More Hypno: The Three Yeses

Apply It to Your Writing

Coincidence or Not?

The teacher in our weekly acting class moonlights as… wait for it… a comic stage hypnotist. A decade ago a corporation sent him to study hypnosis in Las Vegas. He says actors tend to be susceptible to hypnotic suggestion; in Vegas under induction, he’d done a Chippendale-style strip routine. Now his side gig is to hypnotize people at corporate events and big parties. So we talked about hypnosis… advertising… sales… storytelling… acting… religion and other methods of coercion.

Another story. While writing Rant I hung out in the world of used car sales. Meaning impound yards and car auctions and the guys who bought towed-away cars on the cheap and sold them to poor people desperate for transportation. Or sold them to young people who wanted to impress other young people. But always customers who could be manipulated if you had the skills. And among those car selling skills was the infamous “Three Yeses.” First, you ask what color the buyer wants. Then you ask the price range. You keep asking the buyer to state specific demands. Finally you show the buyer a car that meets all of those demands. Almost always, the buyer buys. He might not really want to buy, for instance he might not feel ready or actually have the money, but you’ve steered him into stating his demands and saying “yes” so often that he no longer feels comfortable telling you “no.”

This is just one of the many creative, sleazy skills the used car guys were delighted to teach me. They were like, “Hey, we can make the Fight Club guy one of us!”

So, sonny, what color of car floats your boat? Can you see yourself driving a top-down Mazda Miata convertible? Can you imagine how the chicks are going to watch you as you slowly cruise by? Can you imagine the sex you’re going to get?

Compare this coaxing and “buy-in” to Jewelry Television. On the cable television channel, the off-screen host voices a stream of such questions: Can you imagine wearing this necklace to church? Can you picture the looks of envy and admiration you’ll get from the ladies in your social circle? Can you hear the squeal of joy from your baby granddaughter when she opens this present on Christmas morning?

As the yeses pile up, the inventory of necklaces dwindles. The time dwindles away. The pressure mounts. In her head, the viewer has created a world that depends on owning that necklace. The teenager has created a future of sex that requires he buys that car. Armistead Maupin has created a world of people that you, the reader, wants as friends — but you must believe in them.

A tangent. In the Tales of the City books the main characters are Mary Ann, Michael, Mona, and Anna Madrigal. All names that begin with an M. As does Maupin.

As a writer, you’re seducing people. But first you’re looking for people who want to be seduced. Coercing people who want to be coerced. The first trick is to identify them. After that, the three yeses come in.

As the joke begins: A kid walks into a car dealership. A lady switches on Jewelry Television. A hopeless man walks into a church.

Let’s revisit the metaphor of the stained glass window: The sandals and weeds and garment hems build authority at eye level. Do you believe the sandals: Yes. Do you believe the tansy ragwort: Yes. Do you believe the snake: Yes. Do you believe the angels… As the eye moves upward, the impossible occurs. First off, people are already inside the church: They’re open to an idea. Beyond that, you’re bridging them to consent to greater and greater ideas.

Back to my novel Rant, in it I make the following observation:

• From infancy you’re taught that if you believe in a jolly man and you behave yourself, you’ll get toys. An easy yes.

• When you can walk you’re taught that if you behave you can hunt for candy left for you by a magic rabbit. A tougher yes.

• When your baby teeth fall out you’re taught that if you offer up those teeth a fairy will leave you magic coins — but what’s more important than the fairy, you must believe that those coins have the power to bring you… everything. Your entire ability to believe is transferred to a faith in money.

In short, you’re being bridged from one act of faith to the next.

Now An Anecdote

Last week a fellow student in the acting class mentioned that he had a migraine. I asked if he wanted to try a cure by hypnosis. He said, “Yes.”

I asked if he’d stand facing me. He said, “Yes,” and stood within a breath of me. Our eyes met.

I asked him to tell me the color of his headache. He rolled his eyes and smiled. The room fell silent as other students watched. The man with the headache said, “Red.”

I asked him to hold out his hands in front of himself and show me the shape of the headache. He lifted his arms and modeled a shape in the air. First a cube, then a more irregular shape. His hands wrestled with this invisible object.

I asked him to demonstrate how much his headache weighed. With his arms still in front of him he lifted the invisible headache up high at first, then allowed the headache to drag his arms down until he could barely hold the headache without dropping it. As his out-raised arms grew tired, his headache grew heavier.

I asked him to smell the headache and describe its scent. He brought the headache in his hands near to his face, closed his eyes, and sniffed it. He screwed up his nose and said, “Sour.”

I asked him to taste the headache and tell me its flavor. He bit into the invisible headache and told me, “Bitter.”

By this point a roomful of students was watching us.

I asked how his headache felt. He smiled and said, “Almost gone.”

Part of what occurred was externalizing the headache: Placing it outside himself and giving it physical qualities; by making it real in the world, not a part of himself, he took control over it.

Part of it what occurred was that he stated the intention to be rid of the headache. This is what Declan Donnellan in his book The Actor and the Target would call the “target” or objective that a character faces. Do you want me to cure your headache? Yes.

To my mind, most of what took place was The Three Yeses. I’d asked him if he wanted to be cured. I’d asked him to stand before me. I’d asked him to envision his headache. After this series of specific requests, it would’ve been very uncomfortable for the headache man to not be “cured” at the end. In front of an audience especially, he had to cure himself.

In effect you create a buy-in where the wonderful, envisioned future depends on the kid purchasing the car, or the old lady buying that necklace, or the headache guy agreeing that his headache is gone. At that point, if they fail to follow through, they’re the party that’s in the wrong. They’ve failed.

A tangent. Decades ago my then-agent Edward Hibbert told me about “Dr. Footlights.” Edward was and is a successful actor, and he said that no matter how terrible a performer felt in real life, he/she felt instantly well when they stepped out on stage. This is because they’re so compelled to envision and enact a different reality, filled with different specifics, that they lose track of their own immediate circumstances. Thus, when the headache man is asked to taste his headache — he must take action — he must take control of it. He has control and is no longer a victim subjected to the pain.

As a writer, you must be specific. You must, in effect, ask your reader to hold, smell, taste specific things as those things are being experienced by your point-of-view character. Not in inches, pounds, minutes, but in the measurements by which your character filters the world. Hypnotists call this the “buy-in” or “the three yeses.” This method is at works in sales, in religion, in storytelling.

Imagine Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone saying, “Picture a world, if you will, a quiet day on a main street in small town America…”

Serling is asking you to do two easy tasks, then three, and soon enough you’ll be compelled to do the undoable — but you’ll do it.

See how easy?