DMB Digest: Tuning the Ole B.S. Meter

It Takes One to Know One

As they say, “Don’t try to bullspit a bullspitter.” Er, or something like that.

If you’re new to these parts, you might not have picked up on the fact that I’m full of grade A bull-plop. One of the fringe benefits of my masterful ability to weave rumor, humor, and gossip into a tapestry of truthiness, is a finely tuned B.S. meter. Some might call it an occupational hazard. I call it the human race’s last greatest hope.

Having grown up on a cattle ranch before graduating from a university known as “The Berkley of the Rockies,” I’ve developed an intimate working knowledge of literal and figurative manure. (I bet you saw that one coming.)

After graduation, I spent thirteen years helping university students navigate the spiritual and emotional ups and downs of their own tumultuous “coming-of-age” stories. From my experience I can tell you that everybody has good reasons to believe what they believe. I can also tell you that we’ve all bought into to a certain amount of bullshit.

Today’s technological, political, and emotionally pubescent climate makes it harder than ever to discern horse apples from Granny Smiths. So I thought I would quickly break down the basic tiers of B.S. to assist in easier detection. This is for all you younger readers out there, but especially for all you older readers who have gotten lazy in your hard-earned “opinionated years.”

When it comes to recognizing B.S. let’s start with the most obvious level and work our way toward the most subtle. At the obvious end of the spectrum, we have first and foremost stories that report themselves as fiction. These can be identified by their classification as and self-admission of being fictional. So for example, The Da’Vinci Code is fiction.

Next, we have what ancient academics referred to as “satire.” Some of you might have heard of it. Satire is essentially taking something based in reality and exaggerating it to the point of ludicrousness. It’s supposed to provide either insight or entertainment (sometimes even both!). I hope this isn’t a spoiler, but Gulliver’s Travels isn’t a true story about a really, big dude or a bunch of really, small people. It’s satirical. In a modern context, satire can get a little trickier. In case the following is news to you, know my intent is not to humiliate or shame. But Stephen Colbert is a comedian, not a political pundit. The Colbert Report was an example of satire. The comedian, Stephen Colbert, decided to cancel The Colbert Report because too many people started thinking it was bonafide news reporting.

The next layer of the B.S. onion can be summed up as shock jocks meet news anchors. Me and my fellow bullspitters often refer to this level of B.S. as “Vegas Smoke” or V.S. It consists of a bunch of “Oh my god! What in the world could that be!?” (V.S. clings to the interrobang, so “!?” is a dead give away.) Whether in a book, a film, streaming media, or social media V.S. should be easy to detect by the shear amount of name calling, finger pointing, and vulgarities.

For the next gradient of the spectrum, we have to put our thinking caps on. Without your reading glasses, this is where you have to start squinting. This layer is most simply put as “unspoken bias.” It’s built around the most basic human desire to categorize the world and everything in it as “us vs. them.” When someone is trying to spin you a story or pitch you the “God’s honest truth” about how a pregnant man gave birth (“That’s a fact”) without any bias or spin, the most important guiding force for your B.S. meter should be to fish for the facts untold. Look for the perspective that’s missing. What viewpoint is being glossed over? What story is being ignored?

And there you have it. Once you are well-practiced in detecting fiction, satire, vegas smoke, and the unspoken bias, you’ll grow confident enough in your interactions to let down your defensive exterior and focus on understanding “the other” and the very good reasons they have for believing what they believe (even those furry-eyed, jack wagons. I mean, can you believe those guys!?).

At the Desk This Week

Booyah. I banged out another couple thousand words this past week on The Green Ones. I even dug into a full blown psychic-battle with EM storms and everything. Good times. I stopped in the middle of the fight so it would be easy to come back to next week. Plus, I have no idea how I want to end the fight. Well, I guess I know how I want everything to wind up in the end, but I have no idea how to get there from here.

The hardest part is kicking your protagonist when they’re down until the reader starts to wonder how they can possibly get back up…and then finding an amazing way for them to not only get back up, but to move the story forward. I’ll let it stew over the weekend. Hopefully I’ll come up with something shock and awesome.

For my Lost DMB fans out there, I’m now streaming the third season: McCutchen’s Bones (which actually starts with “Hell’s Womb”).

If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…

[Click here to start at the beginning.]

---

Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Boundaries, Season 2 of The Green Ones. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Green Ones until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 100 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Green Ones. Happy reading!