Writer's Workshop: Two Types of Ponies (Part 2)

All right, everyone. Hope you enjoyed the last post, because it's time to reveal what the big secret is. Lilly and Holly represent masculine and femi... wait, what's that? Georg totally blew my secret and revealed the answer in the last post? ...Oh.

So, yeah. That's the big secret. When people/characters go into a problem, they have two ways of thinking, usually coded as "male" or "female." 'Course, #notallmen use the male-coded problem-solving style, and #notallwomen use the female-coded one, so for clarity and fairness, I'm going to use the terms "Linear" and "Holistic" instead. As you might guess, that's where the names Lily and Holly come from. Lily is the Linear thinker, and Holly is the Holistic thinker. (Holly has nothing to do with Holly, the character from my old fic, "A Call to Vespers.")

So what exactly is Linear and Holistic thinking? Well, let's start with Linear. Linear thinkers look for direct cause and effect when they see a problem. Things need to be fairly one-dimensional: if this, then that. With a clear path from beginning to end, a Linear thinker can blaze through a problem like nothing! They're fantastic at cutting right to the heart of the issue. They can get tripped up, though, when things aren't as simple as all that. I'm reminded of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal where Superman tries to stop poverty rather than criminals, but discovers that the system is so convoluted that there's no one easy solution, no if-then to pursue. His plaintive response is: "So who do I punch?" Unlike many other problems, it's not so simple as punching someone.

All right, then Holistic thinking. I'm male, so it's a little bit trickier for me to explain this, but I'll try. The word "holistic" means, basically, "as a whole." A Holistic thinker doesn't see cause and effect; instead they see problems more like... blending a whole bunch of things together in a huge mish-mash. Adding this affects that in this way, changing this other thing, and if you have all three of them, then this happens. So Holistic thinkers see the butterfly effect: step on a butterfly, and it affects all these other things, and something you'd never expect happens in the end, like Lizard Hitler winning World War II. The link is so convoluted that a Linear thinker could never imagine it, but a Holistic thinker, they can keep track of all of it. Of course, that means they fall to the opposite problem: getting caught up in all those extra details interweaving when one main cause-effect relationship is really at stake. If they need to find one right solution, they may get stuck trying to negotiate every detail into the answer. If they fall out with one of their friends, they might try to subtly manipulate the friend rather than address the actual problem that got them there.

Thus, you can see how each style can help or hurt in different situations. The episode that always comes to mind for for this is Look Before You Sleep. Applejack is 100% Linear: she thinks in terms of what's important right now and how to fix it. If it's raining, get under a table. If you make a s'mores, it's meant to be eaten. Rarity, on the other hand, is over-the-top Holistic: she sees how small changes can cause bigger problems, even if they're not obvious. Putting on mud masks and cucumbers may seem silly, but it clears up skin and reduces puffiness, and it's meant as an exercise in camaraderie, so there's a balance. However, Applejack gets tripped up by jumping to stabilize the tree, not noticing the uneasy balance it was in (literally), while Rarity gets caught up in small things like getting muddy or cleaning up a disorganized room, when the real problem is still at large.

So what's the takeaway here? Stories revolve around a single problem that the characters need to solve: beat the bad guy, get to the destination on time, whatever. You should know what the solution to the problem is, but as your characters try to figure it out, have them get caught up in their thinking methods. Trip up a Linear thinker, or catch up a Holistic thinker. Another great way to use these two mindsets is to pit them against each other, like Lily and Holly. Linear and Holistic thinkers confuse the heck out of each other; neither makes sense from the other's perspective. Look at all those messy details? Not when there's a causal problem at stake! Look for the chain of logic? Not when there's subtler forces at work here. Lastly, consider your own biases. Like I said, it's hard to cast into the other thinking process, but if you're writing a character like that, try to envision what they may be thinking. If you can't understand why Rarity has to outdo Applejack to win Trenderhoof's affections, or why Twilight takes Celestia's exhortation not to let her friends help her defeat Sombra seriously, maybe you need to take a second pass with their problem-solving styles before you put them in your story.

I hope that all makes sense. This is a really complicated subject, made no less complicated by the fact that nobody's 100% one or another, and even my examples probably aren't perfect. Human psychology is still very much up in the air, so take what I've said with a grain of salt. But perhaps, with the help of these two articles, you can start to see these differences more clearly, and you can try to write characters in that other mindset believably.