Barry Bonds. Lance Armstrong. Roger Clemens. Tiger Woods. Alex Rodriguez. Marion Jones. Does it seem like the people on the top are all getting busted with cheating lately? (Or in Tiger’s case, cheating on his wife) Beyond sports, what about Enron and their imaginative financial tricks, Clinton and his love of cigars, Rush Limbaugh and his addiction to pain meds. Are the people at the top all crooked? Did those athletes get there solely by cheating? Is there no chance for the clean contender to make it to the victor’s circle?

Let’s talk about the Scrutiny Bias.

Never heard of the Scrutiny Bias?

That’s because I’m just now making it up.

The concept is simple, and I want you to explore it on your own time and let me know if you think it has merit. Here’s the pervasive idea (and one that seems logical): people who cheat at sports (and in other arenas) make it to the top because of their lack of scruples. In essence, because they are able to cheat. That leaves all the honest people foundering in last place. The reason Walmart is so successful is because they employ unfair business practices. Everyone else is honest, which is why they can’t make it in this dog-eat-dog world.

The Scrutiny Bias presents it in another way: the only reason the people at the top are caught cheating is because we only care to investigate the winners. Who wants to dig into the affairs of the 12th guy on the money list? Who cares what the guy with the bronze medal did to deserve it? Nobody. Their lucky winnings is that we leave them alone.

A few concepts:

1. The statistical likelihood that the few people cheating are the ones coming out on top is small.

2. We already know some runners-ups have cheated, it’s just not as scandalous because the fruits of their shenanigans don’t inspire the same degree of awe and envy (Sammy Sosa’s corked bat would’ve been a bigger deal had he won the home run derby).

3. We are all cheaters to some degree.

Wow. Number three really snuck up on us there, didn’t it? But here’s the thought experiment: if your life was subject to President-elect scrutiny, would it hold up? Have you ever stolen music, cut in line, cheated on a loved one in thought or deed? Have you given preferential treatment to someone because of their relation to you, or their looks and charm, or because it would financially reward you in the end? Have you ever cheated on your taxes, been rude or hostile with a client/customer? Have you borrowed something with the intention of giving it back, but without asking? Have you rolled through a few thousand stopsigns? Do you habitually drive five miles over the speed limit? Did you drink before you were 21? Do you use recreational drugs? Have you ever flirted with a co-worker, or said something sexually or racially insensitive around them?

Man, that was a hard list to come up with. It took some wild imagination on my part. Some of these things are very big deals, some might be explained away, I probably left out your worst offense. The cool thing is this: not many people care about most of these things. Not many people care about you (or me). But what if you won? What if you were the best? What if people envied and admired you, would they want to know how you did it? I think they would.

Walmart is a great example. Often cited for their poor business practices, I enjoy asking their detractors what some of these are. I hear they don’t pay well (none of the small business owners I’ve worked for paid very well either). I hear they don’t give enough benefits or health coverage (the small businesses I’ve worked for gave zero of either). They have a lot of employee complaints (they have a lot of employees, and a lot of people wondering if anyone has ever complained).

Look at it this way: if we aggregated a random sampling of small businesses to equal the footprint and size of Walmart, and then dug through those joints for the worst that we could find, what would we come up with? My guess is a pile of dead bodies, a gazillion lawsuits, a shitty BBB rating, a bunch of employees with no benefits, shitty pay, and no chance of promotion, etc… Basically, the same deal Walmart provides. But nobody cares to dig into a million small businesses. There’s no scrutiny.

My guess is that the percentage of players using performance enhancing drugs in baseball during the 80’s and 90’s was greater than 50%. Most of those people still weren’t good enough to break records. Nobody cares. We dig and dig into the people at the top until we find untoward activity. Maybe, just maybe, if we scrutinized anyone with such vigor, we would find what we were looking for. Maybe our looking is as much a tell as their doing. Does that mean we shouldn’t look? No. It means we should look around a bit more evenly. And we should understand how this bias might color our conclusions. Rather than assume the cheaters always win, we might want to couch that in more accurate terms: Most of the people competing are cheaters in some fashion or another. Most of the people who win are . . . people.

Hey fans! I’m slaving away on book four: Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace, and I need your help. As it turns out, the Kindle edition of the Molly Fyde books are selling quite well, and I think it’s because of the awesome number of reviews I have on Amazon. In order to build more steam, I need more of these reviews! If you’ve read the books, please go write up some thoughts on why you loved them. Don’t be nervous, the review can be as conversational as this paragraph. Just rank it as high as you think it deserves, do one for each book, and state your opinion. Your few minutes of time could really help this excellent series grow and grow!

While you’re at it, tell everyone you know that has read the books to do the same. And for each of you that write reviews for the first three books, I’ll send you a free sample from the beginning of book four. And who knows, your review might turn into a blurb that makes its way in the front pages of the next entry!

Thanks so much for all the words of encouragement. These reviews do more than just help others find the series, they are what motivate me to get up every morning and work my butt off on these stories. Keep it up so I can keep driving forward!

Only, the other way…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002CMLE04

That’s right, the UK Kindle store is now open, and the Molly books are well represented across the pond. If you know any limeys who haven’t read the books yet, tell them to give the series a shot.

I get teary-eyed watching this.

For the third time.

Seriously, I’ve got a full-on geek-crush for Ryan Reynolds after this display of classy awesomeness. Enjoy:

I just fired off an email to another writer, and it contained some thoughts on these two concepts that I thought I’d share a bit more publicly. Keep in mind: there’s a good chance that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

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…Another thing to think about is the difference between world-building and storytelling. Both are incredibly difficult to do well, and each is a wholly unique animal. World-building is something many people can’t do. They can’t look at a blank page and construct a believable land or universe whole-cloth. You do not have that problem, which is a very good thing. Writing books with texture and depth is impossible without this skill (which is nothing more than a vivid imagination combined with a sense of aesthetics, really).

World-building is the enemy, however, of lean writing. The urge to add too much detail, to info-dump, to introduce too many characters all at once, all this comes from your excellent world-building skills. It isn’t the sign of a problem; it’s the sign of a powerful ability that needs practice honing. It would be like a man with massive muscles learning to golf. The tendency would be to hit it a mile, but never quite where one was aiming. That can be a good problem to have, because it’s easier to back something off than it is to ramp up what isn’t there.

The competing force in writing is storytelling. If world-building is the macro, storytelling is the micro. We zoom down through the history and lore, past the epic battles of time past, and we land behind the eyes of a simple character who has all of that larger stuff in their peripheral. Here’s the tricky part: the author needs to have that lore spread before them, like a map, but they need to write with the limited perspective of that character. As the reader, we will feel lost initially, but so should this person through whom we’re seeing the world. Their discovery is our discovery. That’s why we immediately relate to the first main character we’re introduced to. We like to think we’re them.

With storytelling, it’s best to not be too creative. Human beings have a shared genetic history, which includes innate senses of right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unjust, pleasing and disturbing, etc… The exceptions to this are not worth mentioning, because you aren’t writing for an infinitesimal percent of the population. You are writing for the people to whom Homer and Shakespeare make a lot of sense. Sir Gawain and the travelers to Canterbury all resonate even today. We might call it cliche to write of the pauper with a noble heart who one day becomes king, but then we could call it cliche to admire the shape, smell, and color of a fresh flower, or call it cliche to hum with delight at the first bite into a ripe apple. We have certain tendencies, and it behooves the author to fashion according to near-universal tastes.

So, after you’ve spent time building your world, pick a few characters (not too many), and tell their story as simply and clearly as you can. Make it compelling. Give it an odd twist here and there by playing on old themes in new ways (for instance, the gray, wizened wizard can be substituted for the town drunk, who only drinks to silence the prophecy and bad dreams he is accused of being insane for having. Once again, we see the redemption theme, the pauper -> prince theme, all hidden in an unusual take on a traditional character).

These are just my opinions, of course. I haven’t been doing this terribly long, but these are probably the same things I would’ve said five years ago, just from my experience as a reader. Like you, most of what I’ve learned has been from consumption. I am only now beginning to learn via creation…

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That’s it for now. Back to my own writing!

I’m about to make my birthday a festive one for everybody! With Amazon’s new royalty system, whereby authors get 70% of a sale, rather than the old 30%, I’ve decided to revamp the look of my eBooks and offer them for much less money. I want these books to be priced where anyone will try them out, and even owners of the physical book will feel like they need to also grab a copy of the digital version.

All three Molly books are now available on the Kindle store for less than $4.00! The Parsona Rescue is priced at $2.99. If you have a friend with a Kindle who isn’t hooked on this series yet, tell them about these deals. You seriously can’t get this much action, adventure, romance, philosophy, and tense cliffhangers for such a great price.

Check out the entire series here.

Happy birthday, indeed!