• reverse
• add
• subtract
• substitute
• rearrange

—work with EVERYthing written or spoken, it seems that you, like many people, just aren’t quite sure what to do with NewView. Somehow, the concept seems too big to handle. And for some, the concept seems too uncomfortable for them to work with because it’s just so different from other things they’ve used in the past.

I think part of people’s hesitation about using NewView comes from their forgetting that those 5 NewView Options are meant to be used with the 5 OldView Categories:

• values
• expectations
• experiences
• reasoning
• language

And people tend to forget that the “values” and “expectations” categories are the two most important of those categories because almost all stories use them (actually, I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t, but I’m being modest).

And so you can teach students (or yourself) about NewView by starting with stories they (or you) are already familiar with (to see NewView Analysis in action, see my book, The Secret DNA of Analyzing Short Stories; it does a NewView Analysis of ten classic short stories; my newest book, The Secret DNA of Analyzing Novels will be released soon, as well).

On the Testimonials page on this website, an elementary teacher named Jeffrey C. Ballard briefly shares his successful experience in teaching his students–third, fourth, and fifth graders–to write using NewView. Anybody can do what he did:

First, he had them bring in to class their favorite storybook. And he took two weeks to talk about each story with the class, showing them how each story had the same NewView three-step pattern in common:

Step #1. OldView strong value statement, by or about the main character, at the beginning

Step #2. Support/undercutting of OldView, in the middle

Step #3. NewView Reverse of OldView, at the end

Ballard said that at the end of the two weeks, his third, fourth, and fifth graders were making suggestions on how their favorite authors could have improved their stories by using the 5 NewView Options better. They had become literary critics! Elementary school students!

Second, the teacher shared some good short essays with his students and talked about the NewViews that were in the essays. The students also began to make comments about how the essays could be improved by doing a better job of using the 5 NewView Options and the 5 OldView Categories.

Third, the teacher helped the students write down a list or inventory of things they liked, things they disliked, and things they didn’t care about. And on the chalkboard he wrote down specific instances of their likes and dislikes from what they had written down and showed them how to reverse them, add to them, subtract from them, substitute in them, and rearrange them. In short, he demonstrated over and over, from material they liked in their own lives, how to take an OldView and change it into a NewView, in the 5 different NewView Option ways.

Then, about two months after he had introduced NewView to them, Ballard gave his little students their first writing assignment using NewView. The result was predictable: ALL his students improved materially in their writing.

And you can use that same procedure, for just yourself or for students you teach. It works. Why? Because if you are not communicating what people already know, you are communicating–speaking or writing or whatever–what’s new to them. You can’t get around that. And since you are just about ALWAYS communicating the 5 NewView Options being used on one or more of the 5 OldView Categories, you need to learn to make that contrast clearly, colorfully, and memorably between the old and the new with all the right NewView Reinforcing keywords.

So—–

Say it true,

Say it you,

Say it new,

Say it clearly—–

OldView – NewView!

Rule #3. Locate major characters talking about abstract values.

The abstract values you find will be things you can’t touch, such as,

• freedom
• love
• friendship
• fear
• good
• evil
• sin
• God
• respect
• responsibility
• justice
• equality

Again, start with the NewView Reverse and identify one of those abstract values involved in it. Then look for strong expressions by the narrator or by characters placed near the NewView Reverse that clearly emphasize one or more of the abstractions listed above.

In “Mockingbird,” Sheriff Tate talks heatedly with Atticus about Jem not being able to have killed Bob Ewell because he had a broken arm and was just a young boy, without the strength and determination to do the deed.

And then he makes a second point—that what they all had to agree on was that Bob Ewell fell on his knife and was killed by accident, not by Boo. If they didn’t agree, then Boo Radley would be treated as a hero by the whole town, with women bringing all sorts of baked goodies to him and lionizing his courageous deed, which would be hard for Boo to relate to and would most probably ruin his life. Tate’s interpretation of that probability is confirmed when thirty-five year-old Boo asked little Scout, a nine-year-old girl,

“Will you take me home?”

He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark.

What’s fascinating about this is that Sheriff Ewell was illustrating that “stand in his shoes” principle that Atticus had mentioned so many times to Jem and Scout. What’s ironic is that Atticus—the frequent teacher of the “stand in his shoes” principle—was having a hard time standing in Jem’s shoes, as well as Boo’s shoes, and understanding just what had happened that ended in Bob Ewell getting killed. As I see it, in this instance Atticus was a foil in strong contrast to Tate’s use of the “stand in his shoes” principle.

This incident is also another instance of the ignorance-assumptions-negative reactions pattern that is so prominent throughout the story. Atticus, like all the others at the house except Scout, is ignorant because he wasn’t there when Ewell attacked the kids. And Atticus has, no doubt, been quite upset by Jem’s injured condition, so he doesn’t think as well as he often shows throughout the story. So he wrongly assumes that Jem killed Ewell, which results in his negative reaction of wanting to bring the whole matter to court and air it before the public. Finally, however, he sees that Sheriff Tate’s version of the event is the right one, and he goes along with it.

I could talk a lot more about patterns that support the NewView and the theme in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” But that would be gilding the lily, so to speak. Still, let me mention one more pattern, the one involved in Tom Robinson’s trial.

The ignorance-assumptions-negative reactions pattern involved with the trial of the black man, Tom Robinson, are so obvious that they are talked about by every critic who has gone on record to analyze the story.

No one misses the ignorance that the townspeople have concerning Tom as a person, which Atticus brings out in the trial when he addresses the jury directly at the end in his closing arguments. No one misses the assumptions of the jury and the townspeople that are really just bigoted stereotyping of blacks, which the South is infamous for. And no one misses the negative reactions of the jury and townspeople, which is just another phrase that means prejudice.

But what all the critics seem to miss is that Harper Lee shows over and over, in commonplace incident after commonplace incident, that the ignorance-assumptions-negative reactions pattern afflicts everyone’s lives, in one form or another.

What was that repeating pattern but a form of bigotry and prejudice when—

• Scout and Jem are ignorant about what good things Atticus, their father, can do and they assume he is inferior to other fathers and therefore they have the negative reaction of being ashamed of him.
• Miss Caroline is ignorant of the good that has been done by Scout learning to read early, as she assumes that Atticus has wrongly taught Scout to read and takes the negative reaction of telling Scout not to let her father teach her to read anymore.

I’ll let you apply the ignorance-assumptions-negative reactions to all the other small and large foils and conflicts in the story. It’ll do you good to find them on your own (take your vitamins, please ).

So those things in the story that support and echo the basic pattern of the NewView are also the things that reveal to us the theme of “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

Since just about all the incidents and conflicts in the story show some form of bigotry and prejudice, we can safely conclude that the theme of the story is about bigotry and prejudice ruling and ruining our own everyday lives and others’ lives, not just the life of our society.

But Harper Lee does provide a surprisingly simple and powerfully effective remedy that is urged over and over throughout the story by Atticus and prominently used at the end of the story by Scout and Sheriff Tate:

—stand in ______’s shoes a minute

I hope this third installment on our discussion of using NewView to determine the theme in novels was worth your waiting.

Please let me know with an email to wrdrewjr@comcast.net, okay? I’d really appreciate it.

The theme of a story is what the author is trying to communicate to readers, the main idea.

In a well-written novel, the theme is worked in all throughout the story, in the foils, conflicts and resolutions, and other literary devices, and especially in the NewView.

And since the NewView is, in fact, the Power Key for determining the theme of a story, it’s helpful to create and use your own customized Mind Map with the NewView Reverse at the center. As you’ll see, everything in the story that supports or relates to the NewView will also be under the umbrella of the theme of the story.

Follow these three rules to fill out your customized Mind Map:

Rule #1. Check for repeated key words and key phrases.

For individual key words, make sure always to go from the NewView to the title of the novel.

When we were pinpointing the NewView Reverse, we noted that Sheriff Tate and Scout drew our attention to the phrase, “it’s a sin,” referring to what Atticus had said early in the story, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” And Scout does say, just after Tate leaves, referring to what Tate said about not letting anyone know that Boo Radley had killed Bob Ewell (because the social attention Boo would get from that would wreck his life),

“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”

And “mockingbird” is in the title of the novel, so “mockingbird-Tate-Scout-Atticus” should be penciled into one of the bubbles around the central one. Other events in the story used the word “mockingbird,” too, so pencil those in briefly in other bubbles connected to the one you just filled in.

Another key word in the NewView that is also in the novel’s title is “kill.” Did anybody in the story get killed? You’re right: Tom Robinson, Bob Ewell, and the mad dog, Tim Johnson.

They each should get their own bubble on the same line out from the center. Other bubbles in that line could contain incidents where the kids were telling each other they were going to be killed by Boo Radley, such as at the beginning when Jem was working up his courage to run up to the Radley house and touch it.

An interesting variation of “mockingbird” and “kill” occurs on page 323, where Scout is describing Mr. Underwood’s comment in his newspaper the day after Tom Robinson’s death:

He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children . . . .

Obviously, “songbird” is a variation of “mockingbird,” which was described elsewhere in the story as a songbird. And “slaughter” is certainly an acceptable variation of “kill,” particularly since Scout uses the phrase “senseless killing” in the very next paragraph as she thinks about Mr. Underwood’s commentary. So that should be penciled in on that line of bubbles, as well.

For key phrases, once again start with the NewView Reverse. Quite near the NewView Reverse in this story (just after it, three pages from the end, p. 374), Scout stands on the porch of the Radley home and says,

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

Scout says, “One time he said—” but she misspoke. Actually, variations of ‘stand in his shoes and walk around in them’ were mentioned a total of five times, beginning on page 39, where Atticus is talking to Scout and says,

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—“Sir?” [said Scout] “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

The other three are:

As Atticus had once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it. . . . (p. 77)

“. . . you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute.” (p. 210)

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute.” (p. 292)

Whether it’s skin or shoes, the repeated meaning is clear: To understand someone, do your honest best to try to imagine yourself living their life long enough so you can understand them. That will give you a much better understanding of them than anything else.

Rule #2. Look for patterns in the conflicts.

When we looked for support for the OldView in the middle of the story at foils, conflicts, and resolutions in Step #2 [in my book, this refers to the second step in the NewView Analysis process], we found the pattern of ignorance-assumptions-negative reactions, remember? And we found that pattern ALSO in the NewView Reverse at the end of the story.

Since that pattern is actually part of the NewView as well as in all the conflicts and resolutions in the middle of the story, you should make an acronym out of that — IANR — and put that in the top of each bubble in one line out from the center; then fill in a brief phrase to identify each conflict, such as,

• Atticus-leave Radleys alone
• Scout, mob, jailhouse
• Scout ashamed-Att. shot dog
• Alexandra-Cunghams trash

Rule #3. Find incidents where major characters talk about abstract values.

The abstract values you find will be things you can’t touch, such as,

• freedom
• love
• friendship
• fear
• good
• evil
• sin
• God
• respect
• responsibility
• justice
• equality

Again, start with the NewView Reverse and identify one of those abstract values involved in it. Then look for strong expressions by characters placed near the NewView Reverse that clearly emphasize one or more of the abstractions listed above.

[[[THIS EXCERPT FROM MY BOOK WAS LONGER THAN I REMEMBERED IT--AND I'VE MODIFIED IT A BIT WITH ADDITIONS, HERE--SO I'LL CONTINUE THIS DISCUSSION WITH PART 3, TOMORROW OR SATURDAY. STAY TUNED.]]]

The theme of a story is what the author is trying to communicate to readers, the main idea. In a well-written novel, the theme is worked in all throughout the story, and the foils, conflicts and resolutions, and other literary devices—as well as the characters’ actions, interactions, and motivations—are usually all supporting the theme.

However, since novels are often long stories hundreds of pages long, all the details that make a story real to readers may get in the way. Some writers even try to make a novel into a sort of puzzle so that readers have to work a bit to figure out the theme. Others put great effort into making their main idea quite plain and quite visible to readers.

Still, regardless of how an author writes his novel, the theme will always be closely related to the OldView – NewView relationship in the story.

How can it be otherwise? The change from the OldView in the beginning to the NewView Reverse at the end is absolutely fundamental to every story—because without a change at the end, there’s no story, right?

And that change at the end is always a NewView Reverse, as we have seen in both short stories as well as novels.

Furthermore, a theme expresses a general insight about people, either as types of individuals, or as a society, or as mankind as a whole. And that general insight should be seen throughout the major incidents and even in most of the smaller parts of the story. So if a stated theme doesn’t relate to all the major incidents and to most of the minor incidents, then that isn’t the true theme of the story. A true theme will be supported by just about everything in a well-written story. If it isn’t, then it just can’t possibly be the real theme.

Tomorrow, I’ll conclude this discussion by showing how to connect the NewView Reverse at the end of Harper Lee’s outstanding novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” with the theme for the whole book. You’ll really want to come back here tomorrow to read what I have to say. Why? Because “To Kill A Mockingbird” is the most NON- analyzed famous book in literature. Out of 30 million copies in print throughout the world, in 40 different languages, there are only about 30 published analyses of it, and no doctoral theses have been written on it. Once again—why? Because the novel is so rich in detail that it has defied analysis—until now. NewView lights the way. Check in tomorrow and see if I get it right, okay?

To back that up one more time–for writing essays, at least–here’s a quote from page 18 of Walter Dill Scott’s landmark book, The Psychology of Advertising:

The fourth principle is that the power which any object has to attract our attention, or its attention value, depends on the ease with which we are able to comprehend it.

This principle is one which is often neglected by the advertiser. A few illustrations will help to make it clear.

A child in turning over the pages of a book or magazine does not have his attention attracted at all by the printed words. Even the pictures do not attract his attention unless they are in bright colors or represent something which he can understand.

The same thing is true with adults. we will turn our attention to nothing unless it speaks to us in terms which we can interpret with comparative ease. It is difficult to comprehend an entirely new thing or function. From this it follows that a new article should be introduced as a modification of a familiar one, or as something performing a well-known function.

The pedagogical maxim of always advancing from the known to the unknown is so well established that its violation must be regarded as more or less suicidal.

As I have pointed out many times in many articles and in all my books, what’s new always depends on what’s old. The only way you can meaningfully express something to someone else is in terms that are already known, already old, to that audience.

And just what can you do to modify that old stuff to begin making it into new stuff? You do one of the 5 NewView Options to that old stuff, that’s what you do—

• reverse
• add
• subtract
• substitute
• rearrange

— and you do at least one of those options on one or more of the 5 OldView Categories:

• values
• expectations
• experiences
• reasoning
• language

It’s ALWAYS that simple, as Scott said, above:

a new article should be introduced as a modification of a familiar one.

And those “modifications” are NOT just whatever pops into your head, but one or more of the 5 NewView Options, right?

Are you beginning to trust in the OldView – NewView concept and the 5 NewView Options yet?

Glad to hear it! So buy one of my books, already, and really learn how to

Do the New, with NewView!

The idea of the vital importance of newness goes far beyond writing essays and how to write—newness has been creeping into the theories of many modern professional disciplines.

For instance, key theorists in Information Science have had some very NewView-ish ideas about communication:

But the whole point of a message, the whole point of writing the next sentence in a book, is that it should contain something new, something unexpected. Otherwise there would be no reason to write it in the first place. . .In an ordinary conversation, information is conveyed when the speaker says something that changes the listener’s knowledge. ——Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1982) p. 28.

Such generalizing about “something new, something unexpected,” and “changes the listener’s knowledge” are all spot on with the OldView – NewView relationship I’ve been talking about in my books and blog posts.

What kind of “changes the listener’s knowledge,” in a very general sense? If the information theorists had the 5 NewView Options, the last part of that sentence could be written something like this—

• . . . something that changes the listener’s knowledge by adding facts or subtracting/reducing significance or substituting one purpose or strategy for another or by rearranging the familiar structure or by reversing the expectation of something valued by the listener.

One of the greatest educational theorists of modern times, Jean Piaget, pointed out the significant role of newness in education:

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done—men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers.

And what better way to “create men who are capable of doing new things” than to train them in thinking about and using the processes of the 5 NewView Options on the 5 OldView Categories in their writing?

Another important modern influence on modern education theories and practices is David P. Ausubel, an award-winning educational psychologist who championed a theory of cognitive learning and teaching in the 1960s.

The essence of his theory is stated in his own words:

“If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.”

“What the learner already knows” relates to the OldView, of course.

And “teach him accordingly” fits in with using the 5 NewView Options to go from the old to the new. There is no other way since we cannot relate to a newness for which we have no antecedents, no previous like this or like that experiences, no existing categories and vocabulary of old, familiar thoughts and concepts to launch off from to the new.

So if the concept of “newness” is creeping in to the professionals of modern sciences and disciplines, what’s the problem?’

The problem is that they realize newness is important, somehow, but to them newness is still a big, black, mysterious box that houses all newness, without any distinctions.

Modern professionals simply are not aware of the clear relationship between the NewView Options and the OldView Categories, that there are five major ways each of those OldView Categories can be changed by NewView Options.

So all we have to do is convert them to the Gospel of NewView, right?

The answer to that gives us a fascinating historical perspective of the teaching of writing in America——

In 1994, composition scholar Robert J. Connors (scroll down to the last obituary in the list for the year 2000) published his view of a broad pattern. He pointed out in his article, “Crisis and Panacea in Composition Studies: A History,” that scholarship and intellectual activity had grown by leaps and bounds in the field of teaching writing during the past thirty years (now it’s past forty-five years).

But Connors felt progress has been limited mainly to a series of crises followed by temporary panaceas—all of which were temporary and none of which were turned into permanent, lasting solutions.

Connors believes that further temporary ‘crises,’ accompanied by their temporary ‘panaceas,’ will “continue to shape the discipline” of the teaching of writing. What have teachers learned from all these crises and panaceas? Connors declares that all the failures of the past—“profitless exercises” (his terminology)—can be used as standards for judging all future crises in writing.

Connors optimistically proclaims—for no particular reason, it seems, since he gives none—that teachers of writing won’t repeat the mistakes of the temporary crises, the temporary excitements and panics, and the temporary panaceas that are the proven history of teaching writing in America which he has taken so much trouble to trace and to document.

That historical accumulation of failures is, I think, somewhat akin to Thomas Edison’s view of his 2,000 failed experiments in making a light bulb. Edison is reported to have said, “I didn’t fail 2,000 times. I just figured out 2,000 ways that it didn’t work.” For Connors, the discipline of teaching writing has not failed innumerable times—teachers have just found innumerable ways that are not the best ways to teach writing.

Now, I can accept that Edison remembered all his failures or had access to his own records of them, keeping them handy as archived references.

But who is going to do that record keeping, that monitoring, for teachers of writing all across America?

Surely, no individual can do it. The NCTE? The CCCC? Hardly. Even if they were able to do so, writing teachers don’t need a list of failures—they need a list of thorough successes built on a solid, proven, and widely accepted theoretical foundation.

All the scholarship of writing teachers, all the back & forth of crises and panaceas, have not been enough to appease Professor Wayne C. Booth’s complaint about the deficiencies of teaching writing:

. . . where is the theory, where are the practical rules . . .?

Nor have the scholarship, crises, and panaceas provided any promise of a solution. A perspective of trial and error our writing teachers have got, but an insightful, full perspective they have not. Why?

Crisis, Again & Again
A relatively recent article provides the answer, and not from within the ranks of those who teach writing—

In 2003, an article in The New York Times provided some insight by which to judge Connor’s perception of the recurring pattern of crisis and panacea in teaching writing.

In that article, “ON EDUCATION; Discovering Crisis, Again and Again,” journalist Michael Winerip shares what he learned from Laura Haniford, a University of Michigan doctoral candidate who had presented a paper at a recent annual education convention that Winerip attended.

Haniford’s paper focused on the news media’s coverage of a racial achievement gap in local schools—the difference between how whites and blacks scored on standardized tests, as covered by one small newspaper, The Ann Arbor News, from 1984 through 2001.

Haniford noticed huge swings from year-to-year in the number of articles and the number of letters to the editor about the achievement gap issue, with nothing at all or in any way concrete happening to change things. And she was amazed that the achievement gap remained virtually unchanged, no matter how much attention was or wasn’t given to it.

Haniford wondered, “How can such wildly fluctuating coverage by the news media be explained [despite no change in the achievement gap]?”

To answer this question, she used a research model developed in 1972 by Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution . . . :

Stage 1: A highly undesirable social or academic condition exists, but has not yet captured public attention.

Stage 2: Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm by officials and interested parties.

Stage 3: Public and news media realize the true cost of reform and the sacrifices required.

Stage 4: Gradual decline of public interest.

Stage 5: Post-problem. A twilight realm of little attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest. [This is where teachers and schools are now; the NCW’s five years of “Challenge to the Nation” have passed, Proficiency scores have not increased, and very little is being said, as Stage 5 describes.]

The steps of the cycle fit perfectly both the racial achievement gap issue that Haniford was documenting AND Connors’s description of constantly repeating “crisis and panacea” in the field of teaching writing.

With the constantly recurring crises and panaceas that Connors describes and that Haniford reviews in outline form so well, can there be any doubt of the future of writing in America?

Ahem. Not without a NewView . . . .

The problem is, just what does new mean?

Newness applies so differently to so many things that it seems impossible to pin it down. And there’s such a thing as being too new, right?

And I think I hear you saying, “Bill, isn’t ‘What’s new’ dependent upon the audience?’” Yes, you’re absolutely, brilliantly, 100% correct!

Imagine trying to explain the excitement and fun of playing the computer software game Warcraft to a teenager named Zuru, who lives in an African rain forest with a bone in his nose, wearing a zebra loincloth, and has never heard of a computer. You wouldn’t get very far, would you?

It’s a sure bet he wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, even though he might have some idea of warfare and show keen interest in that magical-sounding computer thing you mentioned.

Zuru is the kind of sales audience you should hope never to have!

You need an audience that already has some knowledge about your type of product or service, so they are somewhat familiar with it in terms of features and benefits. Regardless of what you are selling or marketing, your audience needs to already have a certain level of familiarity or knowledge with your type of product or service in these categories:

• Values
• Expectations
• Experiences
• Reasoning
• Language

Such already-acquired knowledge is what I call the OldView. In order for you to say anything new to your sales audience, you have to have a pretty good idea of what’s already familiar or old to them about your type of product/service in one or more of the types of OldViews. Only then can you be sure you are saying something meaningfully new to them.

Thus, newness depends directly upon what you do with the OldView, and I call that the NewView.

Remember Zuru? If he had enough of the shared, basic OldViews of Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language about computers and computer games, then you might have gotten a sale (paid for with lion skins or elephant tusks, maybe?). But since there was no shared information in Zuru’s personal OldViews about your type of product, there was little communication, no recognizable newness—and no sale.

So what do you do with shared OldViews when you want to communicate a NewView? Simple—you make a bridge from the OldView to the NewView by using the following five simple yet powerful processes that make anything new, either singly or in combination:

• Reverse
• Add
• Subtract
• Substitute
• Rearrange

Now, this relates to some interesting marketing theory.

For instance, in his bestselling Wizard of Ads trilogy, Roy H. Williams (a well-known marketing guru) talks about Broca’s Area, which is an area of the brain just over the left ear and barely forward from the Auditory Cortex.

To make sure we’re on the same page (note that I’m establishing the OldView, here), let me tell you that the function of Broca’s Area is to filter, arrange, and then forward information to the Prefrontal Cortex of the brain, just behind the forehead part of the skull. That’s where decisions are made, such as decisions about buying products.

Williams teaches, and science supports, that Broca is stimulated by patterns that are not anticipated. In short, Broca is stimulated by newness: “‘Interest me!’ cries Broca. ‘Surprise me with something I didn’t know. If you’re not carrying new information or a new perspective, you’ll not enter my Yellow Brick Road [direct pathway to the Prefrontal Cortex]‘” (Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, p. 50).

Did you notice that, according to Williams, surprising Broca requires “new information or a new perspective”? Sounds like he’s talking about a NewView, right? Up ’til now, that world of new information and new perspectives has been mostly formless for marketers trying to surprise Broca. You can take the shared types of OldView things — Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language — and put them into your NewView kaleidoscope, with its set of five NewView lenses, and turn the wheel to see the OldView in new ways, in NewViews.

You can use those five types of NewViews as processes for focusing on any OldView and actually tweaking them to — as Williams so brilliantly asserts — surprise Broca!

So let’s construct in our minds a table for generating NewViews to surprise Broca. It will have five columns coming down from the top and five rows going from left to right, so there are twenty-five blocks within the table.

Now, across the top of the table, as titles for each of the five columns, visualize the five types of new views, from left to right —–

……….Reverse……….Add……….Subtract……….Substitute……….Rearrange

And, coming down the left side of the table, there are the names of the five types of OldViews —–

Values

Expectations

Experiences

Reasoning

Language

To use this table, you’ll first write in short phrases under each of the OldView headings on the left, and then you’ll fill in the empty squares under each of the five types of NewViews to the right. You fill them with NewViews by doing the option at the top of the column (Reverse, Add, Subtract, Substitute, or Rearrange) to the OldView at the far left of that row. You’ll see in a moment how that works.

Creating Material for a Commercial Ad

Let’s take a look at how our table can help you write an advertisement.

Here’s a realistic business situation we can work with: Harper’s Cabinets in Birmingham, Alabama, sells great cabinets at thrifty prices. They need advertising ideas — they’re not sure just what — for the marketing push they want to make so they can expand their business.

To use the our table to help the folks at Harper’s Cabinets to write the copy for some advertisements, we’ll put in a blank line just above the table that states the overall OldView that people have about cabinets in their home. So visualize this just above the table:

OLDVIEW: Cabinets are very useful and can add style to any home.

In the OldView spaces on the left side of the table, we’ll identify all the familiar features and benefits — the OldViews — that customers generally have about cabinets, including Harper’s, like this:

Values quality materials, elegant, inexpensive, easily installed, trusted

Expectations last long, resist damage, friends will admire

Experiences customer testimonials; quick & clean installation

Reasoning have a need, can afford it, & guaranteed, so buy the bargain

Language familiar & standard vocabulary, font, grammar

Now it’s time to fill in the new view squares off to the right for each row. Once you’ve got those OldViews filled in, you’ll be surprised at how much more quickly new ideas will pop up in your mind. It frees your mind up, really!

And don’t be too particular about what you write down for your first reactions in the empty squares. As with other brainstorming techniques, the big idea is just to get something written down, without being too critical, and you can make changes to it later, as needed.

Most importantly, never forget this timeless and true adage:

“Good writing is ALWAYS the result of REwriting.”

To demonstrate how you could fill in the empty squares with newness for each row on the table, left to right, here are some possible NewViews to enter for the Values row, which has, “quality materials, elegant, inexpensive, easily installed, trusted”:

Reverse all that quality plus such low/reasonable costs— naw, can’t be true

Add lasts WAY longer (grandkids will grow up with them) & WAY more stylish

Subtract 2/3s cost of competitors; no install charge; warranty– no worries

Substitute show your adult kids & get them to buy it for you

Rearrange priorities—don’t go on vacation: buy it & add lasting value to your house

Now, let’s just take a closer look at the contents of that Reverse block:

By reversing the entry from the OldView features under Values, and using that verbiage now in the Reverse block (”all that quality plus such low/reasonable costs—naw, can’t be true”), we can fairly easily imagine the following TV or radio spot——-

A man and his minister are sitting in a living room watching TV, and they have just heard the last line or two of all the fine features and benefits about Harper’s Cabinets. The man turns to his minister and says, “Reverend, that’s all just too good to be true, isn’t it?” The minister turns to him and replies, smiling: “Well, son, I had Harper’s Cabinets installed a year ago, and I can tell you that everything we’ve just heard is true — at least in my experience.” The man replies, “Wow! Wait ’til I tell Melanie!” and he excitedly rises, hurrying from the room with a big smile on his face. [End of commercial]

Cha-ching (ring of a cash register)!

Remember, any features or benefits of your product or service that are meaningful and new — the NewView — have to be linked to familiar, old, and shared material — the OldView — which is made up of Values, Expectations, Experiences, Reasoning, and Language that are already meaningful to or valued by the audience/customer.

How linked? With one or more of the NewView processes — by Reversing, Adding to, Subtracting from, Substituting for, or Rearranging the keywords and key concepts of the OldView material.

By using this table, as we did above, you can tweak Old Views with each of the types of NewViews to generate interesting, attention-grabbing, and interest-holding content for your advertisements. And you can surprise Broca more frequently and more reliably now that you know about the five types of OldViews and the five types of NewViews.

As Yoda says — “Burn images into minds, you should, with laser precision. Stimulate sales, you could, and watch company bank bags ballooning, you would.”

Right on, Yoda!

As an outstanding example of writing essays, in “The Eureka Phenomenon” famous author Isaac Asimov employs a clever twist to his NewView thesis—he presents it in stages.

After almost a page of discussion about going to action movies and involuntary breathing, Asimov summarizes what he’s been saying with a formal NewView thesis statement. He says that it’s his feeling that it helps to relax, deliberately, by subjecting your mind to material complicated enough to occupy the voluntary faculty of thought, but superficial enough not to engage the deeper involuntary one, which will allow involuntary thought to bring out what we call “a flash of intuition.”

Asimov then tells the Archimedes story to support that NewView thesis. Immediately after that three-page story, however, Asimov states a second, broader version of his original NewView thesis with the following—

I suspect that very few significant discoveries are made by the pure technique of voluntary thought; I suspect that voluntary thought may possibly prepare the ground (if even that), but that the final touch, the real inspiration, comes when thinking is under involuntary control.

That’s Asimov’s second stage or main NewView thesis statement—he’s saying that involuntary thought, with its flashes of intuition and insight, happens a lot in the broad field of science, not just every once in a while in ordinary, everyday life; and that it happens not just every once in a while in science, either, but “often” in science.

Let’s look at each stage separately, breaking down the first NewView into a short series of causes and effects:

CAUSE: deliberately relaxing the mind allows one to engage
EFFECT: automatic, involuntary thought

CAUSE: automatic, involuntary thought provides
EFFECT: a flash of intuition, of insight, of understanding how to solve a problem or what to do next
………….(this is the reverse of the unstated but commonly accepted old view that hard, stick-to-it, disciplined, worked-at thinking is what effective thinking is all about)

Now let’s see how good a job Asimov does of fulfilling the rules of cause and effect to support this first stage of his NewView thesis:

Sequence—first, no results with hard, worked-at thinking
……………..(”stymied” whenever he wrote himself “into a hole”)
……………..after seeing an action movie that relaxes his mind, he gets answers to problems
……………..(”I knew exactly what . . . to do,” what to write)

Present— when relaxed thinking is present, answers are always present
……………(”It never failed.”)

Absent— when relaxed thinking is absent, answers are always absent
…………..(without seeing an action movie, “in utter panic” over flaw in dissertation)

That shows reasoning working well for the first stage of the new view thesis.

For the second stage of the NewView thesis, let’s look at the causes and effects:

CAUSE: in science, relaxed, involuntary thinking brings
EFFECT: the “flash of deep insight…the real inspiration” that makes scientific breakthroughs
………….(the reverse of the OldView about how scientists work only with experiments and rigid, disciplined, meticulous, ’scientific’ reasoning)

CAUSE: such insightful breakthroughs occurred many times in history
EFFECT: (speculation) so they must have happened often in science

From frequently occurring factual evidences, Asimov speculates that insightful breakthroughs must have happened often in science, but they simply weren’t recorded. Seems likely, doesn’t it?

And here’s how Asimov uses the rules of cause and effect to support his second stage NewView in his Kekule story and two other almost-story examples:

Sequence—first, no solutions or results with scientific thinking
…………….(Kekule is frustrated w/years of searching & no solution)
…………….(Watts: “Thought didn’t help…”)
…………….(Loewi: was puzzled and not making progress; went to sleep)
…………….after relaxing technique, get answers to science problems
…………….(Kekule sleeps, dreams, & gets benzene ring solution)
…………….(Watts: “…peaceful walk did [help his thinking]“)
…………….(Loewi: “woke…with a perfectly clear notion”)

Present— when relaxed thinking is present, answers are always present
……………(Kekule: relaxed dream of “atoms…forming a ring”)
……………(Watts: “Thought didn’t help; but a…peaceful walk did”)
……………(Loewi: “woke…with a perfectly clear notion”)

Absent— when relaxed thinking is absent, answers are always absent
…………..(Kekule: “Nothing came to him!”)
…………..(Watts: “Thought didn’t help…”)
…………..(Loewi: was puzzled, not making progress with usual methods)

Asimov successfully uses the story of Kekule, the chemist, and four examples of almost-stories—Watson, Watt, Hamilton, Loewi—to fulfill the Present and Absent rules of cause and effect. Through the first story and the other examples of almost-stories, he supports his second NewView thesis of relaxed, involuntary thinking being used often by scientists to make scientific breakthroughs.

Now let’s take a look at how Carl Sagan supports the reasoning in his essay, “The Abstraction of Beasts.” The major cause-and-effect relationships in this essay are:

CAUSE: chimps are taught and use Ameslan
EFFECT: chimps do abstract and are intelligent, much like humans
…………..(this reverses the historical OldView that “beasts abstract not”)

CAUSE: chimps are intelligent & much like humans in many ways
EFFECT: chimps deserve to be treated humanely, just like humans
…………..(this follows from chimps being so much like humans)

CAUSE: (speculates) if chimps could or were able to continue in using the Ameslan or other sign languages for thousands of years, as humans have done
EFFECT: (speculates) chimps would probably become even more like humans in showing the same high mental functions that humans have

Given the information Sagan has supplied, those speculative second and third effects (or conclusions) don’t seem all that far-fetched, though I’d like a bit more information before I commit to agreeing fully with them. What do you think?

Finally, let’s see how well Sagan uses the rules of cause and effect to support his NewView:

Sequence—first, no abstractions observed being made by chimps
………………(with 3 years training, chimp could say only 3 words)
………………afterAmeslan training, abstractions observed often in chimps
………………(remarkably inventive,” making new words/phrases)

Present— when Ameslan is present, abstractions are always present
……………(Examples: You green shit; Funny, funny; Lucy tickle Roger; chimpanzees and other
……………non-human primates are being taught other gestural languages, as well as a computer language
……………called Yerkish, so abstractions and reasoning are continuing with chimps and other primates)

Absent— when Ameslan is absent, abstractions are always absent
…………..(no abstractions observed with chimps before the Gardners taught Ameslan to them)

When used improperly in essays, these tools for ensuring solid reasoning can hinder rather than help. Students should first make sure they’ve got a NewView thesis, then write out their whole essay non-stop, and then revise and rewrite using these tools and rules.

Like the famous writer James Michener, we may all admit that we are the world’s worst writers, but we can lay valid claim, as he did, to being among the world’s best re-writers as we master these writing tools for ensuring valid reasoning in our writing.

What is “reasoning,” anyway? When talking about the meaning of reasoning in writing essays, we can get into confusing philosophical issues much too quickly. So let’s start with a down-to-earth definition of reasoning as a process—

• Reasoning involves a conscious attempt to discover what is true and what is best. Reasoning thought follows a chain of cause and effect, and the word reason can be a synonym for cause.

By this definition, reasoning involves cause-and-effect relationships, whether it be a single cause-and-effect relationship or a chain of cause- and-effect relationships. But what is a cause-and-effect relationship?

Cause and effect is a relationship in which one thing, called the cause, makes something else happen, and that “something else,” that result, is called the effect. For example, a boy hits a ball with a bat and the ball goes through a window, breaking it. In this instance, the cause is the boy hitting the ball, and the effect is breaking the window.

Cause-and-effect reasoning is something we all use every day, whether we’re particularly conscious of it or not. So I’m sure you’ll recognize these common, informal rules of cause and effect:

1. Sequence—The cause comes first, & the effect follows after.

2. Present—When cause is present, the effect is always present.

3. Absent—When the cause is absent, the effect is always absent.

Now, here’s a true, commonly accepted, yet typically loose, example of those rules being applied to an historical situation—

For centuries in Europe, only white swans were ever seen. All sightings, records, and information on swans in Europe showed that they were always white. So it was okay to assert as a truth that, “All swans are white.” (Another way to put it: “If it’s a swan, it’s white.”)

The cause in this instance is this: Ever since Europeans had kept and tracked records—anecdotes, diaries, family hand-me-down stories, histories, journals, legends (local, regional, cultural), memoirs, myths, oral history storytelling—they had known swans as only white. No other color of swan had ever been known in Europe, and no world traveler had ever brought word from their travels to Europe that there was ever a swan of any other color than white.

Because of all that experience and evidence, the effect was that Europeans believed that all swans everywhere in the world were white. It was good reasoning, based on centuries of accumulated evidence throughout an extensive geographical region and across varied cultures and continents.

But guess what? A Dutch explorer, Willem de Vlamingh, discovered a black swan in Australia in 1697, undoing centuries of European observation, experience, and thought involving the color of swans.

One lesson from the black swan incident is that reasoning does work most of the time, but not always, because we cannot actually examine all the world on any particular question or fact (at least, not yet; but the world’s sciences and technologies do keep advancing, however… ).

And that’s what it takes to authoritatively say, “always present” or “always absent.” Of course, in the absence of having all knowledge, we will continue using reasoning to help fill in our gaps of knowledge, and that’s why it’s so important to understand the proper use of reasoning in essays.

Let’s look at three popular essays to see how they use cause-and-effect reasoning rules to support their original ideas, or NewView Thesis statements. Let’s start with the simplest essay, George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language (click the linked title to display the essay; use LEFT ARROW or PREVIOUS SCREEN ARROW at the top of your screen to return here).

As you can see in his essay, George Orwell presents his NewView of a Reverse cause and effect in his second paragraph:

If one gets rid of these [bad language] habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Let’s break that down into a series of causes and effects:

CAUSE: If one gets rid of these [bad language] habits

EFFECT: one can think more clearly,

CAUSE: and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards

EFFECT: political regeneration

We should add this, also, to clearly establish the OldView—

CAUSE: political regeneration is a necessary step towards

EFFECT: reversing the decadence and collapse of civilization
………….(reverse of the accepted OldVview that language must ………….degenerate and collapse, along with civilization)

As you can see, that first EFFECT becomes the second CAUSE, and that second EFFECT becomes the third CAUSE, which forms a short chain of cause-and-effect reasoning.

Now let’s see how well Orwell fulfills the rules of cause and effect to support the NewView in his thesis:

Sequence— first, get rid of bad language habits
………………WEAKLY SHOWN by two small examples

………………after, think clearly and reverse civilization’s decadence
………………NOT SHOWN by story or example; merely asserted as true

Present— when good political language usage is present,
……………clear thinking & better civilization is always present
……………NOT SHOWN by any story or example; asserted as true

Absent— when good political language usage is absent,
…………..clear thinking is always absent

…………..the MANY OldView examples show that clear thinking is
…………..always absent


Did you notice that I entered “WEAKLY SHOWN” for the first part of the Sequence rule, based on Orwell’s following two brief examples of getting “rid of bad language habits”–

Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists.

As far as showing how those two examples had the effect of helping politicians “think clearly and reverse civilization’s decadence” for the after part of the Sequence rule, that’s definitely “NOT SHOWN.” No stories or examples or reasoning is provided to support that effect.

And “NOT SHOWN” for the Present rule? Whoa! Orwell does not use any stories or examples or specific speculations to show that what he is proposing actually works or will work—or even has worked at any time or place in history.

And, although Orwell shares his 6-item formula for getting rid of bad language usage towards the end, he supplies no story or example or specific reasoning speculation to show any of those suggestions really working or actually having some sort of positive effect.

Wow! How does he get away with that? Why don’t we notice that when we’re reading his essay?

After much thought, I think I’ve discovered the reason—it’s the amount of time Orwell spends propping up his OldView with all those examples of poor language usage by politicians.

We can see what he is saying is true about each one of those OldView examples. But there are so many of them that it’s—well, it’s very much like a slick salesman who bends our ear with such a torrent of words that we get mentally tired trying to follow what he’s saying. And then we’re just grateful to get to the end of all the talk, without mentally filtering all the reasoning of what’s being said.

I think that’s it. However, I honestly don’t think Orwell was trying to put anything over on us. He just didn’t have examples of the effects of his NewView Thesis to share with us because what he was suggesting hadn’t been implemented by a large group of people yet, so there were no effects to see. And maybe, just maybe, all his examples tired him out, too!

What Orwell should have done is supply some examples of specific effects that he predicts would happen, as well as how they would progressively, logically happen, if his six suggestions were followed. That would have done the trick, I think.

Interesting, don’t you agree?

Teachers and publishers, in general, seem to looooove Orwell’s essay despite its faults—why? Because of the important new insight, the powerful NewView, that Orwell provides, that’s why. Orwell’s principle of ‘good language makes for good thinking’ rings true to all of us, even though his reasoning support for it is rather weak and he provides no NewView examples.

Just goes to show you what a truly great NewView Thesis—plus an overwhelming number of solid OldView examples—can do for you, right?

(Please see my next post to finish this discussion; it will analyze two more published, online essays.)