McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
The Author is NOT the Character.
LizW65:
I tend to think writing is a lot like method acting; while we don't necessarily get into the same situations as our characters (if we did, we'd have no time to write!) we are quite capable of understanding their motivations and emotional responses.
For instance, both my continuing protagonists are heavy smokers--appropriate to the time period and genre they inhabit. I don't smoke, but when I'm tearing the house apart looking for the piece of Hershey bar I squirrelled away weeks ago, I can understand the kind of craving that motivates somebody to spend his last $$ on a pack of smokes when he can barely afford to eat. Likewise, I'm unlikely ever to slam a nark headfirst into a brick wall, or hold a cross-dressing mobster at gunpoint--both actions would probably get me killed on the spot--but I can certainly comprehend the level of rage and frustration that would prompt such actions.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we can all get into our characters' heads and understand what it's like to live there without having to share their beliefs and/or life experience.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Landing on October 28, 2010, 03:24:56 AM ---I don't think I can agree with you, from all my experience if a author has written enough you are able to tell certain things about their beliefs.
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If you can tell, from a sampling of Robert Heinlein's pre-senile-period works, when he was talking about his actual political views and when he was doing thought experiments, I would be surprised. There are a lot of contradictions in there.
Thrythlind:
--- Quote from: Landing on October 28, 2010, 03:24:56 AM ---I don't think I can agree with you, from all my experience if a author has written enough you are able to tell certain things about their beliefs. Granted some you will be able to tell less about then others, but if the reader is skilled enough they will be able to learn things about how the author thinks.
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--- Quote from: my blog ---Okay, you will see me wax philosophic and start to delve into deep and meaningful stuff here and there all over my blog in places. I might even start delving into what I consider to be the big philosophical meanings and metaphors of my various works. Said discussions might get fairly complex, deep and insightful.
Most of them are things I come up with after the fact of writing the story and are more ways for me to analyze myself than to analyze my work.
I am a huge fan of JRR Tolkien and in particular, I am a firm believer in his concept of applicability. I had come to pretty much the same conclusion before I'd ever heard the term before.
Basically, to me, meaning does not belong to the writer but the reader, and thus might be the thing that most makes me dislike George Lucas's recent ret-cons of his most famous works.
George Lucas commented that a work is always unfinished and there is always more to add to it, more to change and to make it perfect. He is correct in that, but he then went on to disregard the people that knew the story as being unimportant since he was the creator and it was only his vision that mattered.
Let's be clear on this.
Once you write something and let it out into the public, it will take on a life of its own and it is no longer yours. You will own the commercial rights, probably, but the story itself now belongs to anybody who reads it. Once you have published it, you should do everything you can to avoid changing what you have already put out save for clear errors in grammar and printing.
It is sheer arrogance to tell someone that their interpretation of your story is wrong.
You don't know what their life is like, and you can't know what images will provoke what responses in a particular individual. You can make a reasonable guess based on the fact that most people in a particular culture will respond the same way to the same symbols, but there are always outliers.
And those meanings change in a particular person.
Ranma 1/2 and the various things inflicted on Ranma by his father as training were hilarious to me when I was a teenager.
Then I became a teacher.
Even before that, you can see a fair amount of my developing dislike of Genma Saotome in pretty much any of my stories, but especially in Genma's Journal and Lost Innocence. Just upon becoming a teacher who taught a large variety of ages and was turning somewhat protective of my students, the concept of someone doing that to any kid, much less their own, drives me bananas.
I try not to think about it too much so that I can still enjoy the comedy.
In the end, to me, the best way to get the heart of who and what you are into a story is to write a story that you would enjoy reading, that you would buy for pleasure. All the work you do to define the characters and make the story into something fun and enjoyable will call on the essence of who and what you are.
Your personality and true beliefs will move into the story whether you want it or not.
And to me, a story is much more effective when it encourages the reader to fill in some of the blanks themselves and, even better, to make their own stories.
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Sorry, just found it easier to go to the article I already wrote on this subject.
Thrythlind:
Incidentally, I've never seen Harry Dresden as an Anti-hero...the closest he got was in White Night and even that was only really edging on anti-hero in the matter with the ghoul torturing
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Thrythlind on November 04, 2010, 12:49:11 AM ---Incidentally, I've never seen Harry Dresden as an Anti-hero...the closest he got was in White Night and even that was only really edging on anti-hero in the matter with the ghoul torturing
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That puts him way further over the edge, but I think I've argued why I see him as anti-hero at length elsewhere so the summary of the summary is; he's willing to start a war that will cost many innocent lives to save Susan. That makes him Not Good in my book.
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