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#Post#: 230--------------------------------------------------
Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: Crackhead Johny Date: January 7, 2016, 3:04 pm
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Writer centipede one way we get terrible TV.
Like human centipede, Hollywood (and other) writers tend to just
take other peoples stuff and slap it in their stuff. For
example: you will see the main male character and female
character fighting and then they make out and have sex. When you
see that happen in a show your first thought should be "Oh god,
please don't go there again" but then after that you have to ask
how many writers this idea passed through, before the current TV
show tried to get you to eat it. Was Shakespeare's Taming of the
Shrew where this idea first popped up? Was it from older Greek
plays? Either way that "angry > making out" thing has been
ripped off a lot over the centuries.
There are so many other ideas and mechanisms that pop up in TV
that are cliche's and tropes. In both cases if you are using
them, what you are doing is using someone else's work, it is
lazy and plagiarism. Just because an idea has been stolen so
many time people cannot say where it was first created, doesn't
mean if you use it you are not also stealing it. Just because
someone else stole it doesn't make it OK for you to (two wrongs
blah blah).
If you ideas are on TV tropes and have a bazillion citations..
uh oh.
HTML http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAShonenSeries
Well, the how does this happen?
Mirror neurons is the answer. These are created as you watch
something happen and are responsible for "monkey see, monkey
do". What this means is that when you come to any given point in
a story, you are likely to replicate something you have already
seen for what happens after that point. What is the point of
mirror neurons? All life is lazy, it is better to learn
something from watching someone or something else do it than to
spend calories figuring it out yourself. This is also there
reason that people are most comfortable feeling about things
rather than thinking about things, it is also what people are
more comfortable not paying attention and answering things with
rote knowledge. Paying attention and thinking requires more
calories than feeling as rote learning and so is risky on an
evolutionary level. As a species you only need a few thinkers
who will provide rote learning to the rest. (At his point some
of you who have turned to the dark side are saying "So for most
people I can just pack a story full of emotional triggers and
they will think 'This is great!'".. bad Jedi, no biscuit! Don't
have those thoughts.)
OK so how do I deal with this?
Bad news: you will not be able to avoid it. Or at least will
have a really hard time avoiding it.
What you can do is know that this will happen and watch out for
when your brain tries to do it. Also learn as much about
everything as possible, then have many people proof your stuff,
to see if they catch stuff you didn't.
For characters it really helps if you can be very social, talk
to everyone, have deep conversations and get to know them. Learn
some psych, learn social engineering so you know how people work
and you can make tangible characters and not card board cutouts.
Also taking things from real live means they usually to not
trace straight back to TV eps everyone has seen.
When it does happen, can you mask it? Take the cliche and mix it
up until people do not spot it or for fun take it 180 degrees
from where it always goes. Distract the reader so they do not
notice what the other hand is doing.
Most of all, never tell yourself that your story is great (OMG,
this is going to be awesome!). Ask what is wrong with it, dig
for the wrongness and fix that, then dig for more. When you run
out of wrong then have others dig. This is how science and good
writing work. When no one can come up with wrong, you have a
story that is lacking wrong and is hopefully enjoyable to boot.
If you do this all well, hopefully you will always be able to
earn suspension of disbelief and maintain a hold on it.
What if I can't get my brain to do this or it is more effort
than I want to spend? Then you have a bright future as a
Hollywood writer. We shall await your next episode of Star Trek
or The Flash. Just grab your bottle of paste (do not eat any of
it, no matter how good it is. you do not want the other
Hollywood writers calling you "paste eater") and some
construction paper and make a collage of cliche's around your
cardboard cut out characters.
#Post#: 239--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: TheSlamJam Date: January 8, 2016, 5:18 pm
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Psychologist here, you misunderstand mirror-neurons.
I'm going to abbreviate them as MN's.
MN's are a class of visuomotor neuron that will fire as a result
of both activity from individual activity and observation of
same/similar acts performed by other individuals. Activity in
this sense would be something simple, like grasp food with the
hand. (MN's are the bee's knees because they allows us to create
a potential link from the observation of others with our own
motor system.) Basically though, they are regulated by action
specificity, or goal-orientated action. When the research talks
about this, it's talking about simple actions (such as to grasp
with the hand), not ideas for stories, etc. They are
motor-based, and are used to show how we understand movement.
The closest you can get with Mirror Neurons and your idea is
associative learning, which isn't really about what you
discussed. Sorry :P
You may be interested in instead reading about memory bias,
Cryptomesia comes to mind, which is inadvertent plagiarism.
#Post#: 240--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: Lumaria Date: January 8, 2016, 9:15 pm
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I think its good to talk with your characters. in a sense, i've
always done this and felt so natural. But it started by feeling
characters that regardless if i thought were great or not, i can
see them real people.
Sometimes when people do this, and i see examples of this, i
tend to see typical discussions set up for the character rather
than seeing a character have a real character.
#Post#: 243--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: Crackhead Johny Date: January 9, 2016, 9:26 am
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Thanks for the correction. I didn't get the physical only part
from the bathroom book (Liars and outliers). If it is physical
only some of that book doesn't work.
So the big issues is that these days the TV is the member of the
family that everyone listens to and TV is always right so they
tend to replicate what they have already seen? That is the
cause of writer centipede? Or does it go back further to Before
TV you would see the story teller problem which goes back as far
as story telling? Life is lazy and it is easier to retell a
popular story than it is to make a whole fresh new popular
story?
So MN are not responsible for wiring? AKA when someone has their
first kid of grand kid and their behavior and personality
completely change?
#Post#: 251--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: TheSlamJam Date: January 9, 2016, 11:25 pm
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Again, MN's are quite a new subject (around 20 or so years) and
they're not fully understood. There's quite a few things we
think they do. Generally though, i think it's safe to say that
they're not responsible for our behaviour/or passing down
behaviour, they're responsible for linking motor action and
perceptual representation.
There's a nice minireview that goes over some of the research
done in the last 20 or so years that's quite a light and nice
read, called 'What we currently know about Mirror Neurons' done
by Kilner & Lemon. Or Wikipedia might be useful, but it also
seems to touch on other Psych theories like ToM, Autism and the
likes. Not sure if Wiki would be too much of an overload, since
it sounds like you've not read anything on them.
I'm not really sure what you're meaning by 'wiring', generally
when i think of wiring i think of white matter since it's
generally used to connect areas of the brain to each other.
#Post#: 602--------------------------------------------------
Re: Mirror Neurons and writer centipede.
By: Crackhead Johny Date: May 10, 2016, 11:54 pm
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[quote author=TheSlamJam link=topic=39.msg251#msg251
date=1452403557]
I'm not really sure what you're meaning by 'wiring', generally
when i think of wiring i think of white matter since it's
generally used to connect areas of the brain to each other.
[/quote]
When major life events happen most people "click" as wiring
kicks in. For example you have your first kid and forget what
being a kid was like. Your first grand kid gets born and click.
It is a form of letting autopilot do it. Something all life
forms tend to do. Nature vs nurture gets to be a more difficult
call when it comes to wiring (for nurture
conditioning/education/reeducation/etc may be a more preferred
term)
The level to which wiring decides human behavior along with
brief readings had me confusing how MNs worked.
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