Deborah Teramis Christian's Open Salon Blog

Liberal Tolerance and the PEW Report

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:03:10 -0400

PEW just released a new study about political behavior on social networks.[1] Conservative outlets have quickly proclaimed, “Liberals are less tolerant of different opinions than conservatives.” The more virulent right-wingers go so far as to say, “Liberals are less tolerant than normal people” (Investors Business Daily), and similar hyperbole. These declarations may attract viewers, but they are also erroneous. That is not what the PEW research says.

A few points about this from a sociological perspective:

1. The PEW study did not measure, or even attempt to measure, the level of “tolerance” of its sample population. What it measured was an action, not an attitude. That action was whether or not people distanced themselves from another person online because of issues relating to political content.[2] Reducing the PEW report to a judgment on levels of liberal “tolerance” is a conflation and misreading of the survey results.

2. Overlooked in this hasty reframing of a survey result is another result from the same report: more liberals than conservatives self-censor their posts in order not to offend others.

3. This is a reflection of another behavior that has been well-documented about liberals, which is: liberals tend to be more averse to conflict than conservatives are. Although this approach is often mocked by conservatives, liberals as a group broadly tend to share the attitude, “Can't we all just get along?” It is one reason why liberals are more likely than conservatives to work towards compromise and consensus decision making, given the choice between that modality and alternatives that would favor just their own interests.[3]

4. Related to these dynamics, from what I have seen of analysis of online political posting (particularly in the realm of comments and informal chat), there is a larger percentage of hostile statements made in conservative political screeds, than in liberal. Conservatives are more likely to use negative words, derogatory statements and ad hominem attacks than are liberals on the internet.

The self-censoring measurement from PEW reflects the fact that liberals, motivated by a reluctance to engage in hostile discourse, or to provoke it, are more likely to edit what they say online. It seems they are also more likely to edit what they engage with conversationally. Other studies have also touched on liberal distaste for and avoidance of hostile attacks and provocateurs in political debate. This is not to say that liberals can't also behave in this manner, but rather, it seems the case that more liberals than conservatives are put off by such conduct and engage less readily in conversations where this is normative. Liberals as a group place high value on cooperation, not doing harm in interactions, and achieving agreement. (For more on the liberal valuation of care over harm, which is a core value they prize more highly than do conservatives, see research notes at http://www.moralfoundations.org. See also the comments at footnote #3, which touch on some of this underlying value foundation in an analysis of Occupy Wallstreet, and an analysis of elements in political reasoning.)

These underlying attitudes are in keeping with what else is known about liberal political discourse psychology and behavior, and could account for why liberals more often hide, unfriend, or conceal opinions they “disagree” with on social networks online.

What the PEW study unfortunately did not ask, and what is central to this question, is, “are you blocking/unfriending people solely because their opinions differ from yours (regardless of how they are expressed), or are you removing them because they are presenting oppositional opinion in an inflammatory manner that fosters uncivil discourse?”

Clearly, there is a vast difference between “intolerance of differing opinions” and “unwillingness to engage in hostile or emotionally stressful discourse.” Neither of these qualities is measured by the PEW survey. However, given the factors mentioned above, it appears to me that liberals are not less tolerant of differences of opinion; they are less tolerant of rude and hostile snark in the name of political expression.

I want to see the PEW study that investigates that.

_____

1 PEW Social Networking Sites and Politics report, March 2012. It is also worth noting the larger context here: that only 18% of all social media users dumped or shunned someone because of their political disagreements. The majority of these did not have deep connections to the user they dropped. Most online users of any political stripe do not distance themselves from other posters on the basis of political content.

2 More specifically, in the words of the survey, “Have you ever blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on a SNS (social networking service) because they...? - posted something you disagreed with; posted too frequently about politics; disagreed with something you posted; argued about political issues; posted something that you worried would offend.

3. Haidt, Jonathan. The Moral Foundation of Occupy Wall Street: an illustrated guide to the signs at Zuccotti Park. Reason, Oct 20, 2011. “My colleagues and I find that liberals score higher than conservatives and libertarians on all measures of compassion and empathy. Liberals are more 'soft-hearted'...” Other studies in political science and social psychology have explored how this compassion orientation colors public discourse and willingness (or not) to engage in contentious debate about issues. For a discussion of this attitude in its broader political framework, see F.M. Frohock, “An Alternative Model of Political Reasoning” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 9(1), 2006, pp 27-64. He characterizes the liberal mindset thus: “The primary instrument of dispute management in political liberalism is a form of political thinking and talking that tries to reconcile opposed positions with an impartial settlement based on fair arrangements and mutual respect, one that is careful to treat rival views equitably, and reasoned through from start to finish with open methods that lead to a public justification understandable to the disputants.”

Other research on small group dynamics and political opinion in online conversations echo this essentially liberal orientation towards political discourse when it is scaled down to personal communications. One pundit characterized this flippantly as, “liberals want everyone to come to agreement; conservatives want it to be recognized that they're right.” Although that is skewed pop psychology, there is some underlying truth to the dynamics referenced. I wonder if this is not at the heart of the tendency towards conservative attack dog behavior in the online political arena, and liberal reluctance to engage with that level of “dialog” (and taking umbrage that such a level of discourse is initiated in the first place.) Which, again, would account for the disengagement reported by PEW.

Note:

I usually write about creative and non-political things at my blog, and I have an exceedingly low tolerance for political discussion of any stripe right now at all (be it ever so well mannered), so I may in fact not follow up on comments to this post. Please pardon me if I do not. My brain is mostly elsewhere in the middle of a fiction writing project, but the sociologist in me insisted on a bit of a venting about this PEW report.

Improving Sales and Income in Ebook Publishing

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 06:02:24 -0500

Writers in today’s new media marketplace are sallying forth and self-publishing a lot of their material. Some are asking what pricing is best and what level of sales is needed in order to make a living at writing. This is an exercise every writer goes through at some point, if that writer is doing it for real income, not merely as a hobby. Here are some thoughts about pricing and income in the current ebook publishing marketplace, with a focus on short fiction. This is not a rigorous treatment of the subject, but some thoughts spurred by a blog post by DeAnna Knippling.

Price Point

The pricing of fiction is an arcane art. There is not much science to it yet. What works? Often you won’t know until you try it and test it, keeping good records of sales so you can see how book page copy and varying prices work in combination to improve sales. Non-fiction publishers know this, and many indie authors and small publishers are experimenting in exactly this manner to find the sweet spot in ebook pricing in their non-fiction niche.

But fiction writers? Not so much.

As a case in point, let’s consider short stories. Famously (or infamously), there are now scads of short stories being sold for .99 at Amazon, a virtual glut on the market that has both sparked hope in the rebirth of the short form story, and despair that so much cheap schlock is finding its way into print that the really good stuff is impossible to winnow out of the haystack.

This rush to the 99 cent price point has produced a ‘default’ low-ball price tag for short stories. Is this a fair price for a short? Maybe so, especially if it is, erm, short (rather than a longer piece of short fiction) or of only average quality. Then again, for authors who write better quality fiction, to sell at this price point may be a real undervaluation of the work.

There is a constant tension between pricing low and selling in volume, versus pricing high, selling fewer but netting much more return on those units sold. Will .99 guarantee your books will sell well? Or will a higher price attract a different kind of buyer, and help put more money in the writer’s pocket?

The fact is that in outlets like Amazon, the writer can set whatever price she wants to charge for a work, within certain limits. For the sake of illustration here, let’s consider an “expensive” short story priced at $2.99, as used in my friend’s number-crunching examples.

While you the author may not be willing to pay more than 99 cents for a short story, the fact is that many people are. The reasons for this are important.

First, a higher price signals quality. People don’t always want a bargain; they are often very willing to pay a premium where they perceive value is to be had. Second, in a market where there is a race to the bottom to undercut a competitor’s price (and I’d argue that’s been going on in ebook pricing), it is very easy to loose sight of the value factor. But remember: people don’t buy books on price alone. They buy them for the escape and entertainment they offer. If you tell a better tale, you have made your book worth more than alternatives out there, and you can ask a higher price because you are delivering more bang for the buck.

It’s easier to do this if you have a track record or a following, of course. Even so, many buyers are surprisingly willing to simply take you at your word. For instance, in a sea of 99 cent stories, don’t you look twice at the one that charges $2.99? What’s so special about that one? Why’s it worth more? At the very least these questions cause a buyer to look more closely at the work in question. You’d have to sell six short stories at the lower price to make the same royalty you’d clear from selling one of the more expensive stories. Financially this should be a no-brainer. Are you ripping off the buyer? Not at all. If they value your work, then it has higher value. It’s that simple.

In the immortal words of Don (“American Pie”) McLean, “The more you pay, the more it’s worth.”

So take the plunge and eliminate the guesswork in all this. Offer a story at a higher price point, and see how it goes. Of course, if your storytelling is poor or mediocre in quality, you are taking a big risk that scathing reviews will warn people off from your work, so I wouldn’t recommend this for people starting out or who lack professional-quality editing in their work. But as for testing a price point? It’s that simple. Try a higher price tag in the market. You might be surprised at the results.

Units (Quantity) Sold

So far people have been selling ebooks essentially the same way they sell paper books. Publish, offer review copies, try to get some attention for it through book reviews and blog posts, do things like virtual book tours or podcast readings, hope word of mouth helps it catch on. Occasionally some investment in advertising to help showcase the book. Even so, things like short stories are likely to trickle, not fly, from the virtual bookshelves.

It is my belief that internet marketing tactics can be used to effectively pump up sales volume for fiction (of any sort) in the internet marketplace. I don’t mean banner ads and such; I mean targeted sales campaigns that recruit and sell to an audience that likes your work. This is a potentially complex subject, and rather beyond the scope of this particular post, but my point is simply that there may be ways to amplify sales that are not being practiced by the majority of the bookselling market right now, and which would help your work find its proper (appreciative, money-paying) audience. I hope to be able to post more about this kind of alternative approach in the near future.

Creating a Body of Work

They may offer a low return on the dollar, but here’s one good reason to continue writing short stories: when you have more content on line, you are creating a pool of “related reading” for people who come across your work. They like one story, they browse and buy two others. If you have a pool of work available you are creating a self-amplifying sales tool. It’s also true that the return would be higher if these were books, not short stories, that you had a growing collection of, but short stories are quicker to write and so lend themselves to this “library building” function more readily. One way to work shorts to your advantage is to create short stories that elaborate on aspects of your novels: telling prequel tales, side stories, back stories, tales about locations or characters or legends that you didn’t have room to properly incorporate into your novel. This way fans of the book can get another dose of your fictional world and satisfy their craving for more while you are off working on that next book.

So, there you have it. I know this just scratches the surface, but those are my observations du jour about selling fiction in today’s ebook marketplace. Hopefully these ideas will help writers who are serious about making money off of their work. Do you have other tactics for improving sales and income in short story or novel e-publishing? Please leave a comment below.

This post originally appeared at Notes From the Lizard Lair.

Stargate Universe: Great Voyaging Adventure

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:12:26 -0500

I recently finished watching the whole two-year, 40-episode run of Stargate Universe (SGU), which aired on TV from 2009-2010. I confess I am having a strange relationship with this setting and story arc. It is haunting me. That is the only word for it.

There is a peculiar flavor to this show, one I don’t think has been captured by any other science fiction I have ever viewed. It manages to engage with its realism and drama regardless of the arguably fantastic setting. (Once you agree to the premise of ancient alien technology, all else follows from that, and that premise is well established both in SGU and in the larger Stargate franchise). It challenges one to actually contemplate the size of the universe, humanity’s inconsequential position in it, and the nature of faith, science, technology and reality.

The show dances on the edge of the un/explainable, even venturing now and then into the mystical, in the sense that an event a character cannot explain remains opaque to viewers as well. Yet this is managed in a way that comes off as luminal rather than simply mystifying. The result is not so much a sense of frustration as a realization that there are some things that are beyond our understanding and just can’t be explained. We the viewers must reconcile ourselves to that reality just as the crew must. And yet such grand questions are explored in an intensely personal manner. SGU is a close-focused microcosm of the ship-voyage crucible, successfully blending wonder, science and the nearly mystical unknown in sincerely moving drama.

Read the full review here.

Li-Wan’s Revenge: A Ghost Story

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:10:13 -0400

“Halloween” in Qua-lun: The Day of Return

In my novel Dragonsword, an Asian-inspired heroic samurai adventure, there is a holiday called The Day of Return. This day marks the fall equinox and the turning of the seasons. At this time the veil between worlds is thin, and ghosts and other disincarnate entities may come through to visit the land of the living. The day itself is loosely analogous to our All Saint's Day or Dia de los Muertos, and the night before – the Night of Return – could be likened to Halloween.

In the land of Qua-lun, however, ghosts are very real. This is a time of year when the favor of departed spirits is curried, and reasonable people are on guard against the predations of unhappy spirits.

As our own Halloween approaches, I thought it would be fun to share this Qualuni version of a ghost story told during this holiday season. “Li-Wan's Revenge” appears in the book Dragonsword, where this tale is told by a wizard to a group of children on the occasion of the Day of Return festival. If you'd like to sample more of this world, you can download a copy of the fantasy novel for free at www.dragonsword.info.

Li-Wan's Revenge

A young woman named Li-Wan was the daughter of a good family in a small village. She was light of mind and heart, for nothing in this world was a burden to her. When her parents informed her she was to marry, she was glad and wanted to ask her ancestors' blessings. But first, she decided to adorn the ancestor shrine with peonies plucked at a nearby stream.

Although she took an untraveled path through meadows, a strange person caught up with the girl along the way. He was short, with beady, gleaming black eyes and took curious darting steps as he fidgeted with his hands. Li-Wan thought he was a peddler by the pack on his back and cudgel that he carried. But she had never paid attention during her studies, and didn't notice all the tell-tale signs: the little man was a hengeyokai, a shape-shifter whose natural form was that of a rat. By this she would have known that his intentions could only be evil. But Li-Wan was ignorant, and spoke kindly to him as they traveled.

He offered to help her pick flowers. Sadly for her, she agreed, and by the riverbank the rat-person abused her then killed her. When her body was found there was no clue to the identity of her killer, and there were no local wizards or monks skilled enough to learn the tale from the plants and stones that witnessed the event. Her death went unavenged.

The rat hengeyokai, who went by the human name Ruoi, journeyed on to Li-Wan's village. He laughed to himself when her funeral procession passed by, and noted the fineness of her parents' clothes when they walked past. "One day I'll rob them," Ruoi promised himself. Soon he opened a sake shop, which quickly became a gathering place for yakuza - thugs and organized thieves who extorted protection money from villagers and ran gambling dens. Honest villagers avoided it.

Meanwhile, in the house of Li-Wan's parents, those good people set up offerings to the ghost of their murdered daughter. Her first spirit, the animus, had been laid to rest with the funeral, and the third spirit, her soul, was already bound for rebirth on the Wheel of Life in heaven. But they feared her second spirit, the ancestral personality, would be restless, and that might cause great danger for the living. They tried to entice Li-Wan to the ancestor shrine and bind her ghost there, but their offerings remained untouched, and the spirit chime never rang in response to their pleas. They knew they had failed and then they were afraid, for a murdered girl often comes back as a kuei, an angry ghost seeking revenge.

As they feared, the serving girl suddenly collapsed. They carried her to her bed, where she tossed and turned, and cried out in a strange voice. Clearly, a spirit had possessed her and was trying to use the girl's resisting body to speak.

Li-Wan's parents called a priest from the temple. He came and immediately began an exorcism. He burned incense and chanted all night. He filled little smudgepots with herbs and, setting them alight, placed them on the energy points of the servant's body, at wrists and chest and belly. As the girl's skin heated beneath the smudgepots, the balance of her vital energies changed. A wail was heard and with a single great convulsion, the kuei was driven forth from her body.

Well! That satisfied Li-Wan's parents, but the ghost of the girl was even more distressed. She had only tried to speak through the servants' body to tell her parents the name of her murderer, and that he was now living in their village. If the priest had thought to bring a medium with him, that woman could have channeled the voice of the vengeful ghost, and shared her knowledge. But the hasty work of the exorcist prevented Li-Wan from telling that news. The ghost was not yet to have her rest.

So the murdered girl drifted through the village to Ruoi's sake shop. There, yakuza thugs drank heavily and laughed over their dice games. Then an idea came to Li-Wan. The kuei lay in wait out back by the privy, and when one of the drunken thugs came to relieve himself, the ghost possessed him. Because he was drunk, it was remarkably easy to take possession of his body. Soon, Li-Wan looked down at herself from within the husk she controlled. She now had a large muscular body, one that was trained to kill with its hands. The kuei smiled and headed back to the sake house.

The yakuza she possessed went by the name of Koichiro. He had been losing heavily at dice, and Li-Wan knew that if she went back inside and quit playing, no questions would be asked. She did so; to a chorus of disappointed voices and razzing insults, Koichiro shook his head and refused to rejoin his companions at dice.

Instead, he walked over to the sake barrel where Ruoi sat, dipping out servings of rice wine and putting them to heat over the brazier. The other yakuza were soon rolling their dice, swilling their drinks, and bantering raucously. They didn't notice Koichiro pick Ruoi up by the neck, and plunge the rat-person head first into his barrel of wine.

The evil little man struggled to get free. He changed his shape to half-rat, half man, then went all the way to rat. But the thug's grip never loosened. When he quit kicking, Koichiro got up and went out into the night.

There, the kuei released her victim, and the yakuza was once more in control of his body. Followed by the curious ghost, the thug rejoined his friends and tried to sit in again on the dice game, but now they had no room for him. Disappointed, he ordered another drink. Hearing no answer, he looked for Ruoi. He didn't see the man, but at the sake barrel, he found something disgusting floating in the wine.

'Ugh!' he fished a drowned rat out of the barrel and held it up. 'Hey, fellows - don't drink the sake! Look what's in it!'" His companions took a look and their stomachs turned. Angrily they searched for Ruoi, to beat him up and teach him a lesson for serving spoiled sake. The yakuza never saw the little man again, and Li-Wan left, content with her revenge.

And on the next Day of Return, the little chime rang on her parent's ancestor shrine. They rejoiced, for their daughter had come home to rest at last. â˜¼

_____

A color illustrated version of this tale may be downloaded through the links on this page, which also includes Kindle, Epub, and pdf formats of this story.

Related Post: Li-Wan's Revenge at my blog

Untangling Splintegrate: Refining the Story Questions

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:08:30 -0400

I haven’t said much at this blog about my main science fiction WIP¹Splintegrate (SPL), mainly because while I’m in the thick of it, I find it difficult to talk about it.

Nevertheless, I hit a particular bright spot today that I wanted to share. I have finally, at long last, unraveled a plot conundrum that has had me boxed in in the story-telling in SPL for entirely too long.

I’ve known there was something “not right” about the plot for quite a while. Sussing it out has been a hair-pulling exercise extraordinaire. I thought I had this resolved in the spring, but it turns out I did not. Lately I went back to some basics, and did some elementary review work of my fundamental construct with a guidebook in hand. That guidebook is Jack M. Bickham’s classic work Scene & Structure. It’s been through several editions; the one I have has as its subtitle, “How to construct fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability.”

It teaches exactly that.

I recommend this book to anyone who is a) learning the basics of the writing craft and wants to tackle novel-length works, and also to b) anyone who is already writing in this mode, but is not absolutely certain they’re following the right blueprint for their story’s underpinnings.

Scene & Structure will cure what ails ya, if you actually apply the principles and treat this like a workbook. In particular, he offers specific troubleshooting advice: if it feels like your characters have “taken over the book”, go back and analyze the scene disasters to see where you may have overplayed things and set the story up with spin in a direction you didn’t really intend. My wording, his sentiment. But things like that prove very practical for actually analyzing what you’ve done, and discovering where there may have been a critical misstep.

In my case, my kerfluffle stemmed from this habit I have of creating ensemble-cast stories. (I plead innocence: that’s how I perceive them, and so that’s how they come through the channel. But man it can be a b*tch to get this all straight when it’s on paper!) Plot complications grow exponentially, not geometically, when you add more players to the mix. I had to review who my main point-of-view characters were, identify who was really the foil to all this interaction, and then – only then! – could I absolutely refine what the real “story questions” were that were underlying all the story events.

The story question is that thing you end up asking yourself: will the guy get the girl? Will the kidnappee escape her kidnapper? Will the hero triumph over the bad guy? The question itself is usually pretty simple and straightforward, but it is created by the basic conundrum/life challenge faced by the protagonist or other significant character.

In a story with a lot of moving parts, as mine tend to be, and multiple leading characters, it is easy for this story question to become obscured by other events and closely related questions. And if you have a character (as I often do) with three pressing things going on at once, which of those questions is primary and the sole essential one to the overarching story? With a multi-character cast, it is easy to lose sight of the answers to these questions. But if the central story question is not highlighted and played to correctly later on, the whole tale falls flat, and you’ll have the devil’s own time figuring out why.

Splintegrate spider diagram synopsis, Aug 15 2011

Thank you Mr. Bickham: you have helped me finally re-define and clarify my underlying story questions so that now the ending rings true. (I think, anyway. We’ll know after it’s in print if you folks think so too.)

Today has been a good day in the salt mines. After quite a while of intensive analysis and always No Insight, I went to bed with my (3′ x 2′) whiteboard by the bedside and sure enough popped awake out of a dream at 3AM, and started spider-diagramming The Answers that were suddenly so evident to me. Rewrote this then in more of a synopsis form. This morning I was able to look at a now very-cluttered white board and laugh, because there are all the plot points and connections and Correct Endings I’ve been missing

I have my Genius to thank for this. We had a talk before I went to bed (indeed, we’ve been having words regularly of late), and man, did she deliver.

Huzzah!

I am way close to DONE, and right on schedule. Or as my heroine Julia Cameron says,

“Leap, and the net will appear.”

_____

1. Someone asked me recently what “WIP” stood for. So in case it needs explanation, that’s common shorthand for “work in progress.”

This post originally appeared at Notes From the Lizard Lair.