Years ago, I had an argument with a friend about\u00a0the NFL. We were talking about free agency, and whether or not a team should hire someone who was kicked off another team\u00a0because of his off-the-field problems.<\/p>\n
My friend’s\u00a0stance was that\u00a0he didn’t care\u00a0about the character of his team’s players. He just wanted to win. My position was that I\u00a0wanted players I could cheer for.<\/p>\n
I used Drew Brees as an example. How can you not cheer for someone\u00a0who raised millions of dollars\u00a0to help\u00a0New Orleans recover from Katrina? That’s the kind of guy I want on my team, even if it\u00a0costs us\u00a0the Superbowl.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0countered, laughing, by saying he’d take the Superbowl win.<\/p>\n
As so often happens, I had no immediate comeback. It took me a while to\u00a0figure out my position.<\/p>\n
I enjoy\u00a0sports (and books and movies) in large part because of the drama and excitement.\u00a0Watching a\u00a0running back spin off a tackler, or power through a defensive line,\u00a0is exciting, as is seeing a receiver leap high into the air and\u00a0pull in a ball just as he’s being hit.\u00a0Those are the kinds of moments that bring people to their feet all across the country.<\/p>\n
Movies and books are the same way.\u00a0We’ve all had countless moments when we found ourselves on\u00a0the edge of our seats, barely able to watch the screen or turn the page.<\/p>\n
Why did they affect us so much?<\/p>\n
I think it’s because we cared about the people (or the teams or the causes) involved.<\/p>\n
That’s why I don’t want my\u00a0teams to hire bad guys: it stops me from caring about them. “Yay, the wife-beater\u00a0scored a\u00a0touchdown!” just doesn’t work\u00a0for me.<\/p>\n
The (slightly disturbing metaphor) that I came up with to explain my position is that of rats in a box.<\/p>\n
Imagine you have a big box full of rabid rats. Half of them are painted blue and half are painted yellow.\u00a0Now shake the box. Are you going to watch the rats attack each other? There will be a lot of drama in that box. You could\u00a0cheer for blue, or\u00a0chant “yellow, yellow, they’re\u00a0our\u00a0fellows!”<\/p>\n
Not me.\u00a0I would\u00a0probably\u00a0run away, most likely to throw up.<\/p>\n
It’s not that the box of rats lacks excitement. It just lacks excitement that I care about.<\/p>\n
The box of rats metaphor isn’t just for professional sports.<\/p>\n
It also applies to our writing.<\/p>\n
There are so many great things we\u00a0can put into a story: excitement, adventure, mystery, humor, tragedy, and a million more. we\u00a0can create nuanced layers of meaning and allegory. We\u00a0can display the human condition in surprising and illuminating\u00a0ways.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0can do all of that and more, but if our\u00a0readers don’t care about our characters, we\u00a0might as well be\u00a0writing about rats in a box.<\/p>\n
And\u00a0no one wants to read that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A metaphor that’s as disturbing as it is useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[20,35,36,96],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-writing","tag-craft","tag-fiction","tag-football","tag-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-4m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}