I was reading a book on male/female relationships over the weekend, and the book mentioned something I’d read about many times: synchronicity of body language.

When two people aren’t that into each other, one of them is likely to start to glance away, then slide a foot back, then slowly turn away, then, yanno, bolt for the door.

When two people are into each other, they lock gazes, they turn toward each other, they lean forward, they reach for their drink/machete/whatever at the same time, they cross/uncross arms/legs at the same time, and so on.

Probably you already know this, I don’t know. In any case, it’s hard to describe synchronicity of body language in a romance novel without sounding like clunky stage directions. (And when John touched his ear with his left hand… so did Mary!!!)

But one thing the book talked about that I hadn’t really put thought to was the idea of synchronicity of language. If one person refers to children as kids/rugrats/kiddos/munchkins/brats/babies, so might the other one. Two people in luuurve use the same phrases, keywords, inside jokes.

And that seems possible to put on the page…

YOUR TURN: What do you think? Have you witnessed or experienced synchronicity (or a distinct lack thereof) in real life? How about in a book you were reading/writing? I’d love to hear your feedback!

For fun and prizes (and good karma!) please drop by ManuscriptMavens.com and leave a comment during this week’s First Anniversary Jamboree!

Thank you!!!

If you hadn’t already inferred it from previous posts, here’s the sitch: my mom is staying with me for a month to lend a hand during the LASIK (which went fine and I no longer require space alien goggles) and to hang out for the 4th of July weekend etc.

Like mother like daughter, which means in my mom’s copious free time (b/c I never untether from the PC) she likes to kick back with a book. She brought a suitcase full, but ran out within the first couple weeks (totally LM,LD!!) so I’ve been loaning her books from my stock. Yesterday she read Dean Koontz’ From the Corner of His Eye and the day before she read Michael Crichton’s Next. Today she said she wanted to read something that required less thinking, and didn’t I have a nice murder mystery she could breeze through? Like, say, a Miss Marple?

No, no I don’t, actually. (Although I have nothing against Agatha Christie, and Sleeping Murder is one of my faves.) Since I like thinky stuffs (like quantum physics and the ethics of biogenetics, see above), I don’t really have many mysteries on my keeper shelves, simply because after I read them, I now know who dunnit, and lose interest in rereading. I do, however, own maybe 30 Mary Higgins Clark novels and every single Sue Grafton paperback, so I was able to point Mom in that direction fairly easily.

Until.

Mom flips open the first page, gives a disgruntled look, and tosses the book to the table in disgust.

Me: Er… Everything OK?

Mom: Oh, it’s just the stupid type. Why do they print the text so tiny?

Me: Well, some say the book’s physical size matters more to a publishing house than the contents’ legibility. They need to fit a certain number in the slot at the registers.

Mom: So they print it so small it’s practically Morse Code?

Me: Not always. The converse is also true. If the wordcount comes up short, they’re equally likely to bump up the font size a notch if they think that’ll make the book (size) more attractive to buyers.

Mom: [eying the book on the table] So… if I compare that book to the other MHCs, some of them might have bigger text?

Me: Sure. Lets grab ‘em and experiment.

[fast forward through the painstaking comparison of 30 MHC novels, and their subsequent division into stacks of Normal Type, Tiny Type, and Morse Code]

My mom demolished my carefully alphabetized library and has now rearranged my book collection in descending order of font size. Just wait. I think it might catch on.

YOUR TURN: Ever notice the difference in font sizes in your books? Ever organize them by said font differences? Ever choose to read or not read something based on the size of the font? Holla back!

Happy Independence Day to my U.S. pals!!!

The rest of you can have a happy 4th, seeing as it’s the 4th of July regardless of what country you happen to be in, unless it’s after 5pm EST, at which point it’s already the 5th of July in Athens and Tokyo and, uh… Perth.

But whatever. Party anyway. Word.