Math & Romance 101*
Math and I have never been what you might say, good friends. Reluctant acquaintances is more apt. However, it has long been proven to me that for as long as there have been romances, math has played a part in it.
So get out your calculators and rulers, we’re revisiting 8th grade math (hey, we were dumb in my school; we did this stuff later than everywhere else.)
Geometry
The triangle: we’re always trying to figure out the angle of the thing, and there is nothing like a simple, uniform triangle to sufficiently tangle your story for a good 300 pages. Love, as the saying goes, comes when you least expect it. You’re not looking for it; or you’re least not looking for it with him. In fact, he’s the last person you were thinking of. Your thoughts and energies instead were focused on Mr. Ideal. The third point of the triangle.
Writers enjoy employing triangles as a writing device because they’re simply complicated, or complicatedly simple. Whichever. You’re not bogging the reader with a slew of unnecessary characters to remember, but you’re sufficiently raising the emotional stakes and tension until we’re all screaming, “Kiss him already, no, not him, the other guy!”
Sometimes writers like to do a diamond sort of thing, a triangle and a triangle, with the short line connecting our hero and heroine at the middle. Each has their own Mr. or Ms. Ideal, but are still drawn to each other. This is trickier to do, because there is a sort of timing to it. If they’re both with their ideals, or pursuing their ideals at the same time, it’s hard to keep them together and aware of each other. There is almost a choreography on ice with a diamond (get it? Ice and diamond? Right.) and one triangle is completed just after the second one takes up, so both characters suffer sufficiently. Writers who do diamonds well make you feel as tense and engaged as if you’re watching Dean and Torvill at the 1984 Olympics.
Warning: if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with the multi-triangled approach of Bhartrihari:
She who is always in my thoughts prefers
Another man, and does not think of me.
Yet he seeks for another's love, not hers;
And some poor girl is grieving for my sake.
Why then, the devil take
Both her and him; and love; and her; and me.
It’s probably more accurate in the long run, but this is only going to work if you want to write your own Gone with the Wind. And you’ll notice Bhartrihari and Scarlett did not have happily ever afters. If you want a happily ever after, keep your writing and your geometric proof simple: go for the triangle. Then when you’re ready for the Olympics, try a diamond.
Algebra
Because I am a hopelessly simple English major, I’m going to keep this little math analogy as hopelessly simple as possible: we’re always solving for X.
My high school math teacher kept assuring me I would use algebra in everyday life, and I kept saying she was on crack; but it turns out on the most basic, simplistic level (not that complicated calculus she was assuring me about later), we are always using algebra (and geometry). X + Y = Z. I usually solve for X, trying to figure out how many miles to the gallon I got on this particular tank of gas. I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong since it’s rarely the same mileage twice. I’m sure it’s why I’m not good at solving for X in my writing too.
I think the X in a lot of fiction books is the dead body. Everyone loves a good mystery: who killed the dead guy, what happened to Aunt Meredith’s diamond and ruby necklace, just what exactly is the hero hiding about his past anyway? We’re all curious about the X and want to find the source of it. X is backstory. After all, what is a dead body at the beginning of a novel but backstory that hasn’t been revealed yet?
So for me, my writing equation to solve for X is: X + H = C. If you could remove a hero from his backstory, you’d have a much less complex creature. But add your backstory and your hero? COMPLICATED. Neurosis City.
And much like all those math classes, where I spent my time, beating my forehead on my desk, saying, “I can’t solve for X because it doesn’t make any sense!”, you can’t really have a hero without backstory, can you? If you have a hero without backstory, you have an infant, fresh from the womb, untested, untried, and unriddled with all the little slings and arrows life saddles you with. But it amuses me to see a lot of writing books where they want you define your character first, then write the backstory separate. It just seems so wrong. It’s like scrambling two eggs in a bowl, then being told to turn them back into unbroken, unscrambled eggs again. Right. That can happen.
Plus, you’ve been to character interviews, haven’t you? You’ve set your smoldering-eyed, gypsy man in a chair and start firing questions at him like you’re Barbara Walters, calm but no nonsense. For no explicable reason, your character clams up like he’s being tried by Joseph McCarthy instead. He has no answers for you. He doesn’t know. He shrugs. You don’t know. And it’s very irritating because you made him up. You’ll even offer him answers, and he continues to shrug as if that is a very nice answer but he can’t be bothered to give confirmation either way if you’re right. Bastard.
Clearly algebra is still the bane of my existence, even in writing; but geometry, which I always seemed to do well in (I loved doing proofs), seems to be something I feel a bit more equipped to do.
I generally find that people can do one math or the other, but not both particularly well. Which one were you better at? Which one are you better at in the scope of your novel—triangles or X’s? If you’re a reader, what has been your favorite triangle in a novel, or your favorite X-backstory? What triangles are you sick of and what would you like to see more of?
*Math masterminds do not need to point out Hellion’s tenuous grasp on mathematical concepts. She is already aware her checkbook doesn’t balance; and this is called literary license.
Books by the Crew
45 comments:
Wow! If only I had been taught by the Cap'n I might have solved for 'IT' by now *sigh*
'IT' of course is the thing that I have always been searching for. That elusive ethereal quality that haunts my dreams. Intangible but always calling me like a siren in the mist.
I know that when I find it everything will become clear. My perfect heroine is simply hiding behind a geometrical transformation!
Yep. If only Hellion had taught me maths. *dreamy far away smile*
I'm going to try to literary license line on my husband. I was always better at algebra, but I really don't care about X, or A or B or C , or proving any damn thing. I actually taught Title 1 math for a year, and the method we used in the new curriculum completely changed the way I think about numbers now. I didn't think it possible to teach an old dog new tricks, but WOOF.
Eeek.... Math!! What happened!? I woke up today and my world has spun around and spit me out with the Captain asking me to do math so early in the morning.
Oh, ok, fine... cut the drama, you say.
Hmmm... Though I was better at algebra than geometry, I was better at trig than both. So, I would say that in my story I employ the geometric triangle with one side (X + hero), another side (Y + heroine), and the last side defined as a wealthy, elderly gentleman who is not opinionated and is open to magic.
But, my story is less concerned with how these three sides relate to each other as a triangle and has more to do with how the side (X + hero) and the side (Y + heroine) are defined within a circular relationship where neither is greater or less than the other, but instead both are equal into infinite.
Forget the coffee, I'm going to need a freaking shot after reading this one. Blindsided, I am. Blindsided by brilliance. I guess I should thank you for getting me into the math mindset since I start my Statistics class a week from today. *drops head on desk and wails loudly*
Ahem. I've always been good at math though I stopped at pre-calculus as it nearly did me in. After reading this I realize in my first WIP, I've used a square. Or maybe more of a rhombus (sp?). That's the h/h & their best friends who hate each other. In my Ocracoke story, I have a triangle. That's two brothers and one girl. In my all-star athlete returns home story I just have the h/h so I guess that's a line?
Solving for X in my stories takes me a while. X tends to change and shift, grow and expand. But mostly, X = ISSUES.
Quantam! *HUGS* I thought about doing literary license-scientific concepts for my next blog--but my tenuous grasp on scientific concepts is even more rickety. Have some scotch, my good man. I make even more sense when you're completely pissed. Everyone says so. Or is it that I make more sense when I'm completely pissed? I don't really recall. You're searching for the intangible and "in the mist"--it sounds like you like imaginary numbers (isn't that calculus stuff?), which Math people are always saying "isn't really real", but that they can't function without them. And isn't that love? Lots of people say that's not really real--but we can't function without it.
Maggie: you did the NEW MATH? How goes it? My yoga instructor (a math teacher) was talking about it--and I made a comment, "Ah, the math that has the parents in an uproar because they're too dumb to help their kids how to do it?" "Yes." (My friend said, HEY, but that's because she was trying to help her niece with the NEW MATH...) Anyway, isn't it basically like word problems you're always solving for? I think the example the yoga instructor used was about locust. 7 year and 13 year...and their predators came on 6 year cycles or something?--when would they all meet up and be exterminated.
I had no idea. Something about lowest common denominator and prime numbers...and I was, well, lost. I don't remember. It's been 25 years since I had to worry about lowest common denominators.
What IS the new math like?
Marnee: GOOD ONE! Way to match my bet and raise the playing field...I have no idea what you just wrote, but it sounded very mathematic...and yet writerly at the same time. I'd totally buy into it.
And I do agree that hero and heroine relationships should be more about how they relate to each other, where they are separate and equal/matched--and also lasting forever. Sweet!
P.S. Marnee, I also liked Trig, too, but we got to use calculators...and the sine and cosine... I was good at math so long as I knew the formula and could plug in numbers.
Terri, a line? WELL, you could be like that math problem where two trains are headed toward each other. One is creeping along because it would sooner rot in hell than ever agree with anything the other train was saying, but the other train was going at a slightly fast speed, impeded perhaps by his biological gut reaction to the fact she smells pretty and has big boobs--and the formula you solve for is: WHERE in the middle of that line will they meet? And when they get there, will they crash?
It’s been 25 years since I had to worry about lowest common denominators.
Really? You haven't worked with fractions since you were 8? LOL!
Hellion - Oh, I couldn't have done any of it without a calculator. The concrete aspects of math are the ones that mix me up. I'm better with the right-brain, abstract stuff.
Somehow the idea that my stories are just boring, drawn out word problems seems rather accurate. But I'd rather have the trains running on two parallel lines that cross every now and then and they have to figure out how to cross without derailing everything. Then when they get to the station, they have to decide if they keep going in the same direction or head off in opposite tangents.
That's total BS but it sounds kind of mathy right?
Clearly addition and subtraction is not my strong suit (hence the statement about my checkbook)--perhaps I was 12. Really, I don't mess with fractions hardly ever.
Except in cooking. But that's really more tablespoons, cups and ounces rather than fractions themselves. I don't have to find lowest common denominators. At most I just have to figure out what is half of 1/8th of a cup...and how do you find a 1/16 of a cup on a measuring device. (You don't: it's 2 tablespoons. *sticks out tongue*)
When's the last time YOU worked with fractions?
Actually Terri, it sound like a Thomas the Train episode, but I'll buy it and let you include it in our mathematical dialogue....
I'm right there with you, Marnee. I could do the math, but the moment you put it in a word problem or tried to make me apply it to a "real life math problem"--I couldn't figure it out if my life depended on it. It was really sad. I finally just got to the point where I just aced the concepts so when I flunked the word problems/real life crap, I'd average out with a B- and pass.
I worked with fractions last summer in my Fundamentals of Math class. Hence, the lead up to this summer's Statistics. Someone just set me on fire now.
Marn - I forgot to say, very eempresive!
I doubt I would be able to do fractions at all if it weren't for baking and cooking. And percentages? I learned about percentages because of sales. 20% off of an adorable outfit? Suddenly, my brain shifts into gear. But, without the retail therapy, I would ahve been lost.
Ask the Captain about her handy-dandy pocket tip card. LOL!
My friend bought me my handy-dandy pocket tip card. And it's very handy! A lot better than packing around my cosine calculator...or figuring it out by hand. And it goes with my Scottish personality of: don't OVERTIP, a penny saved is a penny earning interest, thank you very much. Or a penny buying my next DVD collection. Whatever.
You know what I would like to learn: the milliliter/kilogram stuff. You know, the liquid/weight measurement that EVERYONE else in the world uses but America doesn't? Admittedly I only want this because I want to be able to cook some British recipes I've found...and the conversion tables aren't really helpful. Though with that year or so of physics, I know a kilogram is equivalent to 2.2 pounds.
Cheap math lesson. Always think about tens. You will never have to borrow to subtract again, but COUNT UP to the next ten (just like a cash register) and then to the hundred. In other words, if something costs 43 cents---7 gets you to 50 so 57 cents is your change. Always do front-end addition. Got a column of numbers? Add the tens and then add the ones to it. No more carrying. I do stuff in my head so fast it's not funny. I don't think this is the new math (that was in the 70s and I remember since I taught a room full of horrible private school boys. The long division went on for six pages). Kids are now encouraged to express answers with words, pictures and numbers so they can see the interrelation. As for multiplication, 4 times anything is double the doubles, 6 times anything is double the threes, all the answers to the 9 multipliers add up to 9 (i.e., 9x9=81 (8+1=9), 9x5=45 (4+5=9) and they're always a ten under the # (5x10= 50, so subtract 5). You guys probably all know this crap but it was a revelation to me who was educated in the dark ages.
No, I really don't know...but I do sorta do a version of that new math...I add the 10s first, then the 1s. Hmmm. That must mean I learned it somewhere, because I know I would never have thought of that brilliance on my own. *LOL*
I did know the trick of 9, because that's how that email works. You know what I'm talking about? They want you to think of a number, times it by 9, add the year of your birth...then by the end it's your number and 9. It's a 9 trick. And they always say, "This is the only year this will work" but every year they have another version of this email.
Uh, that's kicked butt, but I'm sure y'all knew that. *rolls eyes*
I've always done math the way Maggie describes it. That's how I kicked but whenever we did those flashcard races. For a while it drove my teachers nuts because I was getting the right answer but not by the right route. They finally gave up trying to change me and I've been floating along just fine ever since.
I did notice that Isabelle does this same thing only now I think she's taught that way. I was irritated when they got to the multiplication tables and at the number 9 she was told to hold up all ten fingers then do these little tricks to get the answers. How is that teaching them anything but shortcuts and tricks? Heaven forbid they actually use MATH to do MATH.
"One is creeping along because it would sooner rot in hell than ever agree with anything the other train was saying, but the other train was going at a slightly fast speed, impeded perhaps by his biological gut reaction to the fact she smells pretty and has big boobs–and the formula you solve for is: WHERE in the middle of that line will they meet? And when they get there, will they crash?"
Hellion, that is the BEST! This blog rocks today! And I say that even while I cringe and shrink away in terror because I absolutely hate math!
Thank you, Kris! I cringe at math myself...may I point to my checkbook. But I'm glad you could follow my train of thought (no pun intended), although that probably proves that we're both mathematically challenged.
Why does it not surprise me Terri was "doing it first" before they were teaching it? Show off.
You can't be the only brilliant one ALL the time. LOL! Then again, being good at Math doesn't help much in the writing area. This blog excluded, of course.
And believe me, it wasn't considered showing off back in 3rd grade. It was considered backwards. LOL!
My sister, a math teacher, would love this blog and would understand it perfectly. I love this blog, too! Math. Yuck. I have problems doing percentages---have no idea how to do them still. But seriously, that's why God invented calculators. I did like Logic though---you could reason in that type of Math. Math was always too black and white for my liking; I like the shadows of gray. I like being able to argue. Not sure if that's a positive characteristic trait I have or not. LOL
Don't worry, Ely, I love the gray as well. Though in my mid-teen years, strangely I was very much in the black and white. I remember asking my sister, who was concerned she was cheating on her married boyfriend (I know, I'll give you a moment to wrap your mind around that one), "But he's cheating on his wife...and he's never going to leave her. How is your going on A date with a single guy going to constitute cheating?" She was pissed; and she went. I regret it now, because she married him. Which wasn't my advice at all. I only meant she should date guys who aren't married.
I was just about to say I HATED my Logics class last year and that's saying something since I ADORE a good argum...err....debate. But then I read Hellion's comment and all logic left the room.
Huh? LOL!
Lord- I need a cheat sheet for this blog. Which was brilliant, BTW.
I hope I'm good at X. I despise writing for triangles. I like (okay, I love) men in my books and lots of them, but my heroine doesn't need to decide who to be with. She can just be with them all.
I can't fault that logic...
Logic is a funny thing.
Ter- I took Logic and none of it made sense to me.
Hellion, I survived Physics in HS the way you survived your trig class--just give me the formulas and I will gladly plug them in. I still cannot understand how something that explains the natural world is so hard to understand--you know it is easier to push a door when you push far away from the hinge rather than close to it--but call it a moment arm and I go "huh?". Sorry, Q.
Maggie, My kids are definitely learning the pictures and using whatever they have at hand to do math problems.
Terri, I had a friend like you in 6th grade who was always eager to show me the fastest way to do any math problem--I loved it. She was also in my algebra class and she loved the teacher because Mrs. Matson didn't care how she got the answer. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. In my opinion, statistics is better than probability although not much. Here's hoping you have a professor who makes everything crystal clear. *g
Amanda - I'm lucky in that I have the same professor for this class I had for my math class last summer. To say this man makes things easy is an understatement. The majority of my classmates had a very hard time which meant we barely got through half of what was on the agenda. I actually hope this time around I have classmates that can move a little quicker so it's not so boring this time around.
*deer in the headlight look*
I need a tutor to answer the question. I suck at math and hate every kind. I vote for love triangles and a hero that has a mysterious backstory:)
Amanda, I survived my Physics class the same way. Actually I got a better understanding of algebra from my physics class. Not because I understood the word problems, but because we just plugged in numbers a lot.
And I'm not sure what the technical term is for the door problem, but suddenly I have Capt Jack in my head saying, "It's a matter of leverage."
Sin, I don't think you work so much in triangles as hexagons...and I love you for it! We babes should get all the men!
Lisa, I vote for Ranger too. *LOL*
*g*
Thanks for the scotch Cap'n. You all had me laughing away....I love sin's hexagons and Amanda struggling with moments!
I am a bit surprised at the lack of mathematical brilliance here though. I remember that I found maths a bit boring at school, except when applied to physics. At University though I discovered group theory ... the maths of symmetry....and my interest flared. This was big magic and there was also a very attractive lady physicist who was interested in the group properties of sub-atomic particles. She showed no interest in me though but definitely inspired my interest in symmetry!
Ah, time for another scotch before bed. Now Hellion, don't transform anything that I wouldn't transform.....Cheers!
I'm late today, which is just as well since I hate math. The last time I liked it was when I learned to count to a hundred. When I took Research Statistics in grad school, I almost caused my professor to have a breakdown. She was almost in tears when she returned my final project because even though it was "well-written" and I had the "correct answers," what I had dome was "mathmatically impossible." LOL!
But the blog is brilliant, Hellion. I can appreciate your creativity even if I am allergic to math.
My head hurts.
I have to agree with Janga, though. You're one creative pirate!
Oh, allergic to math. That's a good one, Janga.
I'm allergic to Science. And thank my lucky stars I never have to take it again!
Janga, I can't blame you. There is a lot of quantitative research classes (okay, at least 2-3 courses) and a statistics course needed for a Ph.D. I can't imagine doing it. I don't want to imagine doing it. UGH. And all my English Education students (and a lot of the Reading ones too) come into the office, utter basketcases. You passed it though...and it's done with. *LOL*
Quantam, I imagine if Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp had been teaching my math classes in high school and college, I would have automatically been more interested in it. I at least would have listened the whole time. Or most of the time...more than I did. (Admittedly if JD was teaching my class, I'd probably be writing our names on my notebook and drawing hearts as he taught me about differential equations.)
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