Design ethics

[Feverdream]

I'm thinking a lot about the principles of design behind files that I like best, and about how to incorporate the best aspects of my favorite files into my work. I thought this might be a nice place to share those thoughts and get some feedback.

I'm not criticizing anyone else's work here. I'm more focused on using this design ethic as a guide for myself, not for telling others how they ought to do their work. I will say that if your files don't match the list then I probably don't listen to them much, but that is only because there are so many good files here that do.

1) Short and sweet. Write the script and then cut it down by at least 30%, editing to keep flow natural with only the best parts. 10 minutes is a great file length. Attention deficit disorder is a terrible... oooh! Shiny!

2) Inductions and awakeners must be short if they are present at all. Most listeners have some experience with trance and will know how to enter the right state of mind quickly, without 20 minutes of foreplay. And I like files that can run on loop for hours. I've enjoyed being trapped that way, and I want to do it to others. Beginners have plenty of files to practice on, and there are lots of inductions that could be put first in a playlist, if the subject desired.

3) Leave something unsaid, and make the listener have to work their brain a little, to finish connecting all the dots. You still have to sketch out enough of the idea that the subject cannot get lost when they take the last final leap to the thought that you want them to have. But the effect will be greater if their mind has to do some of the work for you.

4) Don't be too explicit. If you are designing for a wide audience, leave lots of room for them to each craft their own version of the ideas that you are implanting in them. If you try to keep too tight a control over their internal experience, you will turn them off. Rapport is particularly hard to build in this medium, so you're going to have to aim carefully. Certain words are more likely to disrupt rapport than others. Avoid those.

5) Either keep suggestions nonspecific enough that the subject can supply their own images, or be prepared to do a longer file with a lot more verbage needed to get the ideas across. Just telling someone "You imagine yourself whisked off to Disneyland for a day and when you wake up you will remember it vividly" doesn't fly, unless you takes the time to present enough vivid description to make it happen. Since I don't like making or listening to files that long, I have to design files that don't need that kind of detail.

6) Be creative. Don't follow the same pattern as everyone else, or even what you were doing last week. Innovate. It will either be better or worse, but at least you will gain more insight on what works and what doesn't.

7) Be realistic about what you set out to accomplish. Yes, I can probably get a certain small portion of the audience to believe that they have experienced a day long trip to disneyworld in a 10 minute file. And there are lots of files for people who are experts at having those kinds of experiences in trance. They've never worked for me, though.

8) It is about pleasure. Theirs and yours. Make sure that both sides of that equation are well addressed. Quit if it stops being fun, and don't be miserly with the pleasures you offer as bait to your victims... erm, subjects. If it isn't fun for them, change them so that it is.

9) Be very honest about your intentions. I'm here to play some potentially dangerous games with my minds and the minds of others. I am deliberately manipulative in my files and seek to enslave my subjects, because that is what gets me off. I may accept gifts, especially if I do custom work, but I'm not doing this to make money. I'm not interested in causing real harm or disrupting the real lives of any of my listeners. I do intend to change them in real and lasting ways simply because doing so pleases me.

That seems a good place to stop. I hate top 10 lists.

[zapnosis]

An excellent summary. For feedback purposes, I would urge some caution on points 1 and 2 though. If you want the listener to be thoroughly in trance before the suggestions start, then I would recommend a 10 to 15 minute induction/ deepener. Some people just don't go under that easily. Of course people can always add their own induction on a playlist, but that always struck me as rather crude. And obviously not every file has to follow the template pattern of induction - suggestion - awakening, so 10 to 15 minutes isn't always necessary. For the record, I'm not commenting on your files (I'm on a long break from trancing), just on what you've posted here.

There is one thing that you haven't mentioned, probably because it seems too obvious: Have a plan and stick to it. I've heard a lot of files that were ruined because the hypnotist has partly contradicted themselves at some point, or perhaps added something as an afterthought that just didn't fit with the "feel" of the file. If you're not convincing, you're not effective.

Well done and good luck with your future work.
ZAP

[Feverdream]

Thank you for your feedback! I appreciate very much that you have given me an opportunity to expand upon a couple of thoughts that are very important to me in making files.

Regarding inductions:

I'm not quite of the covert hypnosis school, but I take for granted that most people actually spend most of their lives in light trances. I expect that those who have intentionally been playing with self-hypnosis are only practicing something that happens to them naturally all the time, usually without their awareness and are unconsciously very competent at it.

I expect that the whole process of deciding on a file to listen to, going through the usual motions of starting it and settling in for a listen, that those things are a kind of induction, a behavioral trigger. This primes the subjects subconscious to begin entering a light trance, long before their conscious mind is able to perceive that it has already happened. In my opinion, people who think that they cannot trance simply don't recognize the lighter states of trance that they move through every day as being what they are. They think that if they aren't in a deep, motionless, you-can-convince-me-to-cluck-like-a-chicken trance, that they weren't hypnotized.

I believe that it isn't necessary to put someone into a deep trance in order to plant suggestions. There are techniques to coax the conscious mind into cooperating with what the subconscious and I are up to, and I exploit those. I don't care if it is listening in because I'm not giving it a real choice (or desire) to intervene. And if anything, I think that carefully crafted suggestions given when you don't realize that you are tranced are possibly even more powerful, because thoughts can seem as if they were entirely your own. Advertising works, and it does so while we are "awake."

Length:

Shorter files can be listened to more often. There are more times when you can spare 10 minutes than when you have 30 to spend listening to a file. And looping. I love loops. If you do have half an hour, you can listen to a file three times over. It can be nice to listen like that, to just bliss out and lose time.

But I don't think that repetition is strictly necessary. Bandler and Grinder made the point that learning actually happens very quickly. If you are exposed to something frightful, you don't have to experience that again and again in order learn to be afraid of it. If a point is made saliently, it will stick. If anything, repetition has the risk of blunting a point, as familiarity breeds contempt. Thus, my ethic of short and sweet.

Contradictions:

You make an excellent point! I didn't address explicitly that what I am attempting to make here is a body of work, not just a few one off files. That is why I put so much effort into creating this document, to lay down some guidelines to help me visualize the overall shape of what I want to make.

I not only want to avoid contradictions within a file, but between files as well. Files may have different subject matter and a different feel, but they should still be seamless. I think that many hypnotists miss a wonderful opportunity when they don't have elements of their files interwoven into one another.

Ideally, each should still be able to stand alone, and shouldn't be entirely dependent on having listened to a previous file, even from the same series. It should work if it is the only file the subject ever hears from you. But if I do get someone who is a fan and wants to listen to everything that I record, I want to reward them by having each file include references to other files.

Now, I am talking here about best practices, and no one hits a home run every time. I am sure that I will have some genuine bombs over the course of this project. And I'm cool with that. Particularly if good feedback like this helps me stay on track.

Thank you again for taking the time to respond, and for reminding me of some things I had meant to address.

[zapnosis]

Exactly the sort of answer that I would have posted when I started making files, except perhaps that you are a little more ambitious. Good for you, the whole of life is a learning process...

[Feverdream]

To the greatest extent possible, it is nice if a script is inclusive, so that no one gets left out because of something as trivial as gender. Nothing ruins a file quicker than having nonexistent body parts be called upon by name, unless proper attention has been paid to the subjects desire to imagine such naughty bits, if they don't naturally possess them.

I'm in this for my love of mind control, not my interest in bodies of either of the major genders. Anatomy is not identity. While it is interesting to explore changes that can be made to a person's physiology using the power of their mind, and vice versa, that is just another way of getting at the person's self, what makes them sapient. Which is my real goal in all of this, to interact in a direct and powerful way with the very souls of my subjects... that is sexy in a way that mere bodies never could be.

[Jeshi]

Avoid contradiction is surely an important rule.

Nothing ruins a good file then suddenly hearing "Good girl" or "It makes you wet" when I used the file under the impression that it was unisex.

Or when the same hypnotist says in two files things that contradict each other, when it was intended that you listened to both. I remember there was one hypnotist who made very good files. But one of them said "You think about hypnosis when you masturbate" and another one said "You think about being a slave when you masturbate". And after listening to both it became very confusing. Should I think about being hypnotized into being a slave? No, that happens before the being a slave part. Should I think about already being a slave and then being re-hypnotized in order to reinforce commands? That's kind of complicated and boring to think about when you're brain is at half-capacity.



And when a file says it does one thing and then does 5 other things as well that weren't listed in the description, that's just annoying! Like one file's description just said "Submissive boyfriend" and contained suggestions about developing a foot fetish, being a slut, and it changed between first and 3rd person constantly! (Whether saying "your master" or "Me" Without even specifying that "I am your master" or that there was a master involved in the relationship in the first place!) I jolted out of trance when it started throwing in irrelevant suggestions.


Also, on short inductions.

When I first started using hypnosis, it took 15-30 minutes for me to go into a trance deeper then an everyday trance. Now that I've listened to so many files, I'll go into trance as soon as a file starts and the hypnotist says "Just relax" or "Make yourself comfortable"(Since almost all files start that way) and my brain just goes "Oh, this is the beginning of a hypnosis file!" and I just slip right down.

Long inductions are good for beginners, I don't believe short inductions as short as "Now go into trance, Suggestion time =D" can work well on people who aren't either experienced or somnambulists.

But short files is good, I find it hard to stay in trance for longer then an hour and a half if the file is just repeating itself(One time I listened to a file that had 45 minutes of deepener! At a certain point it started to have the opposite affect) This is really only a problem with recorded hypnosis, since they can't tell if you're deep enough. A live hypnotist could easily tell when enough is enough and move on to the suggestions.

I have listened to a lot of Feverdream's files and they work really well on me, but I'm sure that if I hadn't listened to hypnosis files hundreds of times before, then they probably wouldn't have worked as well.