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Jan. 8th, 2019 12:06 ammy friend’s friend is my friend
my friend’s enemy is my enemy
my enemy’s friend is my enemy
my enemy’s enemy is my friend
Heider’s Balance Theory (1958)
While Social Balance Theory is somewhat outmoded, it's still used plenty in advertising and therefore storytelling. In Social Balance Theory the triangles are POX triangles. Person. Other. X, as in an equation. The idea is fairly simple. You are the person and you're taking in this story. The other is the point of view character: the celebrity, cool spokesperson, etc. that you can trust, like, or identify with. X is the product. Because you like the pov character and they like the product, you are more likely to like the product.
You can extend this to any conformation. If you dislike the fact that we're in the middle east. But you hate President Trump and he comes out and says we should leave. You're likely to feel more positive about us being militarily in the middle east than you did. Because the enemy (disliked X) of my enemy (the hated other) is my friend.
Most important for me, though, is that this is a tool in larger scale fiction. Person P is the reader and I want them to feel certain ways when they're reading my text. So I can set up POX triangles to help sell those feelings. I want the reader to like a character, so I set the character up positively with something I can reasonably expect the reader to like. This is a major part of the principle behind "Save the Cat!" I can also set them up negatively against something I can reasonably expect the reader to dislike - because two negatives net a positive as in the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
On the other side, let's suppose I've gotten my character likable. Once I am safe relying on any reader (P) who is still reading liking my character (O) then I can sell goals (X) off my character. Because Character O wants and feels positively about an element (X), the reader (P) is more likely to feel positively about it, too.
As Social Balance Theory has become more sophisticated - people are still writing papers on it - one of the things that it has delved deeper into is the idea that things aren't an easy positive or negative but that there are varying degrees. Such as maybe feeling -2 about vanilla icecream but +5 about Tom Hiddleston, so even if Tom Hiddleston came out and said he LOVED vanilla icecream, you wouldn't start disliking Tom Hiddleston and you wouldn't start liking vanilla icecream but you might become more tolerant of other people liking vanilla in the abstract.
This too can be used for our fiction. You can play a numbers game with how you want people to feel. This is what I'm nearly always trying to do with my character, JJ. I need her to be a monster but I also want everyone to like her. So what I can do is constantly switch my X's. I can make her son who loves her an X and show a moment of why he loves her. I can also make her an unholy terror against him but with it also showing why she might be doing it for his benefit. Then I can have her "save a cat." Then I can have her do something utterly horrible. And the play of switchoffs will hopefully make the reader have complex feelings about her. I always know I've succeeded when someone reluctantly admits they might like her in spite of how terrible she is.
This is also why you tend to want two "people" on the page at a time. With two and more you can play the emotions of the reader off of O and X in comparison to each other instead of just working with a single person on the page without comparison. Without comparison you are leaving it to the reader to decide purely on their own how they feel about things.
my friend’s enemy is my enemy
my enemy’s friend is my enemy
my enemy’s enemy is my friend
Heider’s Balance Theory (1958)
While Social Balance Theory is somewhat outmoded, it's still used plenty in advertising and therefore storytelling. In Social Balance Theory the triangles are POX triangles. Person. Other. X, as in an equation. The idea is fairly simple. You are the person and you're taking in this story. The other is the point of view character: the celebrity, cool spokesperson, etc. that you can trust, like, or identify with. X is the product. Because you like the pov character and they like the product, you are more likely to like the product.
You can extend this to any conformation. If you dislike the fact that we're in the middle east. But you hate President Trump and he comes out and says we should leave. You're likely to feel more positive about us being militarily in the middle east than you did. Because the enemy (disliked X) of my enemy (the hated other) is my friend.
Most important for me, though, is that this is a tool in larger scale fiction. Person P is the reader and I want them to feel certain ways when they're reading my text. So I can set up POX triangles to help sell those feelings. I want the reader to like a character, so I set the character up positively with something I can reasonably expect the reader to like. This is a major part of the principle behind "Save the Cat!" I can also set them up negatively against something I can reasonably expect the reader to dislike - because two negatives net a positive as in the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
On the other side, let's suppose I've gotten my character likable. Once I am safe relying on any reader (P) who is still reading liking my character (O) then I can sell goals (X) off my character. Because Character O wants and feels positively about an element (X), the reader (P) is more likely to feel positively about it, too.
As Social Balance Theory has become more sophisticated - people are still writing papers on it - one of the things that it has delved deeper into is the idea that things aren't an easy positive or negative but that there are varying degrees. Such as maybe feeling -2 about vanilla icecream but +5 about Tom Hiddleston, so even if Tom Hiddleston came out and said he LOVED vanilla icecream, you wouldn't start disliking Tom Hiddleston and you wouldn't start liking vanilla icecream but you might become more tolerant of other people liking vanilla in the abstract.
This too can be used for our fiction. You can play a numbers game with how you want people to feel. This is what I'm nearly always trying to do with my character, JJ. I need her to be a monster but I also want everyone to like her. So what I can do is constantly switch my X's. I can make her son who loves her an X and show a moment of why he loves her. I can also make her an unholy terror against him but with it also showing why she might be doing it for his benefit. Then I can have her "save a cat." Then I can have her do something utterly horrible. And the play of switchoffs will hopefully make the reader have complex feelings about her. I always know I've succeeded when someone reluctantly admits they might like her in spite of how terrible she is.
This is also why you tend to want two "people" on the page at a time. With two and more you can play the emotions of the reader off of O and X in comparison to each other instead of just working with a single person on the page without comparison. Without comparison you are leaving it to the reader to decide purely on their own how they feel about things.
