Thread: The Theory of Fictional Characters as Reflections of Writers’ Personalities.

Close, but no cigar.

Originally Posted by Ungood

dang Ox, you forgot to cite that I was quoting Seig, now go fix your post.

Eh?

Any more?

[QUOTE=The Backward OX;1314892]I have a theory that a writer’s fundamental nature determines the voice he/she displays in their fiction writing; that if they are taciturn and reserved by nature, their writing will reflect this, if they are exuberant and boisterous by nature, their writing will reflect this, if they are sensuous and erotic by nature, their writing will reflect this, and so on.
Tosh!
Put another way, a person who takes life seriously could not successfully write about a character acting the fool, a person who habitually acts the fool could not successfully write about a serious character, a person who is highly-opinionated could not successfully write about a character of wishy-washy nature, and a wishy-washy person could not successfully write about an opinionated character.
More tosh!
And to wrap it all up, male writers cannot successfully portray female characters, nor female writers male characters.

What do you think? I think you are Mr Tosh from Toshville.[/QUOTE]


I’m not trawling back through 98 posts to check if these points have been made before.

You are making two different statements. One on voice and another on character.

Voice: It would be natural and logical for a writer to use his own or similar voice. Why does it follow that he can’t be successful with an adopted or invented voice? An actor does it why can’t a writer? I don’t even think it is a talent, I think it can be acquired or learnt.

Character: This is idiocy. Are you claiming a writer can only portray his own character traits?


Are you writing a story of an elderly, irascible, comma-counting, cab-driver, with a leak in his colostomy bag, who letches after disinterested librarians? (snigger)

Originally Posted by Sigg

he then grew into a maladapted pervert,

Wow. That has to be photoshopped. He can't possibly have had his hands there and lived to tell the tale. And those positions look incredibly unnatural. It hurts just looking at it.

MY theory is...I have no theory.

That old man's got his fingers right up in there don't he! Probably a little bit of squeezy action going on too.

I think he's just checking for farts!

Originally Posted by Blood

MY theory is...I have no theory.

That old man's got his fingers right up in there don't he! Probably a little bit of squeezy action going on too.

I think, at the time of the shot, he'd just had a back spasm and had to put his hands on the nearest thing. How unfortunate.

The girl in the forefront of the shot looks almost unreal, in any case. How you get out of that position is as mystifying to me as how you get into it.

every character i write is like a part of me that isn't always shown. My main character usually end up having a personality like me or end up being something that i want to be.

There is no doubt that in some way certain character in a story will reflect the author.
What they know or think, but it is not true of every story.

I would say one of the greatest exercise in writing is writing from a point of view that there is no way the author should understand or relate to.

I finished a story a couple of months ago the title is “Mary Ann is a Lesbian”.
I am a middle aged male and heterosexual, hardly a topic or subject matter I should know about or understand.

Yet several women and a few of them Lesbian commented that it was insightful and actuate of the struggle and realization that a woman goes through both in younger years and for those it applies to coming to accept being a Lesbian.

I will post it in the fiction section in case you are interested in reading it.

A writer at least should have the power of sympathy, being able to feel for some one else’s situation. Even better or in some case worse the power of Empathy.
Being able to know what it is like to go through the situation.

Sympathy is being able to stand off from the subject and view it as a sincere interested party. But Empathy involves the emotion and the experience of what is happening.

I say worse in the sense of, I wrote a story titled “Meeting on the Bridge”
A father has what has to be the worst nightmare a parent could have happen.
He was mowing with a Bush hog mower behind the tractor with his three years old daughter setting in front of him on the seat.

When she slipped off and fell under the mower, for a brief instant I felt that pain and anguish. It caused me to have several sleepless nights and to know such a pain in the heart and soul.