The story is yours to paint
I don't teach many English lessons these days and instead focus on skill development but today, I had one with a relatively new group with which I have only had a couple sessions. Every session for me is a surprise although, I walk into the class with a couple general points I want to investigate with the participants. Today, it touched on emotive words and narrative and I thought I would touch on them a little here too for the #anhouraday tag. How is it going for those who have started?
Emotive words
Ok, firstly, lets get emotional. Essentially every word carries an emotional weighting that is tied to the meaning of the word but, also to the experience of a person. For example, for many the word mother is going to be classified as positive however, Norman Bates may argue that point. When he hears the word mother, he is likely to have quite a different emotional response than most. But this is true for all words, especially adjectives.
The difference between a car accident, a bad car accident and a horrendous car accident bring to mind different severity of accident and the imagery will change to suit. The problem is (for non-native speakers mostly) is that the emotional rating isn't 'intuitive' and the words chosen are based on translation of terms for best fit, but best fit to what?
Most non-native speakers are unable to choose the words based on the common emotional rating and will often make poor selections and the story gets lost in translation. Like one of my students noted today, this is probably why conversation between two non-natives in a non-mother-tongue language is easier to understand. I agree and believe it is because both parties have to 'translate' into their native position to build the image. Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean good communication.
When writing, word choice is obviously very important for understanding and this goes beyond the actual meaning of the words. Often, non-native speech is bland because even though the ideas are conveyed, the supporting imagery associated may not be, which takes us onto the narrative.
Narrating the image
No matter what the topic, how boring, if it is technical or prose, the basic concept is that ideas need to be transported across effectively enough that the communicator gets the appropriate response from the audience. It could be the understanding of a task or perhaps, the heart-wrench felt at the loss of a loved one by the protagonist in a work of fiction. There is a story there and that story creates mental imagery.
The challenge is to be able to build the narrative so that when read/presented, it will create the foundation and then the framework so that the shape of what the audience sees is aligned with what the writer wants the message to be. I wrote a piece today about education and talked about learning math and the problem for me was that I never saw the story in the equations. Those that are good at math can visualize what it is doing (or could be doing) in reality. This is a problem for many.
Sales people need to tell the story of their product, fiction writers may need to build a whole world and the approach for each may change depending on the topic at hand. As I said to my class today;
Words are the paints on the palette and the mixing and combination of them create the colours with which the artist builds the image.
Depending on what one wants to convey and with which tone is going to affect word choice and to choose poorly can take a brilliant idea and limit the impact or, destroy it entirely. The creator needs to think through their approach from the audience's perspective because, the writer already knows the story.
This seems obvious but is actually something most people miss as they assume because they see the narative and all of the little hidden gems, everyone will see the same thing. Many writers here try to convey what is in their head which is great but, they do it from their perspective and lose the audience. They of course wonder why their masterpiece is not well received. It is kind of like telling the punchline of a long joke and expecting the audience to laugh without having heard the rest.
For some, these types of things come easier than for others but for me, I have to put myself in to the moment I want to convey, visualize it, feel it and then observe how my mind and body reacts. I have written some quite emotional fiction stories while I have been here. They aren't always rainbows and unicorns to create.
And, perhaps this is the best place to end this piece too. If you don't feel what you write, it is likely going to show through in your work because if it doesn'tevoke a response from you, why would you assume it would bring out anything in anyone in the audience. This isn't just for fiction or advertising looking for sales, the narrative flows through anything you ant the audience to understand well.
Be curious, experiment, learn and improve.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Finding the right words and the right flow is definitely what takes the most time for me. Sometimes it can even take up to a day or I just put on pause until it all comes together. But with english not being my first language, I feel like steemit gives me an incentive to work at it even harder.
Cheers for the article :)
Hi taraz. I find it happening with me when I am talking to someone whose first language is not English. Instead of just saying what I am meant to i change it to try and simplify it so my message gets across. I have learnt over the years when I have given instructions which were straight forward to myself but others misinterpreted them.
This is an additional challenge. My ex while we were travelling in Tokyo asked me on the first day why people understand me there and not her. Her English is good but, too good. Whe she was hearing me speak to them, she was filling in all the stuff I was leaving out in her head. When sh spoke to them, she spoke like she always does and it was too difficult. It isn't easy for people who have spent a lot of time learning a language to 'dumb it down' and when they do, they often sound condescending.
I use the translator because I do not know anything about English, but I have to take the first step to start changing that, I have a friend who has told me to encourage me to take a course and learn with him and we always talk about your good topics and the great content of them I hope to improve soon and have a broader English fluently greetings brother
good luck mate and I hope that you will benefit from the work :)
amen brother, the important thing is to take the first step
Before I joined Steemit, I spent much of my time of Medium. I didn't always write stories that I believed in often they were "how to" pieces. sure I got a response of two but nothing special.
Once I started to write from my heart and with authenticity my writing, the responses and, more importantly, the satisfaction I felt drastically improved.
I have written several pieces about writing/speaking/acting authentically and the difference in audience response when what one presents comes from the heart. Sure, not everything needs to be written like that but, it is good from time to time to explore as like you said, the feeling of satisfaction increases dramatically which I assume because, it becomes yours.
In the section if the post that's titled as 'emotive' you make a very good point. The finer connotations remain outside the grasp of non-native speakers unless they gain an exceptional insight with practice and use. The emotional range of a phrase might not actually represent the same intensity of emotion in a non-native speakers mind and thus we have the poor selection of words that we use.
PS: English is not my mother tongue so I kind of understand the issue.
Yeah, I understand it also and since I have been working with it so much for so long with Finns, I can blur interpret the meaning (in Finland) easily enough. However, this can also be why some cultures appear much ruder or, more polite than others. It might not be them that is that way but the expectations of the audience on what good or bad behaviour is. As you said, these things take experimentation to understand, not school books.
I told you recently that to interact with you I had to use a translator, but I enrolled in a course to be able to speak it correctly, I thought I was not going to achieve it, but now I understand much more. Emotional classification I still do not understand, the translation guides me, but I hope that in the long term you can understand the emotional classification very well ... You are right to send the emotions so that the receiver can understand them more effectively. I hope someday to be able to speak the language. Greetings, my dear friend
Stick with it and you will get there. There is a lot of possibility for people who speak multiple languages + English so I hope it helps you. :)
This is very relevant in something as mundane as giving directions as well. To be able to give clear and unambiguous directions one needs to model the level of knowledge the recipient is likely to have. This is often a cognitive task far from trivial which most people fail at to one degree or another in my experience. It is often frustrating to ask a local for directions in some strange city because one can almost expect them to fail to not only grasp the ambiguities of the expressions they use but neglect to mention things someone totally new to the area must be told before they can make any use of the information.
Giving directions was actually an example I used in class today for this reason. Another relevant one is when my wife wants something done in a specific way but doesn't tell that way specifically so, I do it my way ;)
Women ...
Hello, @tarazkp and everyone! I've created a new Steemit t-shirt and I hope that you will love it as I was working on it for a whole day! You can get it here:
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The Challenge #anhouraday is more of a lesson than a simple challenge
Or we avoid the emotion in the language . When speaking to someone in their second language we instinctively stick to a blunt point .
You really good at English lessons and generally teaching, so I learnt so much from this article especially on emotive words and actions.
writing for the audience perspective is more beneficial than writing for your self.