quote:Christina looked at the lottery ticket her mother had given her for Christmas. What were the chances of her winning? Zero. She tossed it in the trash.
If that's the start of a book, the chances of Christina winning the lottery are close to 100%.
I don't know if "dog-whistle" is a metaphor, or a metaphor of a metaphor. Is there another term for it? There must be. If not, I claim it.
The idea is that if the reader understands the logic of story plots, a narration can signal the reader of what is happening even though the obvious narration doesn't say that.
I'm still thinking about POV, and it's an issue there. The author can't say someone is nearby, that violates POV, but the author wants the reader to know that. #1 is typical; #2 a dog whistle.
quote:1. He felt like someone was watching him.
2. It was a dark alley with a lot of hiding places, but he didn't see anyone.
Do you use these? Good technique? Too heavy-handed?
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
The entire premise of fiction is that things will go wrong. So telling the reader that everything is fine would seem an announcement of, "Hang onto your hats folks, because here we go." And since all the examples you gave are the narrator explaining, as against the protagonist reacting...
Take the alleyway line, for example. If it's the start of the story our protagonist would seem to have no reason to expect a problem. So why mention it? If there is reason, and there are hiding places, of course he doesn't see anyone.
In the "he felt like," line, "felt" is a filter-word, a summation that can only come from the narrator, so it distances the reader from the action.
In the protagonist's viewpoint it might be something like, - - - - They finally turned off the tiny street they’d been following, entering an even tinier, and more disreputable, alleyway, bringing his defensive instincts to full alert. As a light-plane pilot notes safe places to land in case of an engine failure, he searched for escape routes, places that would provide cover, and places from which an ambush could be launched.
Senses in high gear, the world seemed a brighter and more colorful place. Trace odors, which had been buried in the general effluvium of the city now called for attention, to be identified and classified in order of importance. Top on that list, as they approached the end of the alley, was the odor of blood, mixed with human urine. Someone had died—close by, and recently. - - - - Make sense?
Posts: 263 | Registered: Dec 2016
| IP: Logged |
posted
A dog whistle is so high-pitched that humans cannot hear it. But dogs can.
It's now used in politics, metaphorically. If a politician gave a speech, someone might accuse the politician of appealing to racists. Then there are no obvious words in the speech appealing to racists, so the criticizer might point to words that the racists will see as support.
The idea being that the racists know a politician cannot publicly support them, so they do not expect explicit support.
Whether or not that occurs -- I really would rather not do politics here, except I don't know how to accurately explain the idea -- that's how the term is used (rightly or wrongly) in politics. Only recently, as far as I know, and perhaps restricted to the US.
But I rate it a very interesting and useful concept that needs a name, so I predict this metaphor will procreate.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, suppose you want to tell the reader that something's interesting is going to happen, its incoming. I don't think it's good writing, but you can find things like "Little did I know how crazy my day would be."
With the problem being that the character doesn't know the future. There's a trick, where the narration can have the character thinking, something like, "Finally, a relaxing day. I deserve this so much."
Which I suppose a naive reader could take as being true. But the normal reader is going to know something is coming.
So it handles a POV problem, allowing the author to tell the reader something the author wants the reader to know, without violating the POV rules the author is following.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's been years since I read it, but I remember that in Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree Jr there was a situation where I just knew that something terrible was going on in the background, but the characters in the foreground really had no idea about it.
I "heard" the dog whistle about it in things that people said rather off-handedly and I was able to put together what was happening from that.
It was an agonizing reading experience because I imagined terrible things and hoped that some character would figure it out before it was too late.
They did, but damage had been done, and that was rather heart-breaking.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
It would be one type of foreshadowing. Good word.
So, in the book I was reading last night, the main character had heard about a crime, he thought it would be hard to solve, and speaking of his detective friend he said:
Milo would be glad it wasn't his case. Then it was.
(That's not exact wording on the first sentence. From Gone, by Kellerman)
So, it was all from one character's perspective and in chronological order, till that last sentence above. It knocked things our of order in the next paragraph, ruined what could have been a nice "surprise".
And whatever it was supposed to do, the first sentence already dog whistled it.
So, another example, and the opportunity seems common if I am finding it this quickly.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
In my opinion, all the examples you have listed would constitute some of the worst writing I have encountered. Subtle, nuanced? No. Obvious, contrived, blatant? You bet, and a whole lot more.
Imagine Chekhov's gun. These writers would have a character open the drawer then jump up and down, waving their arms and shouting, "There's a gun in here! Who's going to get shot by Tommy?"
Really? Calling it dog whistling doesn't make it any less pathetic.
posted
Politically, a "dog whistle" is pure projection: someone imagining how a Deplorable would respond, based on their own prejudices. It's finding offense in whatever because of who the accuser imagines it might appeal to. Of course, since it's imaginary, no one can hear it except the accuser.
If I were to apply the term to writing, I would expect it to be something like -- the writer deliberately leads the reader in the wrong direction, such that the reader imagines that's where they're supposed to go. [This is a good way for books to achieve low orbit.]
Or more likely, the reader imagining that because an author writes a character who believes X, the author is trying to appeal to actual people who believe X. [This is both projection and stupid.]
And, what Phil said. It's broken as thinking and pathetic as writing.
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Um, this is an actual definition: "Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words."
It actually corresponds well to it's use on dogs: A strategy of communication that communicates just to dogs. Do you see the analogy?
There is nothing about dogs being deplorable. The people who claim a message has a dog whistle are NOT trying to say they are imagining things. Who would do that?
And in writing, the analogy remains. There are conventions we use in telling a story, and readers in the know can gather information about the story from the following or breaking of these conventions.
So it's a channel of communication. I think to ignore it would not be a good strategy in writing -- if you are sending a message in that channel, you should think about whether you want to do that.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by EmmaSohan: Um, this is an actual definition: "Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words."
No. This 'definition' was made up by the faction that invented the idea of political dog whistling, so that anything their opponents say could be smeared as a covert appeal to wrongthinkers. Since every word is assumed to have a hidden meaning, anything one says can be twisted to fit the designated hidden meaning. So if you count 601661 marbles, AH HA! you put three sixes in that count, therefore marbles represent the devil and you're dogwhistling devil worshippers. And yes, it really is that stupid.
So: the literary equivalent of finding demonic symbols in everything, even when the written work is specifically without hidden context.
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
The actual definition of "dog whistle" from the Oxford Dictionary is: A subtly aimed political message which is intended for, and can only be understood by, a particular demographic group.
This is the online dictionary definition. You'll notice it has no correlation to writing in general or dramatic prose in particular. This sort of thing used to be called rabble rousing.
And about 20 other websites have that definition. What you do is enter the quote, surrounded by quotation marks, into Google.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: Simple answer: I don't want to do it. Any information, hidden or otherwise, should be there for all to access.
Phil.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's that easy. Maybe I should take advantage of this feedback and try to avoid that unfortunate metaphor which shall not be named. This is about the channel of communication created when your reader knows the techniques of writing a good story.
It's going to work on most readers. I tried on someone. He could tell that for the opening quote in this thread, the character was going to win the lottery. And if a story starts this way,
quote: Christina looked at the lottery ticket she just purchased. She had to win. She just had to. If she didn't, what would she do? Go back to Tom? She would rather die.
He knew she wouldn't win the lottery.
Which is to say, when you write your story well, using standard techniques, that gives information about what is going to happen to the people who understand the patterns in stories. Writing your story poorly isn't a good solution.
As I noted, you might deliberately pass information in that channel. If you don't want to, fine, it was just a technique.
And for surprise, I have deliberately misled in that channel. As opposed to giving away the surprise in that channel -- that's the part I don't know if you can avoid.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's the same definition as Oxford, except a little better -- I really don't like "demographics" in the Oxford definition. That person writing definitions for Oxford isn't God. Anyway, that's a definition for politics. Of some word, I forget what.
I was going to write that I don't use this technique . . . but of course I do. She doesn't understand her feeling for a guy she met, she looks it up on the internet, and we read:
quote:IT'S A CRUSH! It's just a crush. Thank God. It doesn't mean anything, and it goes away.
That turns out to be exactly how I would write if the crush wasn't going away, and not how I would write if it WAS quickly going away. Do you think the reader will pick up on that?
At this point, some authors would write, "I didn't know it, but the crush wouldn't be going away." I hate that technique. But how else do you suggest to the reader that there is more coming?
I don't know how to adapt Jay's suggestion. I guess have the website say what might happen, that the crush might last a long time and be painful. That sounds boring and would have made the next few chapters less interesting.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
It's going to work on most readers. I tried on someone. He could tell that for the opening quote in this thread, the character was going to win the lottery. And if a story starts this way,
quote: Christina looked at the lottery ticket she just purchased. She had to win. She just had to. If she didn't, what would she do? Go back to Tom? She would rather die.
He knew she wouldn't win the lottery.
The reason this is obvious is because it's in the format of "Oh noes! whatever shall I do?" Different words but that's what it boils down to. There's no substance; it's just angst.
Plus it telegraphs an obvious plot (perhaps not correctly, but how is the reader of a single page to know that?) With that on the first page, I would expect neither twists nor surprises, and not much character development.
Something to ponder: if you work from the premise that fiction can be entirely reduced to a formula, you will produce formulaic stories.
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hi Reziac. That was an example that the channel existed. We both seem to agree on that. Yay.
Then the question is what to do about it. I can't decide not to use it -- it exists. Is anyone suggesting that I rewrite the scene in a way that doesn't work well for the future story?
The reality is, I can decide. If it's a situation where I want to hint at what's coming to interest the reader -- which is very common -- I can amp up the message in that channel. If I don't want to give things away, I can try to tone the message down.
Once my character was surprised that someone could speak English. I wanted the reader to be surprised too, so I wrote the scene, as much as I could, the way I would if he couldn't speak English.
That's good writing, right? I mean, you can question my choices, but shouldn't every author be making these decisions? No one is suggesting an author should pretend like this channel doesn't exist, right?
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
I for one don't see _how_ Christina could win the lottery. She just threw the tickets away. So unless she memorized the numbers, she couldn't even know she won, let alone claim it. So from this opening, I expect a story about a family with financial issues and ongoing tension between the mother and daughter that's about to boil over. The lottery could never come up again and I would be fine with it.
BUT since so many of you expect this means she wins the lottery, I now expect that the ticket invokes a well-known trope that I happen to not be genre-saavy about. Those are the words you're looking for.
The game between invoking tropes, such as Chekov's gun, and then playing with a genre-saavy reader's expectations about them is a fun one.
Foreshadowing is a little bit different, in that it introduces an element before it is immediately relevant. Your foreshadowing may or may not invoke a trope. Always know that tropes are not necessarily bad. Popular ones attract readers, but then they can oversaturate the market and become cliche until you mix them up.
I would definitely not call it a dog-whistle. The way that works is some group pops up supporting a politician because they support X. When the media questions the politician who then gives a rambling non-answer, neither confirming nor condemning. The group is happy with this answer and supports the politician even more. That's when the "dog-whistle" is suspected; the politician is telling the group something only they can hear, but has plausible deniability. As words do, the meaning is in flux, and people have started to try to spot the dog-whistle and accuse the politician of the language directly, even if the politician doesn't have the support of a troubling group. So that's all really it's own thing that you probably don't want to pull into a discussion about foreshadowing!
Posts: 8 | Registered: Sep 2019
| IP: Logged |
posted
We write fiction. The impossible is always possible.
quote:"Honey, come in here," my husband screamed. I ran into the den.
He pointed at the TV. "You missed it. The winning lottery number was your birth date and then your cell phone number!"
Oh ****.
A reader can use tropes. Like, if their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and there's a house/motel nearby to spend the night. No one thinks it will be a boring stay.
But this is different. Basically, if you write the scene in the best way for setting up whatever comes next, you give at least hints about what comes next. (Good writing that thinks about this channel might be different.)
For example, the MC is going through things a client wants to sell for a garage sale. She is opening boxes and not finding anything of much value. Then I get a description of a box and her opening it. First description in this much detail.
Statistically, there's a low chance of this box being any different. The MC doesn't expect anything. But because only this box gets a description, I am in fact expecting something interesting. (Let's Fake a Deal, Harris)
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
