Jon Hurst asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

I have been consistently amazed by your deep understanding and clear depiction of people: how they think and feel, their motivations and fears, how they can be led effectively and influenced. How did you develop your understanding of people and leadership? It seems uncanny and wonderful.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Hm, hard to answer, since much of my writing is intuitive rather than consciously constructed. But I suppose decades of direct observation of people (especially including myself), personal experience, doings; more at a remove, reading, watching, listening and more reading. My theories of human behavior are based to the degree my understanding allows in the patterns of the deep biological and bio-social substrate of all primate humans, as contrasted with particular cultures or associations (although the group dynamics of all kinds of human associations and how and why they assemble themselves is itself a study.) "Accidents versus essences" is the way I sometimes shorthand it for myself. Or, "Culture is what biology uses to clothe itself." And, sometimes, to disguise itself.

Also, do keep in mind, when you are reading certainly fiction but also nonfiction as well, what you are experiencing is not the world, but the inside of another writer's head. Which is a thing to be marveled at in itself, but, as the old saying goes, the map is not the territory.

Ta, L.

flag