Designing Expectations: Improve Every Interaction You Have
Set ’em up. Knock ’em dead.
All makers of media balance expectation and delivering on it — or, when appropriate, confounding it. All skilled makers of media do it well. Any emotional response comes as a result of creating an expectation that receives one of two conclusions:
- It delivers results according to the parameters it sets down. Or,
- It is confounded. The ending knocks you off-kilter.
In either case, skilled media makers balance expectations and following up on them in order to create emotional reactions.
Example
Before I provide an example of what I mean, a la Penn and Teller I’ll explain it. Ain’t no way of ruining fun better’n showing the trick of the trick before you do the trick, right? Right.
The expectation I intend to set up:
- A chuckle. Mild offense — very mild — relative to your religious persuasion.
Set-up:
- Introduces a religious figure in an anachronistic situation, indicating a joke and the probability of at least mild offense.
Conclusion:
- I’m delivering on the expectation.
- However, that delivery is mitigated by an excessive use of reality. I intend that to throw the ridiculousness sideways and inject some “huh…didn’t see that coming” into the pure ridiculousness.
Intended effect in reader (my focus):
- A general feeling that something pertinent just happened, but it’s not entirely clear what. But you’re pretty sure it happened.
Okay, here’s my example:
Jesus missed my Christmas party. I invited him special, seeing as it was his birthday. Dude never showed. He did leave me a voicemail to explain. Here’s the voicemail:
“Hey, bro. I saw the photos for your party on Instagram. Loved the banner — ‘Congrats on leveling up, Jesus!’ — heh. Classic…. Hey, um, listen. I hope no one was disappointed I missed the shindig. When your invitation said you were throwing me a birthday party, I thought you meant for my birthday. You know, the day I was born: March 25th. At least, that’s the day mom always told me I was born. The whole ‘ox and assen’ story was a real kicker at parties, dude. I tell ya. Anyhowzer, real sorry to miss the party. Got confused. Rain check? Sweet. Deuces.”
That Jesus guy. Preachy, dude…. Or I’m insensitive. Not sure which.
This next statement may be a little bit of a generalization.
EVERYTHING is a balance of expectation and delivery.
Some people have a natural knack for this balancing act. Those are the people to whom we assign guru chops. Those people just seem to have a natural ability to produce compelling things. They have an instinctive understanding of how to set up particular expectations in their audience, and they have a natural instinct for how to deliver on those expectations. Sometimes they deliver exactly what you expect. They make you comfy and cozy, like the world’s all at ease. Sometimes they twist the delivery to a weird mangle, and leave you unsettled.
Whether they put you at peace or turn you round ragged, they leave you with a sense of symmetry. Of completion. They leave you satisfied.
Not everyone has a natural knack for this balance. But I’ll argue till I’m dead that it’s a skill. Like any other skill, it can get got. It can get learned. Once you learn it, you can practice it.
Doing the Thing
I ’m convinced anyone can do it, but I’m also pretty sure that the best way for me isn’t the best way for everyone.
That said, I’m pretty sure I know where to start.
Start with this question:
What do I want this to do to my audience?
The answer to that question doesn’t have to be something simple. It can be as vague as “red” or emotional as “sunrise.” It also doesn’t have to be something artistic and grandiose. “Give ’em chills,” would be as good an answer as, “inspire them to organize a foundation for cancer research.” But you do have to know what it is.
You don’t have to be able to say what it is, because only part of our minds are verbal. If you have a real idea of it, you’ll be more able to get me to understand it.
Me, I like keeping the idea simple. The novel I’m working on jus’ now, I’m focusing on the idea, “make ’em go ‘woo! yeah!’ real excited-like.” Jus’ simple like that.
Next, ask this question:
What are my tools?
Real simple. What’s your medium? My first tool set is words. My tool set keeps on bigger than that, though. I can use social context. I can use background. If I know my audience well, I can manufacture results real technical-like. I can’t always know my audience as well as that, but I can use my knowledge of people and make choices that’ll work to do things in their heads.
For my current novel, I’m thinking especially about my brothers. I know the books they’ve read, and I know the movies they’ve seen, and I know the history they know. Armed with that and armed with my vocabulary, I can make more self-reflective and effective choice about words to use that’ll more likely make them go, “woo! yeah!”
Then, ask this question:
With the tools I have, how do I make something that’ll do what I intend it to do to my audience?
That’s where my advice goes soft and gooshy. There ain’t anything of use I can tell you about that except that you’re talking to me. I’m a real person with a whole imagination of my own. It’s filled with different thoughts than yours. And, moreover, I don’t know your thoughts.
The way you wield your medium’s your own business, an’ I can’t tell you too successfully how to use it.
I can tell you without any qualms of dishonesty that anything you propose to share with me creates a relationship where I start expecting something. I can tell you that you’ve got a huge power over my future because of that; you can decide how I think and feel, if you’re clever. I would like you to be clever.
Do us a favor, mate, an’ continue with a broadened awareness that you’re talking to me, an’ I do give a crap what you say. Think of me every now and then when you’re making the thing. Ask yourself whether that’s the best way to put your ideas in my head, or if you could edit it jus’ a titch or two more.
p.s.
I seem to be writing a Marilyn Monroe series. Not quite sure how that worked, but there you are.
You can find the second in the series here:
