The Click: A Promising Start or a Pitfall?

The last sentence of a novel is one of the most important sentences. When buying a book, I have regularly been guided by the first and last sentence. Personally, I wasn't allowed to read the last sentence, it could reveal the end of the story and take away the tension from reading. However, I have rarely had this problem and the last sentence was often the deciding factor for buying the book.

Openai mentions six writing techniques (tips) for seductive writing:

In the Dutch weekly ‘De Groene Amsterdammer’ of 21 December 2022 (https://www.groene.nl/artikel/mijn-oscar) Opheffer states that Oscar Wilde in the first two chapters of ‘The picture of Dorian Gray’ has nearly written a manual on how to seduce. Curious by this observation, I picked up the book that I once read, I don’t remember how long ago. My memory of the story was almost erased and I read the two chapters as if they were new.

Because I've been reading a lot lately about the information value of artificial intelligence, I asked openai.com what the characteristics are of literary seduction. Through the chatbox, I received the following answer:

In 'The picture of Dorian Gray', Oscar Wilde shows what seduction is and how to seduce the reader. Like me, Theo Holman was also inspired by him (https://www.groene.nl/artikel/mooie-praatjes-vullen-gaatjes). He learned from Oscar Wilde that "nice talk helps, but that you have to capture them in paradoxes and statements, and you have to be extremely vague, so use a lot of words like love, passion, soul, senses, et cetera, et cetera, words with which you can go in all directions because they mean nothing anyway. Literary seduction is confusing the other, and you evoke that confusion by speaking confusingly, but writing clearly."

Christmas is celebrated all over the world, especially in originally Christian countries. But even in Japan, where Christmas is not an official holiday, it is becoming increasingly popular.

As readers of my latest block may have noticed, I couldn't get a clear picture of the wrong man in literature. Because I wonder if I missed any information in my search, I have enlisted the help of ChatGPT. It divides the wrong man into three categories: 1. The seducer, 2. The transgressor, and 3. The tragic figure.

Following our writing contest on the theme of The Wrong or Bad Man, I was confronted with a wide variety of ideas about such a man. In short, it came down to the fact that he is an attractive charmer, who knows how to hide his unreliable and sometimes criminal behavior well. In my opinion, this is a too rosy, perhaps somewhat romantic image. I am reminded of James Bond, who can certainly be called a wrong guy, but also a fighter against Evil. His work as a secret agent gives 007 an excuse for his wrong behavior and women forgive him for this.What then defines a bad man? Curious, I googled its characteristics.First I came across the site of Roos Vonk (https://www.psychologiemagazine.nl/artikel/fout/) who succinctly proclaims that there are actually no wrong men. Well, silly women who cling to such a man and blame him when they become unhappy.According to  Roos Vonk, there are no studies into bad men. How could you possibly get a random sample of bad men? From a scientific point of view, therefore, no classifications of these men can be given. However, there are characteristics that partners can suffer so much from that they see the man as 'bad'. Roos Vonk mentions:1. Narcissism2. The man is bound3. Fear of intimacyEach of these characteristics causes the "bad" man to keep his distance and not engage with the person, usually a woman, who craves him.Searching further I ended up on the site of Mannenbrein (https://www.mannenbrein.nl/player-foute-man-recognizing-signals/). Laurens, women's coach at Mannenbrein, dares to distinguish three types of 'bad men':1. The player. He pleases women, is extremely vain and has smooth talk.2. The man who is only out for sex3. The cheater. This is a great man in the eyes of many women, but he acts kind of sketchy. Often it turns out that he is bound.Laurens also gives 21 signals to recognize a bad man. Number 21 is the most dangerous: the man is "a world class manipulator". He twists the truth to his advantage and often in such a way that the woman who criticizes him for his behavior feels guilty. It's her fault that things aren't going smoothly...If we compare Roos Vonk's descriptions with those of Laurens, the player seems to agree with the narcissist and the bound man with the cheater. Perhaps the man who only wants sex is the prototype of the man with fear of commitment?The question is why it is that women fall in love with these kinds of 'bad men' and lose themselves in an often year-long yearning for the love of just such a man.Besides the fact that personality traits and developmental history can play a role in this, it is probably also important that the word love definitely does not have the same meaning for both sexes and is therefore a source of serious misunderstandings. Thus Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex). That this statement also applies to herself in her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, a womanizer par excellence, is mentioned by her biographers.Apart from the fact that the word love can be judged differently by both sexes, this also applies to the sexual act. According to Vivian Gornick (interviewed by Marja Pruis (https://www.groen.nl/artikel/vallen-voor-fout)) a lot of misery stems from the confusion of sexual attraction with love. Men, unlike women, take their brains seriously, perhaps even more than their genitals. Women like to lose themselves in a bottomless desire, hang the meaning of their existence on that one irrational passion that often heralds their downfall. In fact, the impending doom gives that passion its true passionate character.

After the male bad guys, I was curious to see which female bad guys I would find. However, my keywords female, villain and books hardly yielded mean and evil female characters.At https://booksometea.com/2020/02/28/friday-five-the-biggest-bad guys-in-books/I ran into Dolores Umbridge. In "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix" by J.K. Rowling, Dolores Umbridge is a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Magic and the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. She is sadistic, cruel and dictatorial, and treats her students and colleagues in a horrible way. She is considered meaner than Voldemort, who is mean because of a loveless past, because Dolores chooses to be mean and act like a bully in order to assert her own superiority.

A Florida school principal was forced to resign last week for showing students "pornographic" material during a Renaissance art class. The "pornographic" material consisted of a photograph of Michelangelo's world-famous "David" statue. We may chuckle at this, but the sad truth is that parents who don't want to expose their children (or themselves?) to "sexuality" now feel supported by a law banning sex education in public schools. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of the Republican party plays a leading role in this. He is charismatic, good looking, power hungry, intelligent, efficient, populist and has many followers. What does this remind you of? Right, the hallmarks of a supervillain.The forced dismissal of the school director is an example of a series of incidents, also in the Netherlands. School leaders, Universities (sic!) and publishers fear repercussions from society if they are associated with sexually suggestive texts or images. The same applies to words that are not gender neutral or that can offend a population group. The problem here is that usually the text or the person who wrote the text is removed without discussion. For writers, this could mean that they not only have to deal with an editor, but also with a chastity committee. Such a committee has other motives than the writer. The writer wants to use words that have a function for the text or serve as an atmosphere drawing. In the past, 'chastity commissions' were mainly about 'decency'. Whether nowadays chasting handels exclusively about politically correct language seems unlikely to me. It is also questionable whether it is possible to avoid all sexual terms and not to hurt anyone.As an example I would like to mention the 'Kittelbloem' or 'Clitoria ternatea' and 'Mother-in-law's cushion' or 'Echinocactus grusonii'. Can we still sow the beautiful Kittelbloem?  And mothers-in-law, there are a great many of them, shouldn't you be rioting against the name 'Mothers-in-laws cushion'?To me, chasting and censorship are an extension of each other and affect not only the autonomy of the writer, but also that of the reader. Readers are very capable of distinguishing which texts are beautiful, innocent or funny and which are intended to hurt.

In my search for bad guys in books I came across an interesting overview of the characteristics of super villains on Wikipedia (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervillain). Here's a selection based on the most commonly mentioned villains:The Evil Genius: These are villains that were especially standard in the Golden Age of comics. They are really bad through and through and have a constant hunger for power. Examples include Lex Luthor, Doom, Red Skull, Krang, Professor Moriarty, and Joachim Sickbock. Nowadays, the villains are a lot more complex. The Psychopath: villains who are completely deranged or crazy, unable to control their homicidal tendencies. Examples are Sabretooth, Shredder, the Joker and Carnage.The Beast: villains who turn into beastly creatures or monsters, and in that form can no longer control themselves. Examples are Man-Bat, Dr Jekyll, Baxter the Fly, The Lizards Sauron.The Dark Lord: a dark villain who is sometimes more of a diabolical force than a person. This type of villain is often very skilled in (dark) magic and usually lead armies of dark mages or infernal creatures. Some dark lords are so feared that people dare not speak their names, such as Voldemort (Harry Potter) and Sauron (The Lord of the Rings).

What draws the reader to a character?

The whale is an impressive film about an obese online teacher who literally eats himself to death. With his beautiful voice and passion for writing, he inspires his students. They only hear his voice, they do not see him because he has turned off his camera out of shame for his appearance.I was struck by this touching man who eats away his grief over his lover's suicide with kilos of junk food.The film is based on the play The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter.There can be many causes for being overweight. Overweight people are often already on the heavy side by nature, they are bullied as a child, they do not feel at home in a society in which being thin is the norm and they seek comfort in (junk)food. Once overweight, it is very difficult to lose weight.Tatjana Almuli describes in "Pretty for a fat girl, The weight of weight", her life as a fat woman and her attempts to become thinner. Eventually she takes part in the television program Obese and loses 1/3 of her body weight. This fact does not silence the unsolicited comments from people close to her and she slowly gains weight again. Finally, she decides to question the slimness standard.