Make you know of any formal publication process to make sure you have the most important feature —–novelty—– in the thesis of your essay? Thought like this. Me neither.
Textbooks and teachers just show you pieces of writing that have something new on it, and then they say, “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 shoemaker showing an apprentice a box full of shoes and saying, “This is what they look like. Now make some like these.” Hey? Yes, right!
That is why I have written this … to share with you a proven process to create novelty for your essays.
The surprising thing that we are not taught novelty in writing is that novelty is all around us: on the Internet, in bookstores, in clothing stores, in car showrooms, in politics, and especially in movies. . Or movies give us a new emotion, a new poignant or heartbreaking story about some nice or hateful character, a new view of the universe (science fiction), a new and interesting view of society or history, or some novel combination of these. novelty patterns —– or we stay away en masse, don’t we?
What fascinates me is what I see as the reason why we are not taught to generate novelty in writing. It seems to me that novelty is such a vast concept that no one has handled it well, a good way to talk about it without having to refer to a trillion different things. new things. And none of us can relate very well to a trillion different things. In short, what has been lacking is a very short list of the categories 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 novelties:
- Counter
- Add
- Subtract
- Replace
- 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 quite a large group of things —- that is already familiar and familiar —– so it should also be broken down into a small, manageable set of categories.
So here is my little handy set of categories of what is old which can become something new:
- Values
- Expectations
- Experiences
- Reasoning
- Idiom
Pretty short but comprehensive 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 old-new thing work with those two short sets of categories, anyway?’ Good question.
The most important thing to start with are the values of the set of old view categories. Think positive and negative, good and bad, what you like and what you dislike: these are the essence of values because they are things that make us feel and that we like. values.
Marketing people have all of this under control. They know that customers will buy things they feel good about, so marketers make announcements that:
- add to the positive feelings of the client,
- subtract feelings of insecurity or mistrust,
- replace good feelings and ideas for old feelings and negative ideas,
- reorganize old ways of sequencing things,
- counter the negative feelings customers have about an idea or product.
You could spend a lot of time on all of that, but since you’re reading this, you’re probably smart enough to remember advertising examples using those new display options.
What I am going to discuss with you now are 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 generate thesis statements that have the novelty built in.
The kind of cultural patterns I’m talking about are everyday sayings or stories that give a glimpse of life and contain the element of novelty, like these two:
- The lion roars but has no teeth – “Something or someone may seem great or powerful, but they don’t perform that way,” which means: The person with all the influence, all the brain, all the friends, all the power, or the great track record does not perform as well. well as his record indicates.
- Columbus breaking the egg – “It may seem very easy or very difficult, but it is quite the opposite”, which means: instead of something being difficult to do, it is actually very easy to do; or something seems very easy, but it is actually very difficult to do.
Let’s look at that cultural pattern of The lion roars but has no teeth.
Do you remember the first two categories of ancient views, values and expectations? They are the key. When they are reversed, then you have novelty, a new view. And that’s exactly the pattern of The Lion Roars, but it has no teeth. Normally, we expect a roaring lion to have the power to harm and kill, but when we discover that a roaring lion has no teeth, that expectation is nullified and reversed.
Let’s put it in very general terms: when people are aware of a great strength or great talent, they expect the person or thing with that strength or talent to keep doing things with that great strength or talent. When that great strength or talent does not manifest as expected, then it is a new change of view, like a lion that roars when it has lost its teeth and thus has lost the power to support that roar, the opposite of what which is normally expected. when any lion roars.
For example, a student had the experience of being disappointed on a date by not being kissed. Expressed that way, that student’s disappointment doesn’t make any sense of novelty. But he connected his experience to the cultural pattern The Lion Roars, But Has No Teeth and expressed it as a reversal of old expectations. He ended up writing an interesting new view for his essay:
- One of the stars of the soccer team asked me out, a guy with a reputation with all the girls. I was hoping to have fun making out with him and making him behave. But we went to the movies and then straight home, where they gave me a kiss on the cheek and a limp: “It was fun, Wendy! Let’s do it again sometime. Good night!” What a coward!
Let’s see how things work with that other cultural pattern of Columbus breaking the egg, which 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 on end without support. It was too difficult a task for them and none of the nobles could do it. So Columbus simply tapped 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 date by talking to girls. Put like that, it made no sense of novelty. But when he learned about the cultural pattern of Columbus Breaking the Egg, he came up with this for his essay:
- I used to think that getting a date was difficult. They rejected me all the time. Like other guys, I thought girls just wanted to date athletes, high achievers, rich guys, or really handsome guys. But then I found out that a lot of girls like guys they can talk to, just talk to them! How simple! Now I never get turned down on a date!
There are many cultural patterns of novelty “out there” for us to take advantage of, both to generate new ideas and as pre-existing formats to convey our strong positive or strong negative ideas.
Can you think of others from your own experiences?
Here are some more cultural patterns in which you can connect your strong negative and strong positive experiences and views to create and convey novelty:
- David vs. Goliath—– The little one unexpectedly hits the big one.
EXAMPLE: Last year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) took my little, meek and uneducated aunt to court to take her car and pay her back taxes. I just knew that I would lose. Everyone was shocked —– My sweet little mouse aunt got mad and hit the IRS!
- Chicken or Egg—– Cause and effect are reversed or changed.
EXAMPLE: Does my boyfriend like science fiction movies, books, and other things because he has a creative mind? Or do you have a creative mind because your whole family spends a lot of time on all the weird and sci-fi stuff?
- All work, not play —Wrong!—– Topics don’t always work well in real life.
EXAMPLE: Two nights before the final, I went to the cinema and relaxed, as they say you should. Bad advice! I bombed it! The following semester, I studied for two weeks AND the two nights before final exams, and I got through them!
The big idea here, of course, is that the 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 negative personal experiences and then look for cultural patterns with which we can relate them. We can use these cultural patterns to strengthen, clarify, or reframe our initial ideas. We can even use them as patterns to compare when looking for ideas in our own experiences.
Because novelty surrounds us in cultural patterns, we must become sensitized to those patterns of novelty and begin to focus on focus # 1 of all successful communications, whether published, commercial, or not:
………………………………………….. ……….. What’s new for the reader?