Advice Columns: A Window into Human Nature for Writers

We all have our various routines to get us going in the morning. I need my cup of coffee and a brisk twenty-minute walk. Then, while eating my breakfast fruit and cereal and a cursory check of my emails, I like to read an advice column.

The column I currently read is “ Carolyn Hax, “ not so much for Carolyn’s advice but for the entertainment I receive reading the reader comments. By the end of the day, over one thousand people (including myself) may have written their own advice and reactions to both the letter writer’s problem and the advice doled out by the columnist. I don’t spend a lot of time on this, approximately five to ten minutes reading the comments, but that’s all it takes.

Over the past few months I ‘ve begun to recognize repeat commenters’ screen names. Each has a consistent attitude: suspicious, positive, anti- marriage, pro- therapy, etc. It is interesting to note which comments get the largest number of “likes.” Sometimes heated arguments erupt over certain comments and responses.

If a column is particularly provocative, I may jot down some notes in my “idea list” for future story ideas. Advice columns have been around for hundreds of years.

According to Wikipedia the very first advice column was published by the Athenian Mercury in 1690 and answered questions on history, science and politics.

In the United States, early broadsides and newspapers during the 18th and 19th centuries were resources for helpful information on how to solve problems. At the start of the 20 thcentury, newspapers began publishing advice column to specifically target female readers to enhance their advertising reach.

Advice columns specifically for teens became popular in the 1950s. One example is “Ask Beth” which began at the Boston Globe. Later picked up by the Los Angeles Times it was syndicated at its peak to 70 papers.

While advice columns such as “ Dear Annie” ask general questions to do with family and relationships, other columns such as the famous “ Ask Dr. Ruth” column on adult sex had a specific focus. Currently for sexual advice you can anonymously write to the Slate Magazine column “ How to Do it?” For work advice you can email “ Work Friend” at the New York Times. Think of a topic, and you can probably find advice specific to that topic. Gardening, cooking, toddlers, carpentry, sewing, car repair: you get the idea.

I myself, when I wrote a column on antique lighting for Victorian Homes Magazine, would invite readers to mail in questions about the old lamps. They’d send me photographs asking questions about an item’s value and history and I’d publish the responses in my column.

Specific advice on how to repair a kerosene lamp is straight forward. How to deal with a young adult living at home who is unable to hold down a steady job, not so easy.

Before the era of computers, the advice column experience did not include immediate audience feedback. Now however, I find it fascinating to read how others interpret the published question. Today in the Hax column a young woman’s question voiced her disappointment over her mother’s friend abandoning her a year after her mother died, after she’d offered solid support during her mother’s illness and the initial year after the loss. A number of readers wrote that it must be because her widower dad made a pass at his wife’s friend (married and a mom herself).

Where did they get that idea, I wondered. Many issues were at play in the question and the responses. Other days the questions are simpler: How to get rid of repeat house guests? How to avoid inviting irritating relatives for Thanksgiving, How to handle a nosy mother-in-law?

Human nature is what writers love to write about, at least I do. It’s interesting to read all the various forms of miscommunication as well as some of the foolish things people complain about. The late John Prine, nailed it in his song, “Dear Abby.” The first two lines of the refrain goes

"You have no complaint
You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't."

You can read the lyrics to his entire song here, written in 1973. Prine is not the only writer/poet inspired by advice columns. American poet Bill Knott’s ( 1940–2014) , poem “Advice Columnist”, cuts deeply into the psyche in just a few lines.

Also worthy of inclusion is the work of Cheryl Strayer, writing as an anonymous advice columnist 2009–2012 and then revealing her identity and publishing the book Tiny Beautiful Things, now a series on Hulu.

WRITING PROMPT: Use the Advice Column format to tell a story. It could be fact or fiction. If you are working on a longer work, you can learn more about one of your characters by having them pose a question anonymously to a columnist. Or use this prompt to write a piece of flash fiction. Get creative and hide the deeper question inside something more basic: Do you need to wear a tie to a funeral, I can’t my frosting to spread evenly, Are three cats too many?

Imagine the columnist. Maybe they are the character you wish to develop? Have fun, a try several different versions. Take the one you like best and develop it further, and who knows- you may have something worth publishing.

Thank you for reading. Have fun and if you haven’t already signed up to follow me, it is FREE. And please, if you like my writing, you can support my efforts by buying a copy of my chapbook RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN- Poetry, Flash CNF and Short Essays (Old Scratch Press Sept. 2024) a great gift to yourself and for friends at $8.95.

Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on November 18, 2024.