Negative Bias, Readers, and the Internal Editor

Human beings are hardwired to notice what’s wrong. Historically, it was a lot more important to spot the tiger hiding in the bushes than it was to pick out the antelope grazing down the hill, because the tiger was a more immediate threat. Missing the antelope meant dinner would be roots and berries instead; missing the tiger meant being dinner.

This bias toward the negative affects all sorts of things. It’s mostly been studied relative to decision-making (people are more likely to choose the option that avoids loss, rather than the one that increases gain), but it also affects things like memory and perception. When people already have an opinion about a person or an event, they tend to notice and remember the things that confirm that opinion, and ignore the things that contradict it.

This is one reason why it’s easier to make a character consistently unlikeable or consistently likeable than it is to make them complex. Readers frequently take their first impression and run with it, ignoring any counter indications. It can take a major revelation to convince them that an “evil” character can be good. (It’s a bit easier to convince people that a “good” character can do something evil, which is another example of negative bias.)

Whether it is a good character who reveals a dark side or a bad character who reveals understandable motivations and/or redeeming characteristics, there will always be readers who don’t accept this. They insist that their original impression of the character is “right”—no matter what the character does a few chapters in, that character is as evil/good as the readers decided they were based on their first impressions. I’ve even heard people argue that only “good” characters can be complex, and that villains/antagonists/anti-heroes, by definition, can have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

It isn’t just readers who are affected by negative bias. Writers are, too. One of the reasons some writers enjoy writing villains is that it is often easier to write a complicated (and thus more interesting) villain without ruining their function in the plot. Throwing a few sympathetic or redeeming characteristics into a villainous character makes them a lot more interesting to write, but because people (i.e., readers) give more weight to negatives, the character will still be perceived as bad and therefore someone the readers will be happy to see defeated.

Good characters can be harder to make complex, for the same reason: negative characteristics get more mental weight than positive ones. Adding a couple of sympathetic characteristics to a bad guy, and they’re still bad; add the same number of bad characteristics to a good guy, and they can slip from “angelic” to “ambiguous.”

Fear of causing one’s hero to look bad is, I think, one of the reasons why many new writers try to create complex heroes by giving them “character flaws” like “being shy” or “has a stutter,” rather than things like “cheats on their spouse” or “lies to friends about important stuff.”

But probably the ultimate way writers experience negative bias is through their Internal Editors.

The Internal Editor is described as the voice in your head “that criticizes everything you write,” “that tells you you’re no good at writing,” “that’s mean and condescending about your work,” “that plays rap songs of self-loathing and doubt” and innumerable similar summaries. I have rarely come across anyone who gives a neutral description of their Internal Editor (such as “it’s distracting”). I haven’t ever run across a writer who describes their Internal Editor in a positive way, even though many of us acknowledge that it can be really useful when one is working on a second draft, or better yet, revisions.

The Internal Editor is the epitome of negative bias. It notices everything that is wrong with one’s work, but seldom stops to notice when one has done something right. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve caught myself thinking “That sentence I just wrote is great,” or “Yes! That’s exactly how I want this bit to go!”

The trouble is that the constant negative whine about commas, word choice, phrasing, characters talking too much/too little, missing/overdone description, over/under-explaining, etc. is enormously discouraging, especially during the writing of a first draft. A considerable amount of so-called “writer’s block” is not about the actual writing; it’s about not wanting to hear that endless mental litany of what one is doing wrong.

Turning off the Internal Editor is the most common solution—there are thousands of web pages recommending different ways of shutting up that mental voice, and only letting it out when one is revising. The thing is, if that’s all one does, it’s still all about what’s wrong. And as an editor once told me, a story that is grammatically flawless, lays out plot points precisely according to the writer’s chosen beat sheets or journey model, stylistically seamless, and utterly without mistakes according to every objective measure…can still be boring.

The only way I know to get around this is to focus on what’s right with the story/characters/prose/style/etc. Which means one has to recognize and work on overcoming that negative bias. Removing all the “mistakes” from a story will not result in a compelling story if that’s all one does.

Retraining one’s Internal Editor to notice the good stuff as well as the bad—to show one the bits that are interesting, funny, gripping, fascinating; the things that keep you reading even though it’s two a.m.—is a lifelong job. But you can’t put more of your best bits into a story if you don’t start by recognizing what your best bits are.