Essay Writing: Using Cultural Patterns to Create Novelty

Do you 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 and then say, “Do it like this.” Oh sure, they give you isolated examples of the forms you should use, such as 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? Yeah, good!

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 writing is that novelty is all around us: on the Internet, in bookstores, in clothing stores, in car showrooms, in politics, and especially in the movies. . Movies give us a new thrill, a moving or heartbreaking new story about a likable or hateful character, a new vision of the universe (science fiction), an interesting new vision of society or history, or a new combination of these patterns. of novelty—–or we stay away en masse, right?

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 broad concept that no one has handled it well, a nice way to talk about it without having to refer to a million different people. new things. 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 researched this for years and found that there are only five different types of novelty:

• Counter
• Add
• Subtract
• Substitute
• Reorganize

Of course, that doesn’t make sense unless you realize that the new always depends on that 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 small, painstakingly researched, manageable set of categories of what is old which can be turned into something new:

• Values
• Expectations
• Experiences
• Reasoning
• language

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 old-new thing work with those two short sets of categories, anyway?’ Good question.

The most important thing to start with is the Values ​​set. 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 of this to the letter. 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 distrust,
• substitute good feelings and ideas to old negative feelings and ideas,
• reorganize old ways of sequencing things,
• counter the negative feelings that 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 ads 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 things built into them.

The kind of cultural patterns I’m 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 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 indicated by his trajectory.
• 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 has no teeth.

Remember the first two view categories above, Values ​​and Expectations? They are the key. When they are reversed, then you have newness, a new view. And that is exactly the pattern of The lion roars, but 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 nullified and reversed.

So let’s put it very broadly: when people are aware of a great strength or 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 vision, like a lion roaring 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 being disappointed on a date because he was not kissed. Phrased that way, that student’s disappointment doesn’t have any 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 soccer team, a guy with a reputation among 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 I got a kiss on the cheek and a lame, “That was fun, Wendy! Let’s do it 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 noblemen to make an egg stand up 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 get dates by talking to girls. Put like that, there was no sense of novelty in it. But when he learned of 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. They rejected me all the time. Like other guys, I thought girls only wanted to date athletes, high achievers, rich guys, or really good-looking guys. But then I learned that a lot of girls like guys they can talk to, just talk! How simple! Now I never get 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 strong negative and strong positive experiences and viewpoints to create and convey newness:

• david vs goliath—–The small one unexpectedly defeats the big one.

EXAMPLE: The IRS took my meek and 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!

• The chicken or the egg—–Cause and effect are reversed or interchanged.

EXAMPLE: My boyfriend likes 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 —Mistaken!—–Topics don’t always work well in real life.

EXAMPLE: Two nights before finals, I went to the movies and chilled out, like they say you should. Bad advice! I bombarded it! The next semester, I studied for two weeks AND the two nights before final exams—–and I passed!

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. So we need to write down our strong positive and strong negative personal experiences and then look for cultural patterns to which we can relate them. We can use those cultural patterns to strengthen, clarify, or rephrase our initial ideas. We can even use them as benchmarks to compare when looking for ideas in our own experiences.

Because novelty surrounds us in cultural patterns, we need to become sensitized to those patterns of novelty and start focusing on the #1 focus of all successful communications, whether published, commercial or not:

………………………………………………………. .. ..What’s new for the reader