Quick Notes continued

Also, last year, whilst browsing a second hand bookshop for Christmas gifts (we usually find some quirky theater play for muminlaw that way), the hubby found a book of which he said: "Here, that's one for you!" Well, actually he used a Flemish/Dutch expression which, translated literally, gives: "It's written on your body."

The Games People Play, subtitled The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis, is a quite readable manual in which the way we people talk and act around eachother is analysed into handy formulaic patterns. You can read more blahblah on it on its Wikipedia page.

I found the book eerie, as I always do when complex human behavior is revealed to be quite simple programming. Never fails to catapult into the past, many many years ago, where I sat in front of our C64, typed in the code given my a computer magazine, and presto: had my own version of Pong. Wow! That's how easy it is!

But it's also interesting, because the simple patterns are an excellent tool to look at dialogues and other human interaction from a writer point of view.
Up till now, whenever I wrote anything from a pissing contest to venomous green-eyed spitting match, it has always been the inspiration of the moment, and not necessarily what the plot required. Nothing so angst-inspiring as knowing I have to make my characters angry at each other. Very very angry. And there has to be dialogue.
Over the years I managed to get a better feel for it; it helps to crawl into the character's skin and annoy the crap out of him/her until he/she finds her angry voice. But still I'd rather find a way around my characters having a hissy fit on the page. Fake verbal fights are ... so fake.

Luckily now (well, quite some time ago but for me just a few months ago) the mechanics of such "transaction" are revealed with absolute clarity. Very helpful for writing. Also, very helpful for realizing how my own hissy fits work and doubt the hubby finds that a bad thing, 'ey.

So, Games People Play. Look it up. Cool stuff.