in published commercial works such as short stories, novels, essays, and movies. Therefore, we must write down our strong positive and strong negative personal experiences and then look for cultural patterns with which we can relate them. We can use those cultural patterns to strengthen, clarify, or reformulate our initial ideas. We can even use them as patterns to compare when looking for ideas in our own experiences.
Because newness surrounds us in cultural patterns, we need to sensitize ourselves to those newness patterns and start focusing on the #1 focus of all successful communications, whether published, commercial, or not:
………………………………………………….. .. ………..What’s new for the reader
