fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2797 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2797 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They seem to forget that we can learn things - we can know new things.

When I read the secret, I was going to ask if anyone really believed that mindset, until I read the S!B and got to this thread. Yikes.

There are many ways to write well, to write a character well, and identifying with them is one of many ways. But it's hardly the only way, and it's hardly guaranteed to ruin the way you write a character.

At most, I would suggest that because identifying with a character is so easy, writers who...still have a long way to go in developing their writing skill...are more likely to try and use character-identification as a means of writing, and this leads to the slew of self-insert and OOC fic that we in fandom often associate with it.

That's the furthest I would go with that connection.

But much of it depends on how you write a character in the first place. For me, my writing depends heavily on 'voice' - both dialogue and monologue, I show my characters by how they think and how they speak. Definitely, the easiest way to do that is to identify with a character, or even just a certain element of a character. But it's hardly the only way, and hell sometimes the only way I can make a character 'sound' good and IC is by going back and editing ruthlessly and pouring over every word and phrase to see if it fits. Both are good methods in their own ways.

People should write what they know - but that doesn't mean confining yourself to writing what you already know. It means trying to learn something before you write about it. Or imagine something so thoroughly that you understand it, know it, as if it were real. It means researching something, so that either you know how to make something realistic - or that you know what you are doing when you don't.

Write what you know, and do it by adding to what you know, so that you can write about any damn thing you want.

I think part of learning is learning how to identify with people you don't think are like you at all. Even evil ones - evil characters almost never think they're evil, they think they're right! You have to find that patch of darkness in yourself - everybody has it, somewhere. Everybody has the capacity to be cruel or violent or ruthless or arrogant or sadistic. Anybody can snap under the right circumstances. (I think it's testimony to human goodness that most people don't act on those feelings most of the time - but I've never met anybody who completely lacked them.)

I think you have to get a little bit into every character's head - how they think, how they talk, how they see the world. It's like acting, you have to become your characters a little bit. You have to find that part of yourself that's most like them, and draw on it. But I think the mistake a lot of beginning writers make is that they pick a character who they think is most like them, and then completely overdo it to the point where that character is them. They overemphasize the similarities (and romanticize the hell out of them) and don't even see the differences, much less delve into them deeply enough to make the character well-rounded as a separate person.

OP

I agree 100%! Your first paragraph is exactly what I was trying to say.

With inexperienced writers, I think the problem is that they don't set out to tell a story, they set out to write about a character (who is the writer as he or she would like to be).

OP

I think the difference between self-insertion and what I've called 'identification' is that self insertion is writing about yourself or, rather, the self you want to be -- the character may have a different name, and different physical characteristics, but you will privilege him or her in the story and, in particular, you'll downgrade other characters in an attempt to enhance 'your' character -- whereas identification is putting yourself in the character's position and finding something in yourself -- thoughts, feelings, experiences -- that help you understand them -- help you write them intuitively. Then you have to assess what you've written -- decide whether it's in character, whether it furthers the plot, whether it's intelligible to the reader -- and, where necessary, ruthlessly edit.

I actually think that self-insertion and identification (as I've described it above) are quite different mind sets, and reflect different motives for writing.

When things are going badly, and I'm battling writer's block, I find I can fake identification, using just reason and observation to deduce how a character will behave, but I know I'm faking it and, for me, without the emotional dimension identification provides, the characterisation lacks the spark of life.

I want to frame this comment and put it up somewhere.

[ SECRET POST #2797 ]

A lot of people have been talking about "writing what you know" on this thread.

Re: A lot of people have been talking about "writing what you know" on this thread.

Re: A lot of people have been talking about "writing what you know" on this thread.

Re: A lot of people have been talking about "writing what you know" on this thread.

Re: A lot of people have been talking about "writing what you know" on this thread.