The Night I Got Bogged

Okay... y'know, when I picked the theme of Failure, I didn't think it would be so literal. I want to work on a listicle about small failures that got out of hand, but I've failed to substantiate (or succeeded in debunking) several of the most interesting ones; I wanted to work on a story, but I failed to come up with a good enough idea in time. Then, I wanted to work on a simpler list about "Film Failures", but I failed to take into account time management. So, it's 10pm, I just got home from work, and I don't have time to do anything that takes that much effort, so instead, I want to tell you a story.

I wasn't sure I wanted to tell this story, but it does involve failure quite a lot, and it's a true story meaning I won't have to do any research. This happened to me a little over a month ago...

- - -

See, I work at a restaurant, and at the time our head chef went missing, and I was kind of worried. He just failed to show up to work one day, and didn't answer his phone when anyone of us called, and I considered him a friend. He didn't seem like the kind of person to just leave and ghost everyone without saying anything, so I was worried. I thought maybe he got into a car accident or something, so one night after work, I decided to head around to his house to see if he was okay - if his car was in the driveway, I figured that was a sign he was still around.
Now, don't go worrying about him. I've come to learn, no, he IS the kind of arsehole to just leave without warning and ghost everyone. So don't worry about him, he's not worth worrying about.

What is worth worrying about is that I was driving around late at night, after a long day at work, and it had been raining all day. I don't know whether it was because I was tired, it was dark or I was just dumb, but I failed to find his place... I got well and truly lost. See, I was driving through suburbia when I suddenly came upon a narrow, one-lane bridge that I'd never been to before. It was at this point I realized I was well and truly lost, and I decided, I really should turn around and go home. But, this bridge was narrow, and past the bridge, I was on this road with tall trees either side, much more rural than the suburbia I'd been in moments ago. I stopped the car, and I saw that there was a bit of a clearing to the left, with clear tiremarks leading into it. I thought it might have been a rudimentary carpark I could turn around in, and I didn't fancy the prospect of doing a fifteen-point turn on a narrow, two-lane road, so I turned into this clearing. Unfortunately, there were a lot of trees about, so I didn't fancy the idea of turning around here either, I'd have to check my mirrors to make sure I wouldn't bump into one of these thin trees. But, as I turned right, preparing to turn, I saw a little path, with clear tire-marks leading away. It looked like it curved around, and I was hoping it was a crescent that would lead back to the road. So, I turned down this path and started driving. I noticed one puddle deep in the tire-tracks, so I drove askew to go through it, but as I went past it, I felt my tires spinning on the wet grass, and I was a bit concerned, so I drove a little faster. But then, when I saw a second, much bigger puddle, instead of stopping, I drove askew again and hit the accelerator, but I'd failed to estimate just how deep this puddle was. My car tipped and fell into the puddle. I was left sitting in my car, which was now tipped slightly forward, but leaning to the right at about a thirty-degree angle. I tried the accelerator, but my car didn't move at all. I went into reverse and put the pedal down again, nothing. I tried this three or four more times, but the car wasn't even wiggling.
I was wearing my work clothes, and I didn't want to get them muddy (and I really didn't want to get mud all through my car, but after a while I decided to hop into the passenger seat, to use that as a kind of air-lock (or "sludge-lock") to keep the driver's seat part of the car clean.
So, I hopped over, got out of the car, and I decided to look at what I could do, with my phone. I could see how deep the puddle was - most of my tire was in the water, so I took off my hand-brake, put the car in neutral and tried to push the car forwards. But, that wasn't doing anything - the ground under my feet was too slippery, and even when I threw my weight against it, it wasn't moving at all. I figured strength alone wasn't going to help me here. So, instead, I grabbed a few fallen tree branches, and rammed them under the tire as hard as I could, in the hopes they'd get some kind of grip,  then I climbed into the car (after taking my shoes off in the passenger seat, and hopping into the driver's seat, in my socks). I tried to drive again, now with added friction... but that didn't do any better. I could feel the tire rubbing against the branch, and the engine was struggling a little, (the lights dimmed when I tried to reverse) but I wasn't moving, and I realized then how much water was flicking up when my tires span. I got out of the car again (hopped over the gear-shift, carefully put my shoes on again doing my best not to get mud on my hands, opened the door, and climbed up and out the angled door), and I grabbed the branch, but when I pulled it out from under the tire, it came free too easily - I thought it should have been rammed in the mud. That's when I realized - the front bumper of my car was resting on the muddy ground. The reason I'd failed to move the car was, the front-right driving wheel wasn't touching the ground at all, it was in the puddle with my car's chassis on the edge of the puddle No matter what I did, I couldn't move this car - I would need help.

So, I yanked all the branches out of the way and got in my car (taking my shoes off, sitting in the driver's seat). I considered calling my parents - I live with them, and I figured we all had Scout training, we could figure this out. But, I looked at the time... it was 10pm. I'd left work around 9, and my parents go to bed earlier than me. I didn't want to wake them up. Besides, I'm a card-carrying RACQ Member!
For those not in the know, RACQ stands for Royal Automobile Club of Queensland, it's a club that provides insurance, vehicle inspection, apparently banking for some reason... but most importantly, it provides Roadside Assistance, and that's what I needed.
Now, I don't live in Queensland, I live in New South Wales. Actually, I live in Albury-Wodonga, which is on the North side of the New South Wales, Victoria border (hence the name Albury is in NSW, Wodonga is in Vic, so we're two cities, but one community). Anyway, the point is, NSW is usually dealt with by NRMA (I believe that once meant "the National Roads & Motorist's Association", but it's not actually national, it mostly covers New South Welshmen), but as I understand it, these clubs usually operate interdependently.
Anyway, so, I call RACQ, using the number on my card. After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I speak to a lovely lady and explain my situation. I say something like.
  "Hi, my name is Matt, look my car's been bogged, and I need help, but I'm not sure who to call. I'm with RACQ, but I live in New South Wales, is that okay?"
  "That's okay," she says. "I can't help you from here, but I'll just transfer you to the NRMA."
I appreciated that, since I didn't even need to write a new number down or whatever, I just get transferred over... but, I'm back on hold again.
Quick aside: Why is hold music the crappiest repeating loop of muzak-jazz in the world. It's not like it's calming to listen to shitty music through a crappy speaker whilst waiting on the phone.
Anyway, after another 15 minutes or so, I finally get through to NRMA, and I explain my situation.
  "Hey, I just called RACQ, I'm an RACQ member, but they transferred me here because I live in Albury now. My name is Matt, and I've got my car bogged."
  "Well, we don't usually help people whose cars get bogged," the lady says, rising my anxiety until she adds, "But, with the rains lately, we have been sending out tow-trucks to help people who are stuck. Can you just tell me where you are."
I put her on speaker phone as I then opened my GPS app to find out where I was. According to my phone, the nearest road (which I had turned off of, to enter that clearing) was called Island Road. Huh, I guess that bridge actually lead me onto an island, I think. So, I tell the lady "I'm just off island road"
She looks it up on her computer, then she says:
  "Oh, you're in Victoria? Just a moment..."
Then, she puts me on hold. Thankfully, I'm only on hold for five or so minutes before a woman answers the phone, telling me I'm talking to someone from RACV (i.e. the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria).
See, in Australia, the border between Victoria & New South Wales is the Murray River... but, the border officially and legally starts on the northern shore, so the moment I'd driven onto that bridge, I was technically in Victoria. When looking back on it, it was a fun fact, but when you're just trying to get some help pulling your car out of a puddle, it's bloody frustrating!
So, I tell this third nice lady "My name is Matt, my car is bogged just off Island Road, I NEED a tow to get out of here."
The lady then says "Okay, I'll just organize to send a tow truck out there to help you, can I get your information."
So, I tell them my full name, my license plate number, the make and model of my car, my phone number, and I think my birthday as well, just for fun.
Anyway after all this, it's about 10:30 when the lady says "Okay, we've called the guys out, they have your number so they'll text you when they're nearly there. But, it may take up to an hour to get out to you."
  "That's fine," I say, "I'm not going anywhere, I'll be fine... uh, should I do anything for when they arrive?"
  "If you're a potential danger to other drivers, you might want to put your hazard lights on. And don't get out of your car and wander around on the road. Otherwise, you should be fine."
I say okay, I hang up, I switch my hazard lights on and I lean back to listen to a podcast on my phone.

Unfortunately, the podcast I was listening to only had episodes 30 minutes long, so after that time, I didn't want to listen to another, because I figured "up to an hour" usually means "an hour, or less", and I didn't want to leave an episode half-way through. I tried reading my book, but I couldn't do that without my lights on, and since my lights had sort of flickered when I'd reversed, I was worried about flattening the battery. So, I wound the window down and watched the stark, dark trees either side of me blinking orange in the glow of my hazard lights.

After 45 minutes, I get a text. It tells me there's a tow-truck nearly there. I sit my seat back up straight, and wait for the truck. After five minutes, I get a phone call. It's the tow-truck driver.
  "Hey, mate, where are you?"
  "I'm just off Island Road, to the left", I tell him.
  "We're on Island Road, but I can't see you," he says.
  "Right, well, there's a little clearing to the left just past the bridge, and there's a muddy path that seems to go around."
  "How far are you from the road?" asks the tow-truck driver.
That's when I begin to worry... I remember my Dad vaguely mentioning that "roadside assistance" was literally limited to the roadside, and there was a legal distance beyond which was not considered "the side of the road". I guestimated that distance was about 50 metres, so I say to the guy "I don't know, maybe 50 metres."
  "Well, our truck's front-wheel drive, so we can't go in the mud," says the driver (which made me feel kind of stupid since, yeah, my car's front-wheel drive and I found that out the hard way). Also, he says, "and our tow-cable is only 20-metres long."
  "Oh..." I say. I'm relieved that this wasn't a coverage issue, but now this guy seems to be saying he can't help me at all.
  "Well, I don't want you guys to get stuck as well, but what am I supposed to do, then?"
I was hoping he'd tell me the number to call to get back in touch with RACQ (or RACV or whatever), or maybe give me the number of a better tow-trucking company. But, instead, the guy says.
  "You need someone with a four-wheel-drive to get you out. I recommend you go onto Facebook and find a local group of four-wheel-drive owners, and post a message asking for help."
  "I see," I said. I think I was able to hide the disappointment in my voice. "Well, thank you."

I hang up, the truck drives away, and I look at the time on my phone. It's approaching midnight, at this point - 11:24. I know the exact time because I have the record of when I made the call on my phone. See, over an hour earlier, I'd decided against calling my parents because I knew it was very late at night, and they were probably in bed. However, my Dad owns a 4WD... I was hoping to let them sleep, and keep all this to myself, but that plan, clearly, had failed. My parents were definitely in bed, but I knew I had to get home since I had work in the morning. And yeah, they're retired, so they can sleep in - but come on, it's still rude to call someone that late, even if it is an emergency.

So, I called my folks, and they came out with hooks and straps and gloves and wellington boots, and after thirty minutes of fussing around, we strapped up the car, Mum got in the front seat (she's lighter than me, so we figured it was better for her to be in the car), me behind pushing, with wellington boots on, and Dad driving the four-wheel-drive, we managed to get my car up and out of the puddle.
The cable did snap as we got near the road, but the car was out of the mud, no damage was done to the cars, and after making sure my car was running fine, we went home.

I was apologetic about waking them up, and they said it was fine, but Dad said "don't drive on unpaved roads when it rains", and my mother added. "Well, I'm tired, so if you don't mind I'm going to take off my shining armour, and go to bed."

So, all told, I don't think a single thing went right for me that night. Some of it was my own fault, I really shouldn't have driven through mud after a rainy day like that, and I should know exactly what roadside assistance means before I call for it. But, if there's one thing I learned from all this, it's that when things go wrong, you can always rely on your loving family to help you in times of need.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and if there's two things I learned from this, the second one is that I probably get my wicked sense of humour from my mother. Until Next Time, take care, drive safe, and make sure you have someone you can rely on who drives a four-wheel-drive.

The Facts in the Case of Patient S.

Tonight, we'll unravel the sordid mess,
From the Facts in the Case of Patient S.

The patient was a female with cerebral palsy,
    in a paraplegic condition,
She was also mute, had been so since aged three,
    With Doctor Marcus as attending physician.

Patient S couldn't speak, but her mind was sharp,
    Although she was mute, you could not call her dumb,
She used her phone to speak, for the most part,
    By texting her words, with one thumb.

Although most impressive, this caused tendonitis,
    constant cramping, and repetitive strain,
So, Doctor Marcus sought out a new means for this typist,
    To get the words out of her brain.

And that's when he started to make a device,
To interpret her brainwaves, into signals precise
    With brainscans, computers, and predictive text,
    To translate her thoughts into what she'd say next.

Although the machine was incredibly clever,
    After tweaking, and testing quite vigorous,
It took three weeks of trial and error
    To make a sentence came out of the gibberish.

"Doc, can you hear me? Doctor Marcus, hello?"
    Even Patient S's mother was surprised.
The doctors and men all shook hands at the breakthrough
    And Patient S had tears in her eyes.

They interviewed S, asked her perspective,
She said so many saw her body defective,
    But the body she had was "granted by God",
    She was truly unique, that's why she seemed odd

She said she was glad when her Mum took her phone,
    Although she was stiff, and her legs felt cold,
With the freedom to talk, she did not feel alone,
    She said "Now I can walk in my soul".

But don't yet rejoice, it would be in haste,
For you see, there's a few more facts in this case.
    Just a week later, she shocked her physicians,
    When she died... "choked on water", reports the mortician

Although S was deceased, the device kept speaking.
    "Perhaps one day, I'll be able to dance," it said
That's when all the doctors began to start freaking.
    How is she speaking? She's dead!

But even after the wires were cut,
Their talking device still wouldn't shut up!
    They couldn't explain how it worked with her gone—
    But then, Doctor Marcus found her old phone.

One last desperate message on the girl's phone read
<<Someone please help me thats not wat I said>>
    the talking machine that they thought they'd perfected,
    Had drowned out her screams with the words they'd expected,

They'd committed the sin, like so many before,
    For the differently abled among us,
She was not speaking through; she'd been spoken for...
    when we confuse what they suffer for justice

Although you may think I declare it in haste,
I think that is the crucial fact in this case:
    When we fail to listen, all we do is supress.
    That's the Fact in this case of Patient S.

Dangerous Dumbasses, or A Discussion of The Dunning-Kruger Effect

How difficult could it be?

It's a simple phrase which may well be the basis of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias which has been "common sense" for a long time. It's been said “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, and even Charles Darwin is quoted saying “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”, and this is how the Dunning-Kruger effect is understood in general, but what exactly is it?
The Dunning-Kruger effect was officially quantified in 1999 when social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger published their paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.

In this simple study, the two researchers gave their test subjects an exam which tested their logic, grammar & humour, and before evaluating any subject, asked them how well they thought they'd done. Dunning & Kruger then compared the subjects' percieved scores against their actual scores, and found a fascinating correlation... The lower the subject scored, the greater the disparity between their actual score, with the lowest scoring participants assuming they'd done three-to-four times better than they did; middle-scoring participants thinking they'd scored double or one-and-a-half times better, to the point that the highest scoring subjects actually underestimated their scores a little. I've included a stylized recreation of their findings as today's Illustration (see fig. 7, above), and I don't want to overstate this... the lower scoring quartile of subjects, on average, didn't believe they'd done the best - but they were still overestimating their abilities by a wide margin.

Now, this test wasn't great. I haven't been able to get my hands on the actual questions, but the fact that they were tested on "humour" seems questionable at best, I'm not really sure how you score someone on their sense of humour. However, this test was the first of several more tests on different subjects and sciences, and similar results have been found throughout several fields of study.

So, why does this happen? Well, there are several theories. Some of the most common theories relates to Illusory Superiority. This kind of cognitive bias is also known as the "above-average effect", "leniency error" and the "overconfidence effect", because it's not simply one thing (and in fact, in modern psychology the "Dunning-Kruger effect" is considered one of the factors of Illusory Superiority). But, it includes a bevy of psychological fallacies such as the "better-than-average" heuristic: in simple terms, the majority of people do not think they're "average", but the majority of any set is "average", by definition, meaning that, the majority of people therefore must overestimate themselves. Some theorize that this is because most people hold "above-average" to be ideal, for most social and personal traits - honesty, intelligence, kindness, popularity, strength - whilst these are positive traits, having them to an unusually high degree can be seen as negative, i.e. brutal honesty;  arrogant intelligence; self-sacrificing kindness; idolized popularity; dangerous strength - so, by seeing oneself as merely "above average", it's holding oneself in the highest possible esteem with most of these traits.
In a way, it could be seen of as a form of high self-esteem, as we're holding our own selves equivalent to what we see as the societal ideal. However, it could be seen as a form of low empathy, as we're considering the majority of others as sub-standard, which relates to the second form of Illusory Superiority I want to talk about, Egocentrism: basically, it's when you hold singular and greater significance over yourself, your abilities and your characteristics, compared with anyone else and often involves a kind of perception of advantage and/or privilege for oneself, compared to others.

Sadly, this is the common pop-culture understanding of the Dunning-Kruger effect: egocentrism, arrogance and self-importance. I admit that this is how I viewed it, and what inspired this post. After all, what's a better example of Failure and the Dunning-Kruger effect than Donald Trump? His thoughtless actions are still affecting the world to this day, and I thought his incompetence could be explained by this psychological phenomenon. It's well-established that Donald Trump would frequently overestimate his own capacity, intelligence, abilities, political knowledge and didn't even understand the responsibilities or powers of the presidency - the Mueller report found that on several occasions, Trump ordered his political staff to commit illegal acts, and the only reason he was not punished for this was because those members of staff chose not to follow through with his unlawful demands.
But, after doing this research, it's clear to me that Trump was not an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect... it's just textbook Narcissism.

See, the Dunning-Kruger effect may have nothing to do with self-perception at all, it could simply be because humans suck at counting, and estimating, in general. There have been several studies showing how common innumeracy, discalculia and poor mathematic ability is amongst the human population. There are even several theories that claim humans don't count linearly, but logarithmically. I won't go into detail on that because it would take two hours of research...

[A/N: I know that because I already DID that research, and lost it all because my computer crashed (TWICE!). I guess it took this year's theme of "Failure" literally...]

But the important thing is, humans suck at counting and estimating, and perhaps our overestimation of ourselves is just another example of how badly we screw up at counting.

It could even be related to Game Theory, specifically Information Asymmetry... in the absence of relevant information, we are often left with inadequate strategies of how to proceed, especially when we don't know just how much information we don't have, in a given "game".

But, at the end of the day, the important thing we all must learn from these examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect, is that when we fail... we may be unable to understand just how badly we've failed until we see the results. Whilst Donald Trump turned out to be a shitty example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (as he's kind of a shitty example of basically everything humanity has to offer), I do think a much better example is "Climate Change Denial". I was once a climate change denier - I even have a blog post all about it - but the difference between myself and most other climate change deniers is that I was still pro-environmentalist, and I saw the benefits of the climate-change position, even though I disagreed with their conclusion (at the time).
Even now that I better understand climate change and fully accept all of the realities of anthropogenic climate change, those who still don't not only don't seem to understand the realities but their lack of understanding is so deep, they fail to understand how they could possibly be so wrong, and how wrong they could possibly be.

This is true of basically all science-deniers: creationists; anti-queer bigots, anti-abortionists; conspiracy theorists...
They're all dangerously stupid, but not because they're significantly dumber than the average person. I've met a lot of dumb people who admit their own ignorance - and hell, some people on the autism spectrum have learning disabilities, but autistic people aren't more dangerous than the average person, despite their lower intelligence quotient. No, what makes you a dangerous dumb person is when you fail to understand that you are dumb.

So, yeah, all of this just to circle right back to the beginning, because there is truth in that quote:
     "A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing".
We fail, all the time, but that's not always a bad thing. To err is human. I think I've used that quote about five times already in this Countdown but it's the reality, we fail yet we thrive regardless.
But Our Failure becomes Truly Dangerous when we Fail to Recognize It.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I'm going to see what's wrong with this computer, so it doesn't fail on me again... that would make this Countdown take much longer to write.
But, Until Next Time, I ask that you self-reflect, take a good look at yourself, your life and your actions, and ask yourself... have I already failed, and just not realized it yet?

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 2)

In yesterday's post, I listed the first five of ten of my most interesting abandoned writing projects. It's a lot of fun, you should check out that post here.

But, without further ado, allow me to continue with the Top 5:

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (5-1)

05. THE GUY IN THE TREES
This one is kind of embarrassing. Not to talk about, no, but because this one is something I nearly completed. And first thing's first, it was a story, but it wasn't a novel or a short story... this was a YouTube series. See, I am a huge fan of Night Mind, a youtuber who presents dark ARG; unfiction & horror series from the internet, for people to learn about and discover for themselves. I had seen a lot of these really creative video series, and since I'd done a course of Film & TV in university, and helped write a successful student short film, I thought it would be a fun challenge to do something like this for myself. At the time, I didn't have a job, and I was at home, alone, for a few weeks, so I came up with a plot for a horror series. The concept was pretty simple... it starts off as my character, played by me, discovering that there's a homeless guy living in his neighbourhood, whom he just calls "The Guy in the Trees", since he seems to spend most of his time in this little collection of trees (that actually was in my neighbourhood, at the time). He decides to confront him, so he goes to his tent late at night, and the guy is missing, but instead he discovers a creepy notebook. The homeless guy returns, and he has to run off, and jump in his car to escape. He gets home, and reads the notebook, it's full of mad ramblings. But, what intrigues my character is how it talks about "a creature that controls me", some kind of monster which he appears to fear as well as worship, which killed his whole family - and there are several pages torn out of the book, which the guy finds. The character then recieves a threatening message, from the Guy in the Trees demanding his stuff back. So, he encounters him, and they get into a fight which my character manages to get out of, although he's covered in blood, but I didn't show (firstly, because it was just me, there were no other actors; secondly, because it was important to the plot). After this fight, my character reveals that he's lost sleep, and managed to get the missing pages off the guy, which reveals both some important names of his family, and the ritual to call upon the monster. After attempting the ritual; my character disappears, reappearing hours later, and tells a weird story about slipping into another dimension. Then there's a knock at his door, he answers it, and the story ends shortly after. So, what was this about? Well, I really only had ONE idea... basically, yes, there was this evil monster, but the reality was, that all happened after the guy became homeless, he was just an unfortunate drunk... after the fight in the woods, my character had killed the Guy in the Trees, hidden his body (stolen the pages from his corpse), and that's why he was losing sleep, and investigating this mystery, he was looking for some justification for his murder, proving that the Guy in the Trees killed his family, or that he was trying to summon a demon, but he wasn't. The knock at the door which he answers was the police, coming to arrest my character.
Unwritten because... actually no, that's a lie, this is written, I wrote it; and I filmed it. . But, in the editing process, I realized that this was not that great of a story. So, uhh...
Unpublished because: It had only one gimmick. I had a lot of fun filming this whole thing, and creating the notebook prop, but it all relied on the whole "he secretly killed the Guy in the Trees" thing, which I thought was clever... but it's not clever enough to rely on for a whole story. Also, I don't have any skills with special effects, so I couldn't really make the monstrous demon thing that I wanted to, it just looked like a crappy power-point animation... which it basically was. And, without the monster thing, it lacks that necessary misdirection, of the guy trying to find a monster, when in reality he was the monster - the murderer - the whole time. A year after filming this, I came to admit to myself that the only reason I created this wasn't because I had a cool story that I wanted to tell, it was because I could, and I wanted to be able to say I'd created a cool youtube series. But, after looking back, my major inspiration was "I want to create a YouTube thing", and that's not a good reason to create. That's why I say this one is kind of embarrassing, because it's only as I approached the finish line that I realized, I didn't have a good reason to run the race. Whilst I still admit that I enjoyed the hell out of acting, filming and creating this short series, and I do recommend that kids try creating short films, it's a lot of fun... but, don't do it for clout, and don't do it because you want to post something to YouTube. Do it because it's a lot of fun to bring a story to life. I'm not opposed to creating any kind of YouTube series... in fact, I created a pair of videos for my Halloween Countdown a while ago. But, that was because I created something that needed to be on video to show it off in its full glory, not created for the sake of creating it, and that makes those videos something I'm still proud of, to this day.

04. COLD VIRTUE
Remember how I said I love a good murder mystery? Well, Crooked O'Hare wasn't the only time I tried and failed to write one. The difference is, rather than a series, this one was planned as a novel. I still think it's a pretty good idea... see, I wanted to set this in a dystopia. I was inspired by the prevalence of YA dystopia novels at the time - see Hunger Games; Divergent; The Maze Runner - and I thought it would be a great place to set a murder mystery story since, well, all the crime - and who doesn't like a couple of pseudo-futuristic technologies thrown into the mix? So, the concept was simple, a kid is being trained for the youth police (yes, very much Hitler Youth, I said this was Dystopian, right?), but just before he graduates, even though he is basically top of his class (or near, I didn't want to be too cliche), his father is declared a traitor to the state, and executed. His father was a mid-to-low-tier member of the political party, and so he'd been given many benefits of the 1% - free housing, cheap food, low taxes, household servants.
This means that after his death, not only is their family name horrendously besmirched, but they lose their home, their income and their food security in one fell swoop. The main kid and his mother are forced to live in government housing (i.e. slums), so they're crammed in a tiny apartment with a dozen other people, and since this kid lived his whole life of privilege, he walks, breaths, talks and smells like money, so as soon as he walks through the streets, he is targeted and attacked, he defends himself, but he gets a hard and nasty lesson about "justice" in the slums - Criminal gangs, drugs and murder are rife in these densely packed, low-income facilities. So, to earn some money and hopefully clean up his neighbourhood, the kid sets up an "office" in the burned ruins of a state-banned church - no roof, and little-to-no security, but it has privacy - and so he starts working as a private investigator. The idea was that he would solve a few small time crimes, but the story would focus on a series of 5 or 6 murders; starting with victims of crime, moving up to slum-lords, state police and eventually to a politician visiting their slums. He'd make a few enemies when he refuses to ally himself with any of the street gangs, until he manages to find himself a space as someone who turns a blind eye to non-violent gang activity, and eventually he makes enough money to afford a smaller (like, the size of half a room), but nonetheless private home for his mother and himself (I didn't decide what, but his mother would find work, probably as a servant in a richer household).
The whole idea was showing, from the ground up, how the system was forcing the lower classes into desperation, and the upper classes into classist paranoia. And of course, the novel would end with the kid uncovering the mystery of whether his father was truly a traitor, and who betrayed him to have him executed. It was a cool idea, one I still think would make a fantastic story, of dystopian murder mystery.
Unwritten because: Dystopia relies upon worldbuilding, and this requires a lot of worldbuilding and politics that I am not the best at parsing. Out of fear I'm starting to sound lazy, I want to clarify, I'm not against doing research. The problem is that I really need to have some foundation upon which I can build - Stephen King, as a writing teacher, is famous for his oft-quoted lesson: "write what you know", and people unfortunately misunderstand this advice horrendously. They think it means "only write something if you've experienced it" which would make for a lot of boring fiction, every writer would write about what it's like to be a writer... no, what "write what you know" means is, write stuff you can understand. I am not a murderer, but I can understand murder, I can understand the emotions and motives and opportunities and biology of murder, I can understand what it is that leads to a murder victim, in a murder mystery. But, I don't understand politics and socio-economic strife (at least, not very well); and I don't understand how to represent the lifestyle of people living in slums and gangs and political strife. Basically, I don't know enough about this setting to really bring it to life, even though I think it's a clever cross-genre concept. And hell, if I threw in a love triangle subplot, I'd have hit every one of the necessary tropes for dystopian YA of the era... I think I've kind of missed the mark on that particular "pop culture" moment, but I insist that murder mystery is awesome, and I'd love to see someone turn this into a real story. I'm just not the one willing to do it...

03. TRANSYLVANIA
The idea here was pretty simple, it was the idea of doing a Frankentein rewrite with a transgender theme. The story I had was that in this version, Frankenstein had an Igor that helped him from the beginning to develop the methods of creating life, as he was inspired by Frankenstein in college to work with him. But, as they discovered the keystone to the research, the alchemical/electrical (or whatever, as the plot needed) element to finish, Victor and Igor celebrated, and Igor finally admitted the truth... (HEAVY TRIGGER WARNINGS for discussion of Gender Dysphoria & Suicidal Ideation - it's a huge part of this story, so you may need to skip to the next list entry if that's too much for you, but it's a huge part of why I couldn't write this story, so it's important)
Igor is a pre-transition transgender, and she loves Victor. She was inspired to work with him because, as a male, she is incapable of carrying children, and the idea of creating life inspired her. She admits all this believing that, as they've gotten so close (and with his love of science, she hoped he'd understand her). However, Frankenstein rejects her out of... well, basically "Trans Panic", and attacks her.
Then, Igor dies... I'd originally planned, as suicide because she basically gets her gender thrown in her face, but I thought maybe it could be murder or manslaughter.
But, when Victor calms down (or, when he discovers Igor's body), he realizes how wrong he was, so he decides to resurrect IGOR with the science they uncovered together. And, as per her wishes, he actually uses the corpses of women to surgically transition Igor.
I hadn't decided the name, and this was all in the planning phase, but for the rest of this, I'll refer to Igor as "Irina". The idea here is that Victor and Irina would work together, and at first Victor is simply sympathetic to Irina's plight, and wanted to save his old friend, but in time Victor would fall in love with Irina, but there would be complications as the townspeople learn of this resurrected person turned into a woman, and would rally against the doctor.
I hadn't decided the ending, but it would be very much fire and pitchforks.
Unwritten because: Do I even need to explain it? The key feature of this whole idea is Unfortunate Implications. Part of the inspiration behind this is that I love science and medicine and knowledge, and the idea of showing how science can turn a person assigned male at birth into a gorgeous, feminine woman is the epitome of that; and the inspiration for this was seeing how many - even modern - movies tend to write sci-fi horror as "man should not wrestle in god's domain", as though toying with nature is inherently evil, but I think that's nonsense. The real monster is ignorance, and this kind of story would thrive on that... However, it also thrives on:
  1. Representing Motherhood as the pinnacle of Womanhood
  2. Turning a transwoman into a creature literally called Frankenstein's Monster.
  3. Trans Panic as a Plot Device (for a main character no less...)
  4. Suicide/Murder as plot device. (Yikes... I never decided which but pick your poison, both suck.)
And whilst I personally like the juxtaposition that Irina would be seen as a monster, but the real monsters are the townspeople who fear her; the problem therein is that it requires a delicate equipoise of understanding the inherent reading and counter-reading of the "monster" metaphor, which idiots like JK Rowling have already shown to be completely incapable of.
Also, do I have to mention that I'm cisgender? This is me looking from the outside at the trans experience, and trying to write a story to represent that from experiences that are entirely academic. I don't think I can, or should, attempt to write a piece of literature designed to define the transgender experience. I've considered writing this by working heavily with a sensitivity reader... but I realized, I'd have to rely on them so heavily that clearly I'm the wrong person to write this story, if indeed it can be written at all without going against everything I believe in. I don't know how to resolve all of these unfortunate implications, even though I think this is a cool story idea, so I'd rather just admit defeat, and step away from the concept altogether. I do plan on writing stories about transgender persons, but I want to do so in a way that doesn't have so many unfortunate implications.

02. THAUMATURGUS
Y'know, this one is a little hard to explain, and that's because it's an absolute mess of a concept. It's easy to understand in principle... when I was younger, I realized that I had a LOT of story ideas, and I mean a whole lot, so I decided "Hey! What if I took ALL of these ideas, and put them together?" so, I did. But, this was before I realized that you could, and should, cannibalize, frankenstein and remould ideas to make them fit, so I basically took whole story ideas, and slotted them into this story wholesale. The basic concept was that the story would follow this young boy and his sister, who live with their grandfather, and the boy discovers  a magical world, and has to fight a big, bad evil wizard... very generic "2000s YA Urban Fantasy" schtick. But, I threw in all these other concepts wholesale. So, the grandfather owns a dozen weird cats with weird names, because I had this "kennel for familiars who lost their witches" idea; the kid meets a teen boy who has a living car with a personality, because I liked this "living, magical car" idea; I threw in a wise, old cat called Tembley, from my "Cursed Cat of Cecil Street" idea (which I also used for a "hyperlinked story" project at school, that's why that story's so short, had to fit a wordcount); they also encounter a dozen strange freaks on the street, because I threw in my 'Nocturnals Gang' idea; the kid works in a burger joint that gets attacked by a shadow monster, because of my 'We Never Close' story idea; one of the characters would be a late night jazz musician, because of my "Smokey Jones" idea, and I think I even threw in a DJ at a magical radio station, because of my "Wizard Radio" idea; and two of the characters were identical twins, and vampires, because of a "Sinister Sister" idea I got from my cousin... hell, even the title comes from an unused story title I really liked, so this world was heavily populated with all of these fascinating characters and stories, I figured it would be like a crazy, fantasy amusement park ride of adventure!
Unwritten because: I realized that this would basically be like an amusement park ride. Specifically, a dark ride. Sit in the car, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle as we drive slowly past hollow, plastic, lifeless scenarios, where cheap representations come out and play out some distilled version of their full character before sliding back into the dark so we can drive past another fake scene. I thought I'd come up with a clever way to use all my unused story ideas, but I wasn't using them, I was abusing them. I had to just ignore major parts of these ideas to fit the main story... I still like a lot of these ideas, and I think I can reuse them (and like I said above, some of the ones I really like, I'm not sharing, since I either can, or already did, alter it to work in another story), but throwing them all into a story like this simply turned the story into a junk drawer. And if I strip all of that away, all I'm left with is a generic urban fantasy premise - child discovers magic; child learns of magic threat; child defeats threat... blah blah blah. I'm not against urban fantasy by any stretch of the imagination, but without the junk drawer full of unused ideas, there really isn't anything left.
So, I'm not going to write this story. If someone else wants to try, they can... heck, you can even throw in your own unused story ideas. Or, hell, you can take some of these individual ideas and turn them into something... heck, even though I already wrote "The Cursed Cat of Cecil Street", you could try that too. Write a better one - I made that for a school project in like 2007, surely you can do better than teenaged me.
But no matter what, learn from my mistakes. Ideas are incredibly adaptable. Take, for example, the idea of a living car... that's a cool concept, but why? You might have a lot of reasons why you think it's cool, but I like it for three reasons. Firstly, I like the idea of exploring an inhuman mind (how would a car think?); secondly, I have always enjoyed the A Boy And His Weird Pet trope, since it's about friendship and forming a unique bond; lastly, I really like the idea of having a Cool Ride. Knowing this, I can adapt this idea to fit in literally any story. If I wanted a (somewhat) realistic romance story, I could have an unusually smart horse; if I write a sci-fi, the obvious rendition would be a space-ship with a quirky A.I.; if I wanted it in a horror, well, that's basically just the plot of Christine...
That's why I find that idea cool, but if you have an idea, but you're struggling to find a way to make it fit your story, break it down into it's fundamentals - why do you like the idea in the first place? And, can you adjust those things so that you can include the parts you like, and leave out the parts that don't fit your story? I know I spent half of this entry talking about writing advice, but that's really what this idea is... the idea is "find a way to put your unused story ideas to use, in a single story". If you want to give a try for yourself, well, I hope you do a much better job than I did.

01. THE UNSPOKEN KING
This is the biggest one... because all through high school, this was my magnum opus. For literally eight years, this was the only story I ever thought about, it was going to be a middle-to-high fantasy series, and the premise was simple. It was about a knight in the middle-ages, called Sir Graham, who died in a battle against a dark, evil monster, but came back as a mindless zombie, because of the evil lord's magics. As he had once saved the king from an assassination attempt, the king had a soft spot for Graham, and so had the poor man buried in a stone sarcophagus, in a far, secluded corner of the cemetery. over 100 years later, for reasons unknown, Graham's mind returns, his mind is alive, in a dead body. So, Graham pries himself from his grave, and decides to seek out who or what resurrected him... kind of like an anti-murder mystery, if you will. But, since he's a corpse, he's reviled and rejected by society, meaning the only people he can turn to for help are similarly abandoned outcasts of society: a half-demon cursed man, a mad wizard, a pirate ghost... all kinds of fun monsters, some who are friend, others who are foe, he doesn't know who to trust. And the first story was all about how the same evil monster that killed him hard returned (yes, very "dark lord returns"... it's a trope for a reason, people), so he's the first suspect in Graham's undead anti-murder mystery, so he decides to confront him first...
Unwritten because: Well, two reasons really. Firstly, I am not a historian. I decided to set this in the actual middle ages, as in the year 1472, meaning I had to do research on all kinds of medieval things from that specific year... and it kind of slowed down most of my research. But that's not a huge issue, this is clearly pseudo-fantasy, I could get away with a lot of this by leaning on magic... but then I hit a terrible snag, and this is only the second time this happened to me.
I had philosophical issues with this story.
See, I started working on this in high school, before I'd fully come to terms with my own beliefs regarding atheism, absurdism and dualism, which means at the time, I still believed in ghosts... albeit in the form of souls, or spirits, whatever you want to call it. Now, as an adult, I don't believe in souls or the afterlife. Part of what initially appealed to me about this story was exploring the ugly side of life, death, and since Graham was asking "why am I not dead?" there was some philosophical discussion of  death, and what death even means, why does anyone die. I mean, one of the main characters was going to be a ghost. And, without going into horrendous spoilers, my plan was effectively that Graham was going to be a "ghost" trapped in a "zombie" which the "Anti-Murderer" (no spoilers) had basically fused with magic back into a single body, for some reason relating to later stories.
But, since I now don't believe in souls, I'm kind of... well, philosophically opposed to the main conceit of this story. I could potentially rewrite it to refit my philosophies, but I would have to change the story so drastically that, it wouldn't be "The Unspoken King" anymore. I'd have to lose my ghost pirate (what a shame, he was cool), I'd have to change the villain and his whole deal (he was basically a poltergeist, so that's a whole thing...), I'd have to change the philosophical and thematic underpinnings of the story, and I'd have to change how the main character... works.
So, I've basically abandoned this story, thrown the pieces onto the recycling pile. I still do like some of these ideas, which is why I'm actually sharing the subtitle, not the series title. It's not a huge secret, I mentioned it before on this blog even, but like I said, if it's in this list, it's up for the taking, and I still like that title enough that I'm not willing to just give it out to anyone. But, this story - like its main character - as it is, is dead, and even I can't resurrect it after the damage my philosophical maturation has done to it.

- - -

So, those are my abandoned writing projects. It's kind of bittersweet looking back at this list, because when creating this, I had to look at a lot of projects that I haven't worked on in a while, and for some of them, I could say "no, I still want to write this, I want to keep it. This is a good story.", but for some, I really had to bite the bullet and admit, yes, this is a failed project, I can't write it anymore.
Especially those top two. Both are projects I spent literally years working on, but I couldn't manage to pull it all together, until I finally realized that it was beyond saving... for me, at least.

But, I hope you found this interesting, and I especially hope that this list can help inspire a writer out there to make something of these unwritten projects, to create something upon the stained workshop table where I was broken. If any of these ideas inspire you, or you'd like to know more about them, feel free to ask me in the comments below. Just because I failed, doesn't mean you can't succeed.

Speaking of which, I want to finish this by saying that, whilst these failed projects are works that I have abandoned, I do have some stories that haven't failed, and this whole experience of listing my abandoned projects has inspired me to let go of the failures, and turn towards my successes.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to work on some projects I haven't abandoned.

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 1)

When discussing failure, it provides an interesting opportunity for self-reflection. I am not really the sort of person to regret, since I'm proud of who I am, and most of the events in my life - even the ones which didn't go as planned - have helped to shape me into the person that I am today. However, there are some things that I've failed at which I wish had succeeded, or some opportunities that I missed whose alternative outcomes I wish I knew. But, a lot of those are minor and not really interesting unless you're me. So, I figured I'd talk about something most people can understand - stories.

I'm a writer, and so I have come up with... too many stories over my career as a writer. But, even when these stories fail, I usually hang onto them, so I can cannibalize ideas for later stories. So, even though I can't always write stories the way I originally planned them, they still will turn up on a page somewhere, somehow. Maybe that dumb protagonist idea can show up as a funny background character, maybe that thin "magic key" plot could be put into a larger story, where it doesn't outstay it's welcome & maybe that line of dialogue makes more sense from a villain character. So, I try to reuse & recycle ideas as much as I can...
But not always.

There are some stories - some concepts - that I come up with that I cannot write, and today I'm going to list them for you. There's various reasons why I can't write these. If you're a writer or storyteller of any stripe, and you're looking for ideas, feel free to use any of these as you wish, as I would be impressed by anyone that can write these stories. If I list a story here, it is because I cannot write it, but I would like to see it written - and for the sake of legal purposes, I want to formally state that I am not seeking any kind of trademark/copyright or monetary/intellectual property rights or any of that if you do happen to use these ideas. Whilst these are "my" ideas, they are just ideas, if you put the work in to actually write it, it's your story. All I'd ever want in return is, if asked, that you tell people where you got your idea or inspiration (i.e. from me) - nothing more.

With that out of the way, here are some story ideas which I tried, and failed, to write. (Note: most of the following titles are "working titles").

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (10-6)

10. MONSTER
This idea is a bit weird, since it's part of an idea I don't want to talk about... okay, basically, I am working on a YA Horror novella series. I don't want to get into details, but basically it's set in Australia, and based around characters dealing with supernatural monsters. I liked the idea of the series, and using it to explore a lot of ideas, and one idea I liked is writing a full-length story, since I've only ever written short stories, and novella-length stories. So, I decided to have a special story, set in the same universe, but novel-length. I came up with this idea when I was younger, and the series was less lovecraftian, and I was intrigued by the term "monster". I wanted to develop what a monster was, in more ways than one. The idea of this story was about a kid whose mother died, and his father started dating a younger woman, and the kid is super angsty about it. Not long after, he discovers a strange egg which hatches to reveal a monster which he decides to hide from his family, but as the monster grows bigger and stronger, he starts to lose control of it. The basic idea was that this monster was actually a part of him, and a metaphor for his own anger, angst, hatred and feelings of inadequacy, so as he grows more stressed, the monster grows more dangerous. The story was meant to be all about this theme of the real monster being the anger within.
Unwritten because: It was a bad story. Full disclosure, this story was almost entirely inspired by "Beast" by Ally Kennen, a novel about a kid who takes care of a crocodile from a little egg, until it grows so big, it wants to eat him. I read the book, it was well-written, but I was annoyed that a story called "beast" wasn't actually about a beast. Like, I guess technically a crocodile is a beast, but I was imagining a grisly, fantastical monster, not something you can see at a zoo. But also, as a kid, I was aspirational towards those books written with drama and angst and intrigue, because it felt like that was "proper writing". As I grew up I realized, no, I still find that kind of thing boring, so wanting to write a story where a kid is angsty about dumb teen stuff, which develops into a monster, that's just kind of lame. Now, you might be saying "Great, you tell budding writers they can use these ideas, yet you present ideas that you think are crap. Do you genuinely want to see someone try to write this?" well, yes. Admittedly, there's a reason this is the lowest item on the list, but this idea has potential. Firstly, I'd think the kid's situation should be much more tragic, and the plot needs to be better developed. But more importantly, what inspires me is the title: "Monster". With a story called monster, it must be 'about' monsters, and that alone is pretty inspiring to me. What even is a monster? When I say 'monster' what do you picture? Is it a scaly creature with teeth, or is it a furry beast, or something else - feathers? Blubber? Is it small and ugly, or enormous and dangerous? Is it more human and intelligent, or more wild and animalistic? Is it new, young, perhaps a prototype, or is it old, ancient, perhaps mystical? Monster is a broad concept, yet it's particular, so much is and isn't a monster. I guess the real question is... what's a monster, to you?

09. URBAN SECTOR
The idea here was pretty simple. I like the idea of sitcoms, but I usually find it hard to engage with them for more than a few episodes, since they're living boring, ordinary lives - who cares when they resolve their personal drama, if it means we return to status quo? So I figured... if you set a sitcom in a sci-fi story, it would make it much more interesting. And I think living on a starship sounds fun, and this kind of gives the opportunity to play around with that. So, I had this idea for a trio of guys who live on a Starship that transports cargo between different human settlements around the solar system. I wrote the outline for the first episode that introduces Craig, a bit of a schlub (and alcoholic) who once helped design robots in a factory, but ironically lost his job (because robots took his job); so now he's a homeless drunk, and kind of pathetic (in a funny way). Then, there's Wax, an alien, who is homeless because he is an alien (actually half-alien, but doesn't like to talk about it), and faces a lot of covert discrimination, since Earth is quite xenophobic. I figured Wax stands up like a human, but looks like a mix between an axolotl and a squid, and he's blue; he doesn't have any weird powers, he just looks weird, but he's actually a regular guy. Then there's Luthor, the ship's navigator, and a gay man, and whilst he doesn't face any discrimination, he struggles to have a personal life since whenever their ship stops, they recieve their next destination and he has to spend all his time plotting their next course, and nobody else on the ship is gay or single, so he basically doesn't get any time to himself.
The idea for the pilot was that after introducing each character in a small vignette, explaining who they are, the starship docks on Earth, to unload cargo for several hours, so the rookie pilot goes planetside for some drinks to celebrate a successful first run; Craig finds the sucker, and convinces him to "party" with him (on the pilot's dime), and results in him drinking himself into a catatonic state; this delays the ship's plans, even after Luthor has plotted their new course, so he finally gets a chance to go planetside, where he meets Wax, and they eventually encounter the man that got their pilot drunk who becomes fast friends with Wax because, as a roboticist, he is used to interacting with non-humans, and whilst he doesn't approve of the means, Luthor appreciates that he got a chance to finally socialize with someone new. After some shenanigans and coincidences, Luthor has to go back onboard the ship, so he invites Craig and Wax to be his roommates.
Because Luthor basically doesn't work whilst the ship is in transit, it meant the story would mostly follow these three socializing, getting into drunken hijinks, dealing with prejudices with Wax, looking for love, and occasionally getting into sci-fi shenanigans due to the various anomalous or secret cargoes and passengers they have to transport.
Unwritten because: Well, a few reasons. Firstly, I originally planned this as an animation (back when I was unemployed), and I attempted to create this in Macromedia Flash... and I learned very quickly that single-handedly animating anything longer than 15 seconds is an absolute ball-ache. Also, as much as I like these characters and the concept, I am not a sitcom writer. I have come to realize that whilst I can enjoy reading character archs and interpersonal drama, I do not like writing it. I came up with some ideas for plots, like Luthor coming out of the closet to his new friends; Craig activating a robot that joins the cast; a fun romance with Luthor getting into a long-distance relationship with a guy that's scared of Wax; Craig trying to woo the ship's second-in-command & even some plot about a brewing alien war... but I just struggle to write stories that are entirely character-focussed. Characters should usually drive the plot, and I love writing dialogue where characters discuss the plot, but when the characters are the plot, I don't enjoy writing it (even when I enjoy watching it).
I am still very interested in writing science-fiction, so I haven't told you everything about this (there's a couple of plotlines and ideas I'll gladly cannibalize and Frankenstein into other stories, especially the alien war stuff) but at this point in time, I don't think I'll ever attempt anything remotely sit-com-like again.

08. CROOKED O'HARE
I love a good murder mystery, but they're surprisingly hard to find. Even though they were once incredibly popular, they seem to have vanished. So, I've been interested in writing a murder mystery for a long time. And I don't mean an occult detective or a crime story about a detective, I mean a proper Fairplay Mystery, where the reader can solve the puzzle alongside the detective. That's half the fun of a murder mystery. The other half is the detective themself, a character that is interesting, or has some key gimmick, that guides the story along. So, I had this idea of a detective called "Jack O'Hare", an whose gimmick was that he was a criminal. An Irish gangster who moved to New York in the early 1900s, after he gets framed for the murder of his own gang-leader, he's forced to solve the crime, and when he realizes the killer is his own best friend - meaning that he's going to be killed by the surviving members of his old gang - well it inspires Jack to go straight. So, the gimmick is, he's an ex-gangster, a ruffian and a thief, who spent most of his life being a criminal. So he knows how they think, he has connections in the underworld and now he's become a "good guy". I had this whole idea of him having a love interest - a Catholic, Hispanic girl - that did love him, but rejected him for his criminal, sinful ways; so, there would be this subplot about him trying to convince her that this isn't a scam or a con, he's actually going "legit". However, he does occasionally bend the rules to solve his crimes. Breaking and entering, roughing up suspects, stealing clues... that kind of thing, and he'd have an antagonistic relationship with a particularly by-the-book policeman. And I did have some plans for several stories in the series... about five. I had a closed-circle mystery set in a prison after that policeman caught him on trumped up charges of assault, when someone dies in a prison riot; a mystery where some drug addicted prostitute gets killed, so the police don't care enough to investigate; a mystery at a mansion where he arrived uninvited, and as an ex-con, people assume he's the killer, so again he has to clear his name... a few fun ideas. But, I never did write it...
Unwritten because: A few reasons. Firstly, 1900s? What the hell was I thinking?! I know almost nothing about the 1900s, I was just inspired because that's the classic "noir crime" era and several thinkpieces about "the decline of murder mystery" had convinced me that modern technology made murder mysteries harder to write... this is all nonsense by the way, modern technology doesn't change the murder mystery formula, unless you're a lazy writer and setting a story in a certain time period "for the vibe" is stupid. Now, I did try to revamp this story for a more modern era, something I could write without having to do a butt-tonne of research... but when I removed these characters from the early 1900s, their "classic" noir style washed off, and revealed them for the stereotypes they were. Irish gangster? Hot Catholic Hispanic floozy? By-the-book policeman with a moustache and a superiority complex? These weren't characters, they were caricatures. The real nail in the coffin? My inspiration, my gimmick, that made O'Hare feel so original? The idea that he was a "criminal-turned-detective"? Not only is that not original, it's the LEAST original detective concept in the world... one of the first ever icons of modern criminal investigation (and I'm talking in real life, not in fiction), who first profiled criminals, collected clues & started the whole concept of "detective work" was a man called Eugène-François Vidocq, a Frenchman who was a criminal-turned-criminalist from the 1800s. It turns out, after several years on the run, he witnessed a childhood friend of his César Herbaux, with whom he'd committed several crimes, being executed, and this inspired him to turn away from a life of crime - seriously?! Even my own character's turnaround was unoriginal! Vidocq had no other skills except committing crime, but he realized those skills could be used for good, to capture criminals. And it's not just art imitating life, but life inspiring art - Vidocq inspired several of the earliest "detectives" in fiction, including: Alexandre Dumas' "Monsieur Jackal"; Émile Gaboriau's "Monsieur Lecoq", who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes"; Edgar Allan Poe's "C. Auguste Dupin". So, in the end, I figured my story would require too much research; would take a lot of effort to polish up the stereotypes into three-dimensional characters & relied on an unoriginal premise.
Now, I've not given up on murder mysteries - far from it, I still have murder mystery story ideas I want to write - but, not with this detective, not this concept. I am not prepared to write a period piece, I don't find that kind of thing interesting, And if tried to adapt it to the modern era, I don't think I could do the story justice.

07. THE OTHER NEIGHBOURS
I still kind of like the title for this one... I might use it for something else. I even know the inspiration behind this one, because it's right there in the title... I live in the suburbs, and here everyone has neighbours, people whose homes are near theirs. But, if you're taking a stricter definition, a neighbour is someone next to you, meaning your neighbours are the ones you share a fence with. By this logic, most homes you should have three "neighbours". There's neighbouring homes to the left and the right, and one behind. I don't know if there's a special term for these, but I call them my "other neighbours", and the idea of this story was taking that concept to the extreme. See, I can talk to my left-and-right neighbours, if I want to know who they are, I can talk to them. But, if I want to know about my other neighbours, I'd need to put in more effort. And, I wanted to take the idea of "strangers in your neighbourhood" to the extreme.
So, this story was about a kid called Toby that became curious about his other neighbours. They had a tall mansion-like property, and the kid sees only one light on in their window at night, and hears strange bird-calls and jungle-like animal sounds. There's hedges all around, and he's never seen or heard a single person on the other side of the fence. So, one day, he pretends to throw his ball over the fence, to have a flimsy excuse to jump the fence and learn more about his neighbours. The story was about him encountering fantastical things on the other side of the fence. There would be a dog that was part-monster, and the size of a small car; a talking tropical bird called Clark; a cranky, old sleeping ghost; a squid trapped in a broken water heater; a room full of living instruments; a swarm of hyper-intelligent mice; a nature-spirit turned into a house-cleaner & a mischievous, talking monkey. I think it's a fun, quirky little story. I came up with the idea by designing the house first, and placing all of the weird neighbours all around it - the idea would be, the kid would meet the bird that would warn him about the dog, then he'd see the monkey, which would try to trick him into unlocking his cage by sending him to talk to the house-cleaner. So, then I tried writing the story, but when I got to a part where the kid could either go upstairs to the bedrooms, or downstairs to the basement, I didn't know which way to go. See, I was a young writer, and I had failed to give Toby a character, so he had no reason beyond 'the plot says so' to enter the house, let alone explore rooms. And it was then that I realized, I'd created a series of encounters inside rooms, most hidden behind doors, which often involve a young boy dealing with a magical puzzle, or encountering a creature sending him on a fetch quest - I'd accidentally written a videogame! So, hey, what if I turned this idea into a videogame.
Unwritten because: It turns out, videogames are supposed to be fun. I actually tried to create this game, twice, the first time was in Adventure Game Studio, a free "point-and-click" game maker and engine, but the coding was much too difficult for me to figure out, and I shelved the project, with dreams of one day finding someone who could create the game for me. Much later, I came across GameMaker Studio 2, a game creator tool which was much more intuitive to the non-coding mind. Now, this was a year or two ago, so I was much older; I adapted the story to add more horror elements, designed the levels - I even drew the whole first level, and created the character. But, after playing around with the character for a little bit, I realized... this game isn't fun. Sure, the story was more interesting, but a good videogame consists of gameplay, story and challenge. I had story, but there was no challenge: most of the puzzles I'd originally come up with were just fetch quests; and there was nothing good about the gameplay: walk around, talk to people and pick stuff up was kind of the start and end of the whole game. And because I had rewritten the story, the original plot (discovering that the swarm of mice was the wizard who originally owned the house, and bringing them back) was kind of lame, and I couldn't come up with a good reason why this whole thing had happened in the first place.
I still do like both concepts - I like the cutesy, "kid's book" feel of that original story, a kid encountering weird animals in a suburban home; and I also really like the horrific dark fantasy concept, with a teenager entering a cursed mansion. But, until I can learn how to make a videogame 'fun', I'm going to leave game creation to game creators. And whilst I'm still holding onto that setting and some of the characters and monsters from the horrific re-write of this story, I won't try rewriting The Other Neighbours for a third time (or would this be the fourth?). But damn, I still like that title... it still inspires cool ideas.

06. OTHERWORLD
This one is actually quite old, but the idea is very, very simple... geofiction. Also known as conworlding, geofiction is the basic idea of developing a real maps for fake places... "creating fictional geography", basically. See, a long while ago I created my own world, which I called Otherworld. The basic idea here was that I wanted to create stories which I was going to set on this artificial world I made. I was inspired by discworld's use of an alternate world to come up with interesting concepts and play with fun tropes, but instead of comedy and fantasy parody, I was interested in sci-fi homage and satire (I think... I'm not actually sure, but I wanted it to be kind of funny). The main intrigue of this planet was that there was a big hole in it, right through the poles, which affected sea, weather, culture and geography across the planet... in retrospect, that doesn't make any sense scientifically, since the world would probably have to collapse back into a spherical shape, but that was my idea, alright? I was young...
I had a series of stories based around the peculiarities of this world. The first story, with the working title "Weather Forecast" was originally set in Gorsenia, a country with crazy weather (because it was so close to the hole in the planet), so they developed the most advanced weather forcasting technology, only to realize it was so advanced, that by entering the right data, it could be used to predict the future. Another story, Firestorm, was about the king of Curland (a Pan-Asian Mishmash) leaving his throne to walk the country, and learn more about the lives of his citizenry, resulting in a political storm as several miscreants, both foreign and domestic, try to take advantage of the King's absence, only for a literal Firestorm to cause countrywide turmoil that only the king can resolve. There was another one about a scientist on the gothic, technologically advanced continent of Styriose creating artificial consciousness in a robot slave; and a story just called "The Hole Story" where several characters from Uranika (a cross between Eastern Europe and America) encounter the aliens responsible for blasting a hole in their planet... And there were several other ideas like different technology used to deal with the peculiar issues of each continent, and unusual terminology, since whilst these people basically spoke English, their cultural differences meant they used different words for some things.
Unwritten because: Honestly, it was too much work. I attempted to write the first chapter of the first story, set on Gorsenia, and since I was a young writer, I thought I'd start with my character waking up and going to work. But, even that scene was incredibly difficult, since I wanted him to be awoken by his alarm clock... but then I realized, would this world have alarm clocks? Also, how do they tell time? Does this world have a 24 hour day? And he's going to work, this must be a workday, but does this world have a weekend? Do they even have a 7 day week? I guess it depends on the time of year, but what kind of calendar does this world use? Would they base their seasons on the harvest, like many cultures have, or would they base them off some other yearly milestones. I did manage to come up with a 25-hour day, segmented into 5-hour quintants, skipping the whole calendar question, but even then, he got out of bed, and I realized... I had no idea what he would wear. I wanted to have weird creatures on this planet, not regular animals, so there weren't sheep, so what would their clothing be made of, if not wool and leather?
Okay, I'll worry about that later. So, he goes downstairs and eats breakfast... wait, what the hell would these people eat for breakfast? I just established that we don't have normal animals. Damn it!
I tried to skip ahead, and came up with some fun ideas, like there being subways to take people around the country, and a postman being this talented runner, since the terrible weather would make wheeled vehicles unreliable... but then I realized postmen wouldn't be the only people who couldn't use vehicles. How could a city work without vehicles... and wait, if it rained so much, wouldn't the trains also struggle due to the weather?
Basically, I realized that I'd walked into fractal writer's block, since any attempt to bypass a difficult section of research was just putting me face-to-face with another one. And if I tried to skip ahead, I'd just create problems that I'd either need to retcon, or ignore in the future.
This is not to say that geofiction, conworlding, or stories set on alien, fictional worlds are impossible, of course they're not. But, if I was going to create a story for one, it would need to be for a better reason than "drawing maps is fun", since I already drew the map and had fun, but when I tried to develop the world... I didn't. I'm not against doing something like this again, but I'd need to find some way to make the development much easier.

- - -

This blog post is getting a bit long, so I'm going to hit pause right here... but we'll continue this in tomorrow's post. I hope you're enjoying this, and let me know, do you have any story ideas that you've abandoned? You don't need to share them with the world like me, but since going through my old catalogue of Story Stuff, and finding my abandoned projects, I'm fascinated by the concept, so please let me know in the comments below.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, these are just a few of my abandoned ideas... and I'll see you tomorrow to share some more.

Skepticism 102: How to Argue Wrong

You don't know how to argue properly.

That's not just directed at you, but also most people you know... most people you don't know, and even me. It's a fundamental flaw of humanity that we tend not to know how to present a convincing argument. The reason why, well, I covered that in Part 1 of this retrospectively titled Student Skeptic series, please read that if you haven't, as it is a prerequisite reading for this continuing lesson.

Now, I recognize that "argument" is a bit of a loaded word, since an argument can be a reasonable presentation of ideas... and it can also be a shouting match between two people. I looked up the meaning in the dictionary, and apparently this has always been the case. Whilst "argue" comes from the Latin "arguere" meaning the act of proving, reasoning or (literally) illuminating, it could also be used to mean blaming, indicting or accusing, and one dictionary claimed it was frequentatively used to mean babble or chatter. So, it's always had this antagonistic, perhaps even dismissive aspect.
That could be because the word is flawed, or it could be indicative of just how poor humans are at arguing that the definition of "presenting evidence" is tainted with accusation, but that's pure speculation on my part, I'm not an etymologist...

It's part of the reason why, I don't actually like the word "argument", I prefer "debate", since debate is a formal, public discussion of a question or subject, so as to discuss opposing views. Even an unstructured debate is, in principle at least, more open to opposing views. But, it's flawed, since debates are usually an open forum... so, for the sake of clarity, let's call a spade a spade, and I'll be using the word "argument" for any form of disagreement, be it debate or debacle.

See, the fundamental flaw with arguing is two-fold. Firstly, when we argue we tend to rely on things which are, to put it lightly, completely irrelevant. Our mood at the time, our flawed understanding, the status of ourselves or our opponents. Human social interaction is fraught with extraneous details. This is a beautiful thing, the many layers of empathy, experience, expression and emotion... but when it comes to matters of fact and basis in reality, truth can get lost in the shuffle.
If you want to argue why a particular position is right, or true, you really ought to focus on the proven facts of the case at hand.
Secondly, arguing is fundamentally flawed because... well, people are convinced by bad arguments. As I said, human social interaction is multi-faceted, and although it makes no sense to fall for an argument because someone says "Of course the Moon is made of cheese, what are you, stupid?", but humans can be nonsensical sometimes.

So, I think that's the first thing you need to understand with this lesson. Whilst I am here to teach you about the flaws in argument, so that you can have a better means of identifying truth, that doesn't mean you're going to become some irrefutable debatant. We're not here to convince the unwashed masses... I'm here to teach you how to be less wrong, and that means teaching you not only how to present your position, but also how to be receptive when someone else presents a better position.
Yes, I recognize I'm basically teaching you how to argue with yourself, but it's a useful skill when you're trying to find out what is most likely true, and what is most likely false.

Now, I find that the best way to teach you how to argue well is to show you how not to argue, and go from there. First thing first, when making your case, you should try to avoid fallacy. What is Fallacy? Well, I'm glad you asked because The Word of the Day is: FALLACY

Fallacy /falləsee/ n. 1. A deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.: That the world is flat was at one time a popular fallacy. 2. A misleading or unsound argument. 3. Deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness. 4. Logic. Any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound. 5. Obsolete. Deception.

Since we're talking about skepticism and argumentation, the most relevant of these definitions is "4.", the definition in regards to logic. That said, the main definitions are also accurate—as all fallacy is misleading, deceptive or false; it's ultimately a failure of reason.
There are many ways to reason incorrectly, but for ease of understanding, many of them have actually been identified and named. The following list is intended to be comprehensive, and if you see where it is lacking, please let me know, but this list may be incomplete. Many fallacies are known by their Latin names, because philosophers are nerds, but I will list them by their English name...

A COMPREHENSIVE* LIST OF FALLACIES

Anecdotal Evidence: trying to use a personal or isolated event as proof for a general or widespread claim.
(Latin: "mea historia"; also known as "unscientific evidence" or a "nonrepresentative sample")

Appeal to Ambiguity: using words with unclear or indefinite meanings to try to prove one's claim.
(Latin: "argumentum ad ambiguitas" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of imprecise language, but includes more specific instances, such as: Amphiboly [or Syntactic Ambiguity], Continuum Fallacy [or Fallacy of the Beard, related: Loki's Wager], Equivocation [or Lying by Omission], Etymological Fallacy, Insinuation [or Innuendo], Intensional Fallacy, Misleading Accent [Latin: "accentus"], Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy [or Debate and Switch], Polysemy, Principle of Explosion [Latin: "ex falso quodlibet"] & Reification [or Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness])

Appeal to Authority: claiming that the celebrity or intellect of a claimant alone is enough to substantiate a claim.
(Latin: "argumentum ad auctoritum" or "argumentum ad verecundium"; also known as "argument from authority" or "false attribution"; related to the "courtier's reply")

Appeal to Character: attacking an opponent's character or personal traits, as proof against their claims.
(Latin: "argumentum ad hominem"; also known as a "personal attack" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of character denigration, but includes more specific instances, such as: Appeal to Motive, Poisoning the Well, Tone Policing & the Traitorous Critic Fallacy [Latin: "ergo decedo"] - see also Genetic Fallacy)

Appeal to Emotion: trying to convince through feeling, instead of a valid argumentation.
(Latin: "argumentum ad adfectum" or "argumentum ad passiones" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of emotional reasoning, but includes more specific instances, such as: Appeal to Anxiety [or Think of the Children], Appeal to Flattery, Appeal to Guilt , Appeal to Hope [or Wishful Thinking], Appeal to Pity [or the Galileo Argument], Appeal to Rage [or Appeal to Justice] & Appeal to Spite -)

Appeal to Frustration: presenting several claims or comments, overwhelming one's opponent, rather than allowing them to focus on a single debate topic.
(Latin: "argumentum ad nauseum"; also known as "filibuster" or the "gish gallop")

Appeal to Hypocrisy: responding to criticism by claiming one's opponent is also guilty.
(Latin: "tu quoque"; also known as "whataboutism" or the "you too defence")

Appeal to Incredulity: claiming a claim is wrong because it is difficult for you to understand.
(Latin: "argumentum ad incredulitas"; also known as "argument from ignorance", "appeal to common sense", the "divine fallacy", the "moralistic fallacy" or the "psychologist's fallacy")

Appeal to Moderation: assuming that a compromise between opposing viewpoints is the most valid or fair.
(Latin: "argumentum ad moderatio"; also known as "false compromise" or "fallacy of the mean". )

Appeal to Nature: arguing that something is good, ideal, just, true or valid because it is natural.
(Latin: "argumentum ad naturam"; also known as "look at the trees")

Appeal to Popularity: claiming something is true, or valid, because it is common, popular or widespread.
(Latin: "argumentum ad populum"; also known as "bandwagon fallacy" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of preferential popularity, but includes more specific instances, such as: Appeal to Commonality [Latin "ad numeram"], Appeal to Novelty [Latin: "ad novitam"] & Appeal to Tradition [Latin: "ad antiquitatem"])

Appeal to Possibility: Claiming that something is probable, because it is possible.
(Latin: "possibiliter ergo probabiliter"; also known as "appeal to probability" - see also Slippery Slope)

Appeal to Purity: claiming that a valid criticism only applies to invalid forms of one's claim. (Latin: "argumentum ad puritas"; also known as "no true scotsman" - see also Special Pleading)

Appeal to Repetition: repeating the same claim over and over, wearing down an opponent's patience or stamina, rather than logic.
(Latin: "argumentum ad infinitum"; also known as "going in circles" or "proof by assertion" - see also Appeal to Incredulity)

Appeal to Ridicule: asserting that because a claim is counter-intuitive, unusual or humorous, it is invalid.
(Latin: "argumentum ad absurdo" or "argumentum ad lapidum"; also known as "appeal to mockery", "appeal to the stone" or "the horse laugh")

Appeal to Violence: threatening harm to your opponent, to convince them to your claims, rather than logic.
(Latin: "argumentum ad baculum"; also known as "appeal to force" or "argument from the stick")

Bare Assertion: a claim presented without support, evidence or reason; or an opinion expressed as though it were a fact.
(Latin: "ipse dixit")

Begging the Question: a claim whose premises assert the conclusion, rather than support it.
(Latin: "petitio principii"; also known as "assuming the conclusion"; related to "Kafkatrapping" - see also Circular Reasoning)

Burden of Disproof: asserting that an unsubstantiated claim is true, until it has been disproven.
(Latin: "onus probandi"; also known as "russell's teapot" or "shifting the burden of proof")

Causal Fallacy: asserting or assuming the cause for an effect, without proof of causality.
(Latin: "non causa pro causa" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of causal misattribution, but includes more specific instances, such as: Causal Reductionism [or Fallacy of the Single Cause], Gambler's Fallacy [or the Monte Carlo Problem], Magical Thinking, One-Way Causality [or Ignoring Bidirectional Causation], Regression Fallacy [or the Historical Fallacy] Reverse Causality [or Wrong Direction], Spurious Correlation [Latin: "post hoc ergo propter hoc"] & Third-Cause Fallacy [or Ignoring a Common Cause])

Circular Reasoning: making a claim which includes its unproven conclusion within its own premise.
(Latin: "circulus in probandi"; also known as a "round argument")

Composition Fallacy: claiming that a quality of one part must be equally shared by the whole.
(Latin: "totum pro parte" or "modo hoc"; also known as "false conjunction" or the "package-deal fallacy" - see also Division Fallacy)

Division Fallacy: claiming that a quality of the whole must be equally shared by one part.
(Latin: "pars pro toto"; also known as "ecological fallacy" - see also Composition Fallacy)

Fallacy Fallacy: assuming that a claim is wrong because it's claimant used a fallacy.
(Latin: "argumentum ad logicam"; also known as "argument from fallacy" - see also Genetic Fallacy)

False Dichotomy: claiming that just two (or very few) options exist, ignoring other, valid options.
(Latin: "falsus dilemma"; also known as "black-and-white thinking", the "nirvana fallacy" or the "perfect solution fallacy"; related to "false analogy")

Formal Fallacy: When the conclusion of a claim does not logically follow from the premises.
(Latin: "non sequitur" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of illogical structure, but includes more specific instances, such as: Affirming the Consequent, Denying the Antecedent, Affirming a Disjunct, Denying a Conjunct, Fallacy of Exclusive Premises, Fallacy of Four Terms, Fallacy of Necessity, Illicit Commutativity, Illicit Major, Illicit Minor, Affirmative Conclusion from Negative Premises, Negative Conclusion from Affirmative Premises & Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle)

Genetic Fallacy: assuming that a claim is wrong because of the nature of its origins, motive, or claimant.
(Latin: "argumentum ab originis"; also known as "association fallacy", "guilt by association" or "honour by association" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of categorical dismissal, but includes more specific instances, such as: Appeal to the Purse [Latin: "argumentum ad crumenam"], Bulverism [or Psychogenetic Fallacy], False Equivalence [or Comparing Apples and Oranges] & Playing the Nazi Card [Latin: "reductio ad hitlerum"])

Incomplete Evidence: presenting data that supports one's claim, whilst ignoring data which disputes it.
(Latin: "malum specimen"; also known as "cherry-picking", "base rate neglect", "false-positive paradox", "hasty generalization", "incomplete comparison", "prosecutor's fallacy", "proving too much", the "quantitative fallacy", "suppressed evidence" or the "texas sharpshooter fallacy" - see also Special Pleading)

Irrelevant Conclusion: presenting a counter-claim that is valid and logically sound, but irrelevant to the proponent's claims.
(Latin: "ignoratio elenchi"; also known as "missing the point" or a "red herring" - see also Strawman Argument)

Loaded Question: asking a question which has assumption or bias implicit in its phrasing, or a question which outright makes two claims, whilst purporting to make one.
(Latin: "plurium interrogationum" or "ducens inquisitum"; also known as "biased question", the "conjunction fallacy" [or the "Linda problem"] or a "double-barrelled question")

Slippery Slope: claiming that a harmless/neutral position is invalid, as it might lead to something worse.
(Latin: "ignota consequentia"; also known as "appeal to consequences"; related to "jumping to conclusions")

Special Pleading: dismissing valid criticism by claiming one's position is uniquely immune to it.
(Latin: "argumentum ad immunitas"; also known as "double-standard", "nut-picking", "shifting the goalposts" or "survivorship bias")

Strawman Argument: misrepresenting an opponent's position as a weaker claim instead, so it's easier to dismiss.
(Latin: "argumentum ad effigia" - note: This fallacy refers to many forms of claim amelioration, but includes more specific instances, such as: Persuasive Definition & Quoting Out-of-Context [or Quote Mining, also a Contextotomy])

As you can see, there are dozens of fallacies, and they are all fallacious in their own particular ways. When arguing logically, or trying to understand the truth of a claim, you must avoid using these if you wish to have a valid argument.
Now, this alone does not guarantee that a statement is false - there is after all the "Fallacy Fallacy", just because an argument is unsound doesn't mean the statement being made is wrong:
     "Of course the Earth isn't flat, what are you, stupid?" (appeal to character)
     "It's a bad idea to run with scissors, because Mummy told me so." (appeal to authority)
     "If you keep calling homosexuals 'unnatural', I'll punch you in the face." (appeal to violence)
These claims here are all accurate... but the arguments being used to prove them (or, silence dissent) aren't truly reasonable. That doesn't mean these claims are false — far from it — but it means the arguments have failed, and that's an important distinction.

If you avoid these fallacies, that should greatly improve your ability to reason, and argue your position... but that said, how do you argue well?
You might want to look into propositional calculus, and logical axioms, but at the end of the day, there's only two good ways to argue:

1. If you're arguing Fact (truth, reality and the way things are — describing how things are), then you must present evidence that what you're claiming comports with reality.
2. If you're arguing Opinion (values, morals or things you prefer — prescribing how you believe things should be), then you should establish some common belief, opinion, want or need between you and your opponent (or the target of your opinion; be that an individual, a community, or humanity as a whole), and from there, use exemplary evidence to convince others of your preference.
   

So, evidence... yeah, that's kind of it. There's also reason and logic, and when you're arguing prescriptively, it gets more complicated and requires a better understanding of logic... but it's still all about facts and proveable concepts.

In a way, it's surprising that it's so easy, since all you need to do is stop wasting time with the other stuff, but that's also what makes it complicated. Human beings are biased, emotional, messy things... I think I've said that three times now, but it's true. For a lot of us, we've already been convinced of things because of fallacy. Just think about the number of things that teachers, parents and peers taught you, and their reason was "if you don't, you'll be punished" or "do it because I told you to" or "do it, come on, we're all doing it"...
It is true, to err is human, and that is especially true of reason. Humans don't know how to argue properly. And even when you do, you may find yourself unable to convince others.

But, that's why argument and debate isn't really the point of this post... if you want to use this to engage in argument in an open forum, I whole-heartedly support you (Good Luck!). But, as far as I'm concerned, an understanding of fallacy is a necessary element of introspection, self-skepticism and personal truth-seeking.
It sounds silly, but I want you to argue with yourself, to question your own beliefs, and investigate whether they are built on a foundation of reason, fact and logic... or one of these many fallacies.

Informal fallacy is a part of human social interaction, we are irrational beings, but if you start with yourself, and develop your own beliefs, then you are able to step back into informal debate and argument, and be able to support your own beliefs.
I occasionally argue with others, philosophically, politically, morally, but my goal is never to prove anyone else wrong (people tend to get offended when you tell them they're wrong), rather, my goal is to convince myself of the other person's beliefs. If I fail, I explain to the opponent why I'm still skeptical, and present my own counter-points, based on my reason.
I don't try to prove anyone else wrong, I try to prove me wrong, and if I can't, I explain why - because I'm a skeptic, and I want to give other claims their best chance of convincing me. I don't point out fallacies as a "gotcha" to try to shut down debate... I point them out to explain "you can't convince me without reason, please provide a better argument".

See ultimately, that's the most important part of understanding argumentation - argument is fraught with peril, because of how complicated it is, but the worst possible way to argue is by trying to prove anyone else wrong. You'll never convince anyone else by isolating their wrength and pointing it out to them. To most people, pointing out where they're wrong is basically saying "Look, this is how stupid you are!", and as I pointed out in Part 1 of this series, most people aren't ready to accept that they're stupid — heck, I've been a skeptic for years, and I struggle to admit when I'm wrong — so instead, I want to focus on self-reflection, because at least then there's more room for rational debate.

If you're reading this, hoping to find a way to prove your opponent wrong... you've already failed.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and let me know if you've ever come across one of these fallacies "in the wild" - I'm sure you have, and having a list as "comprehensive" as this will hopefully make you realize just how common they are. Until Next Time, I'm going to go argue with myself about what I'm going to post tomorrow...