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How Much of You is Too Much?
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As for how much is too much, I write mainly spec fic now and it's a fine balance not to make the characters too powerful or too alien so the reader distances themselves from them. I try to keep in mind the human aspects that are universal (family, love, independence, etc) which I can apply to my characters whether they are futuristic starship captains or a part of the Fae royal family. :-)
It could be just the way I write, but I don't believing keeping up walls between my characters and I appreciate authors who go deep into the mind and hearts of their characters. As a reader I appreciate it. They say reading helps build empathy and I like to think writing does the same in a different way.
In my opinion, too much would be going into Mary Sue territory which pushes me into the land of screaming "oh, come on!". The more multifaceted the character is -- like a living, breathing person -- the more fun it is to work with them (and read about them), I think.
I don't put any of myself into a character I write. No one would like to read a character like me. LOL! Well I'll say at least I don't do it on purpose. Maybe one of my characters might have some traits but nothing that could just be identified as me so...But with my reader hat on I'll just say I am fine with an author mirroring a character after themselves as long as you don't start preaching to me. I hate reading a book where the author is obviously a Christian or obviously liberal or conservative or obviously against this and that and they spend the entire book preaching their message through their characters. See what I mean? When you put so much of your beliefs and yourself in a character to where your book just reads like some agenda, that's a problem to me.
Now it's a difference between your character not agreeing with something or being a certain religion but you can tell when the author is just preaching what they believe in. I hate that because it ruins the reading experience.
I read a book one time about this teen getting pregnant. Well the author obviously had something against abortion and she had her characters lecturing and preaching all over the place. You could really tell with the stuff she wrote about abortion that it was personal. You could feel the tenseness and hatred she had for it through her writing. I put the book down because it made me sick. You can have a character that is against abortion, but don't use your characters to get on your own soapbox.
Other than an author doing that, I'm fine.
Best Wishes!
http://www.stacy-deanne.net
I'll say this for the millionth time, "Write what you know" is not made to be taken seriously. I don't know who the heck came up with this stupid statement in terms of writing. If you are a novelist, you cannot write only what you know. That's impossible. If we only wrote what we know there would be ten novels in the world. LOL! I don't know anyone who writes only what they know and I hate that statement because it makes no sense. I doubt that whoever made it up was even a writer. LOL!No, novelists write what they DON'T know because you don't have a choice if you want to write an exciting story. I doubt anyone would wanna read about the average, boring lives of us writers. LOL!
The fun part of writing fiction for me is writing stuff I don't know and what I am not used to. I love learning about new things. I'd be bored to death only writing stuff I am familiar with.
I agree that writers write what they are interested in but that isn't necessarily what they know of personally.
Rae,What you said about empathy made me think of something funny. A reader wrote me one time and said she was impressed at how I could make her feel sympathy for a rapist. She said I did a great job of how I created him because he had so many levels to him. She said she even found him sexy and she found it amazing that I could write such a despicable person and make him desirable by separating what he did from some of his actions and behavior that made him who he was.
I am always mentoring people on writing great villains and people must sympathize with even the bad people at times. Writers must show that vulnerable side in their bad characters or it's unrealistic. No one is all bad or all good and some writers forget that. I love writing villains and they are my favorite types of characters because it's so much fun to write them and get inside their heads. Readers can kinda know what the good characters are gonna do but it's the villains that keep them guessing.
I also like to write characters where you can't tell if they are really bad or good because I show that they have a mixture of both sides.
But that lady who wrote me flattered me when she said that. I knew I'd done my job.
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That's why I always cite Roy Batty as my fave villain next to Vader. Both have so much to them that you can see where they are coming from.
Mod
I totally agree with you about preaching/soapbox writing. If you want to write a message, then you should just write non-fiction. If you want to write a story, then write that first. If you have written well, anything you want to convey through the narrative will be up to the reader to discover through the process of reading.
I also agree with you about villains. I think they can be fascinating to write. I also love antiheroes or edgy characters that you don't know which way they are going to go.
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Danielle The Book Huntress , Sees Love in All Colors
(last edited Oct 19, 2011 05:31AM)
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I think I understand what you mean about not having a wall, but I think of it as not being too detached from your story. You put part of your animus into that creation so that it can be real and can touch the reader. I agree that's important.
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I don't know every author and what they feel about certain things, so I can't automatically think that they are living through their character(s), because of what the character is doing in their book.
For example. I'm not a racist, but say I wrote a story, where my character didn't like a certain race. Should my readers think that I'm a racist, because my hero or heroine is a racist? The answer is no.
Lets takes movies for example. A lot of actors and actresses that we are familiar with take on roles that's opposite of them. Should we think the writers are that way, because the characters are that way?
I can't stop a reader from thinking something about me, but I would hope that they wouldn't think I'm a certain way, because of my characters. An author's character goes beyond the hero and heroine. The evil person in a story belongs to the author as well.
The only author that I knows that tries to get her belief across is Suzanne Brockmann. Her son is a homosexual and she has homosexual male characters in her book and she preaches through them or even other non homosexual characters. I just skip those scenes.
I'm working on a sequel to Rock Star. This is my 10th book and this is the first time I'm creating a character that's similar to me. As for writing what you know, well I happen to be a person who has wide and varied interests. Try a Little Tenderness is about viruses because I've been obsessed with them for 20 years. Figured I might as well put all that research to good use. The heroine of Buttercream owns a bakery because I love to bake. I like to write lots of different types of stuff, and since I can be endlessly fascinated by all manner of things I think I bring that passion and interests to my books.
What I love about writing fiction is the chance to learn something new. Before I started writing I didn't know a darn thing about how law enforcement worked. Now I know probably as much as some officers. LOL! Then I realized it fascinated me to learn about forensics and all that stuff. I've been writing professionally since '97 and I've learned tons of things through research. I've learned about so many different places, types of people and tons of other things without leaving my home. LOL! It's really amazing. I've always loved to learn things and I am one who likes to research. Some writers don't like researching and I tell them, you will have to research some things.
The Internet is a wonderful tool. When I first started writing I had to still go find books on a lot of stuff I needed to know but now the Internet has endless resources for you to learn about anything.
I also realized how fascinated I am with the medical field. I have tons of people in my family that are nurses but personally that does not appeal to me as a career but I love to just learn about diseases, etc. Lord knows I have a lot of experience with Cancer seeing how I've had many family members with it. But I am always learning about new diseases and other things. I read the recent medical reports. When I first started reading them, I didn't understand them, now I do. LOL! You automatically get used to something if you're interested in it.
Oh and don't let me mention about all the foreign places I love to research and learn about. I was just reading about a tribe last week in Madagascar because in the story I am writing now, my character had been to Madagascar and I wanted it where he got connected to a tribe there so I researched the tribes, etc. I've also come across a lot of tiny little islands and stuff through the years that a lot of people probably never heard of. I know I hadn't. I call it, "traveling from my computer chair." LOL! I love learning, I tell you.
I've learned more about different things from writing and the Internet than I ever did in school. Seriously. I have learned so much that I could write books on all the things I've learned. ROFL!
Best Wishes!
Danielle my problem with writing what you know is that the statement leads to confusion for new writers. That's why I don't use the term personally and don't like the impression it gives to people who might not understand. It's just a pet peeve of mine because I've had to go back with many writers and try to teach them that this is not to be taken literally.During mentoring, new writers always ask stuff like, "Stacy how can people write Fantasy, Sci-fi if they can only write what they know?" Then they get off into asking if they can write about other races or genders. One guy said, "I wanna write this from a woman's POV, but I don't know how to be a woman." So then I'd have to explain that the "write what you know" thing is often taken out of context and I have to explain to them to remember that it does not mean you cannot go outside your experiences. Seems like it would be commonsense for people to know that right? Well no, some writers do really take this statement as some sort of rule and thus it needs explaining. LOL!
So I have to explain to them that the statement is not meant in that sense and it's confusing to a lot of new writers. Some writers get it. They understand that it doesn't mean ONLY write what you know. But you'd be surprised at some writers who think that this means they only write their experiences.
Then I explain, if you believe that, how do you figure we have horror novels, Fantasy, etc. Do you think people are really going around with vampires and demons? Then when I explain it to them like this, they usually laugh and go, "Oh yeah I see your point."
So it's not that you shouldn't write what you know to a point but that statement confuses a lot of people so that's why I don't like it. You'd be amazed at how literal new writers take things. Some really believe that they shouldn't stray from stuff other than what they know and I have to remind them that they are writing fiction and it's impossible to only write what you know.
I believe that 90% of what I write is stuff I've never experienced and didn't know a thing about but I can write it like I do. LOL!
I write to move people...to laughter, to tears, to hope and (not going to pull punches) to arousal/orgasm. I know that I have a winner when my characters move me to those things as well. And often those characters do come from deep within me...feelings that are common to us all like the fear of losing a child, failure or loneliness. When we go deep enough to face our own anxieties, our characters take on a depth that people respond to...or maybe just the ones that choose to read my mushy stuff.
Mod
That's another good point, Danielle. I like seeing character grow also. Especially if they have a character arc throughout the story. It keeps me interested as a reader and really stretches my writerly muscles as a writer. :-)
How much of yourself can you put into a character you are writing before the reader is going to be turned off and view it as wish fulfilment or a massive exercise in self-indulgence? Do you consider this when you write?
Most of us writers are taught to 'write what we know', and it's expected that we will write about things that we are analyzing in our lives, and put some of our feelings into characters. I think it's pretty unlikely that a writer can successfully approach a subject that they have no interest in. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. On the other hand, should the author keep that wall up between themselves and the characters they write?
What do you think?