“If you believe what you’re saying, they’ll believe you too.”
It was my first ever debate. I’d joined the debate team in 12th class because I believed I wanted to be a lawyer. I believed that lawyers argued a lot, and I knew that most of the other kids on the debate team also wanted to be lawyers. It was a skill that needed honing if the legal profession was where your arrow was aimed. But I had this pathological fear of speaking in front of people. I’d get nervous and I’d shake and sweat and stammer and not get the right words out properly. My teacher was trying to shore me up with the strength of my own conviction in my points and position, to help me use passion to overcome my fears.
It worked. My voice was so loud (it had to be, to keep from quivering), so forceful, that the shaking was interpreted as anger; the sweating, as feverish passion. I believed in what I was saying, and everyone saw it, and they couldn't help but believe it too, so taken were they by the emotional display.
Fear and passion have the same signals. How they are interpreted is up to you. When people say “fake it ‘til you make it,” this is what they mean. The previous two paragraphs are a complete fabrication. I was never on the debate team in my 12th class. I was in B-Tech. I was a dumb student,for a time.But I was never on the debate team, You believed those two paragraphs because I believed them, as I was writing. If you want to persuade people, you must first persuade yourself.
The first step to writing fiction is to believe that your story is real, and then make an account of it.
Don’t romanticize fiction writers. Writers are just manipulative liars who’ve studied their craft well.
