I would choose this quiet after you - I Guess

Jardin du Luxembourg

Artist: Elaine de Kooning

Date: 1977

Low level actions are things that mostly publicly broadcast support: signing your name on a letter to management; participating in an email reply-all action; wearing a union tee shirt or pin on the same day; attending a lunchtime rally in the break room, etc.

Medium level actions are things that are more confrontational and might actually inconvenience management: an email action designed to overwhelm a manager's inbox and make it unusable; doing a work-to-rule day; participating in a march on the boss.

High level actions are things that are even more confrontational or involve withholding labor: public shaming, a sufficiently heated march on the boss; a lunch time "practice picket"; a limited-duration work stoppage; and, of course, an indefinite strike.

Obviously strikes are the thing everyone thinks of, but here's the thing: even the most ideologically committed union member will not be willing to go on strike the first day of your contract campaign.

They just won't. You need to work up to that. You need to get people comfortable with doing less intense things first, and once those seem normal to them, you move up the scale.

People need to see that nothing bad happens after they participate in an action, and they need to see all their co-workers participating, too. They need to see that, yes, this was uncomfortable and maybe even scary, but it was fine and other people here had my back.

This is a lesson the labor movement learned many decades ago that I think other activist groups and activist-minded people would do well to absorb, too:

The Low Level Stuff Is What Makes The Big Stuff Possible

Don't assume that "when it gets bad enough" you'll step up then. Because by then, things will be even more intense than they are now. The needs will be greater and the risks will be scarier. And you will think to yourself, "Everyone else has just been going along with this, so if I take a stand, I'll just get crushed."

Take a small stand now. Go to protests; call Congress; donate money; attend community meetings; join a local political group or get involved with your local democratic party; join or form a tenants union; become a clinic escort; etc. etc. etc.

Take a small stand now and do it over and over until it becomes normal to you.

Image one: Most people imagine they would know what to do if armed nazis began going door-to-door rounding people up.

"Ah, this is it. This is the moment where we use force."

Leaving aside people's capacity for self-delusion, I'd also argue that threats do not present themselves clearly until far too late.

Image two: Examples of direct action tactics in the middle of the spectrum:

Physically blocking an ICE deportation bus with your bodies

Working with a tenants' union to do eviction defense (blocking sheriffs or security guards from evicting a family)

Organizing an "Underground Railroad" type network

Image three: The purpose of mid-spectrum direct action is to increase the cost & complexity of the enemy's operations, while putting the enemy in a dilemma.

Their dilemma is: "How do we achieve our objectives without overreacting so much that we galvanize more resistance?"

Basic counter-insurgency doctrine.

Image four: No enemy has infinite resources. Not even the US government.

If resistance is widespread, at multiple levels, your enemy will achieve fewer things, at higher cost and more slowly.

Resistance over here means they have to shift focus from over there, taking pressure off other resistance groups.

Image five: It's unfortunate that the history of the Civil Rights movement has been rewritten as "We marched peacefully until our enemies grew a conscience".

MLK and SNCC accomplished a major shift in policy using a deliberate, low-grade insurgency carried out with incredible skill and decades-long strategy.

Hey, so, I started doing a writeup a week ago about how to get character voices in your fanfic to sound “in character,” in response to a comment from a new writer I was beta-ing for. 

I’ve been told this is a thing I do well.

As someone who studied dialogue extensively for a theatre degree, I tend to do this reflexively now, and I don’t write out each individual step. But I put some thought into how I might break down the process if I was new at it and looking to get better.

I don’t think it’s actually that different than an actor studying character accents, except as a writer you’re breaking down meaning rather than sound.

Let’s take a look at what makes dialogue unique to a character. I’m gonna list these as bullet points first, and then I’ll suggest some exercises to explore these aspects of speech.

Most important aspects - focus on these first

Vocabulary - the words they use. As subset of this:

Complexity of words, which can include:

Syllable length

Likelihood to be used in casual conversation - a character can be very smart and still use very informal language.

Cultural touchpoints

Culture can include pop culture references - think Tony Stark’s nicknames for everyone, i.e. “Point Break” and “Underoos”

How in or out of sync the character is with the story’s setting with regard to both time and place - are they from a different country or era of time than their peers?

Important - Check these out if you have time

How likely the character is to speak their mind vs. change the subject - this could be for any number of reasons, from fear to duplicity

Amount they say / Introvertedness / how reticent they are - This is somewhat related to the above point, but not necessarily, and should be researched from different angles. Subverting a topic is not the same thing as being afraid to talk about it.

Different ways of speaking with different characters - this could be a function of story (i.e. how a character who is captured speaks to their captors as opposed to friends) as well as pure Code Switching

Deep cuts - Advanced aspects of speech

Fluency in the language they are speaking

Accents - You do not have to write a character in an accent, i.e. spell the words differently to show the accent, if you don’t want to. It really depends on the piece (usually how light hearted or humorous you want it to be) whether you do or not.

Okay, this is all well and good, you say. But HOW do I incorporate this into my writing?

Dialogue analysis exercise

Find five (or more, but at least five) representative lines from your character’s canon dialogue.

If they don’t speak, don’t have five lines, do the best you can. (I imagine other forms of communications can probably also be analyzed in this way, but I’m gonna focus on dialogue for now.)

These are going to be your key phrases. They need to be from canon and they need to be words that really show off who your character is.

Say the words out loud. Read them again and again. What do they sound / feel like?

What is the average syllable length? How many long words do they use?

Do any words jump out at you as archaic? What about modern pop culture references?

What is a different way they could have said this? Write some alternate versions of this phrase and figure out WHY the character didn’t say it this way instead. What is the difference between the canon dialogue and the alternative? Try to be as specific as possible. It’s as important to know what they wouldn’t say as what they would.

Look up any of the more complex words and find some similar ones, with a similar level of complexity. Use a thesaurus you trust and possibly also Wordnik. If your character doesn’t use ANY complex words, reflect on that. Why? What’s their reason? How does that fit with the rest of their personality?

Think of some other characters from other pop culture pieces who speak in a similar way. It doesn’t have to be 100% the same, but if it can help your ear get used to some new-but-different phrases, it’s enough. You’re training your brain to speak like the character. Start to sort phrases they would say from ones they wouldn’t. How do these two characters differ?

Now that you have worked thoroughly through your key phrases, start to imagine these lines said in something other than the original context. What if they were said to a different character? WOULD they even be said? What would change? What would happen if your character was scared / hurt / overjoyed / sick?

Finally, after all that, write some NEW dialogue for your character, either as practice, or right into your fic draft. Keep using your key phrases as a guide and go back to canon as much as you need to! You can do this!

After all of this, you should feel significantly more confident in writing that existing character into your story. Huzzah!

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about the name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)