This is a social experiment. Just a funny little test to see if those stupid blurb titles actually get people’s attention. I promise not to be tricky again! I’ll post my unofficial findings when they’re found, of course 🙂
It could have been titled: “27 reasons why you should mistrust ALL CAPS”
What a funny way to abuse peoples’ lizard brains. You know, that fundamental part of your brain that exults in the most basic things. It’s why certain people are addicts. Video games, drugs, money, you know, cool stuff. You see a flashing button and you immediately want to press it, or you at least wonder “what the hell?” Stimuli (like this blog title) are used in books, too.
The first thing that comes to mind is the vaunted ‘first page’. Nowadays, first pages have to be pretty stimulating in order to compete with the sheer magnitude of, well, competition out there (i.e. every other book ever). And it makes sense. Appeal to those lizard brains and get people sucked into your story. Only then may you wax poetic…
Secondly, there’s the eternal conflict of literary-ness versus ease-of-read-ness. They’re two selling points that come to mind quickly when picturing the market for authors. Literary-ness sells because of our societal love of pretty words used well. Ease-of-read-ness capitalizes not on the beauty of the sentence, but the flow of the sentence, in that it leads you to the next sentence after appropriately stimulating the lizard brain. The page turning becomes addicting, elicits a positive response, that sort of thing.
And now we live in a world where everyone is vying for your attention, we’re bombarded by stimuli, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a literary reaction to this. Not that it would get anyone’s attention, it might just die in a corner somewhere.
Anyway, here’s the real question: what’s stimulating to you? Is it having a positive or negative effect on your life? It’s okay to be stimulated, you just ought to know when it’s happening so that someone doesn’t trick you into doing something a lizard would do. Without further ado, mountains (courtesy, as ever, of wallpaperswide.com, creative commons)
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Don’t steal my words. They’re mine. ©
