Hi...
Did you ever experience that one of your characters started to scare you? It just happened to me with the protagonist of my most recent story. He started out in a rather bad situation and I invented reasons for him to be there. I filled him with life and realized I made somekind of dark prophecy about my own life. The protagonist suddenly became my author avatar and was found wanting... It made me wonder if I'm really that bad, if my life and reasoning is that shallow and depressive.
Maybe I just wrote down my fears, but in the end the character was based on me. Made me wonder if i'll really end up like that. A total loser and enjoying it... Someone nobody will be able to respect, not even myself.
I guess I never really got over crap that happened in my life... Bullying in the german equivalent of junior high school and that it really influences my worldview. I guess my rather agressive comments in stories about bullying here were another part of this. It made me build walls around my soul and it's extend somewhat scares me. Will I end up a total social failure like my protagonist or can I do better?
I kind of wonder if I should actually publish it... It's like walking around without pants...
Sorry for this, but I guess I just needed to vent it.
Beyogi
Comments
Scary
I wrote the Cunninghams in 'Sweat and Tears', and I can see the evil witch so clearly. Other characters have been bad, but it was her and her psychotic husband that I shivered at as I wrote.
I can't complain,
as long as you really ARE walking around pantless. :)
- - -
Royal catgirl of the court of the Empress of Euphoria. I like fine seafood, and I love huggles! ^_^
I think it's a little bit
I think it's a little bit too cold outside to walk around pantless...
Beyogi
= )
Who mentioned being outside?
- - -
Royal catgirl of the court of the Empress of Euphoria. I like fine seafood, and I love huggles! ^_^
Well I'm not wearing pants
Well I'm not wearing pants in the shower :P
Often when you write things
Often when you write things down that you perceive as true, it can be somewhat theraputic, even when it is uncomfortable. How uncomfortable that makes you can affect whether or not you may want to share it with others. While in therapy, I wrote essentially my life story as I perceived it, and dug around and found some uncomfortable things that at first I wanted to deny, but in talking about them with my therapist, I realized they were true and had been repressed. It wasn't that they were really that terrible to anyone but me, but they were things that made me think about myself in a different way. We all wear social masks that try to direct how others see us, and when a truth behind one of those masks is pointed out one can feel a loss that is akin to pain, but it can also provide a kind of relief. I know I would not have wanted to open my bio to just anyone, as there were some perceptions about others that could hurt them if they were just my memories through the filter of my life, and not events that were intended the way they seemed to come out.
If you had not written your blog, and had just gone ahead and published it would anyone have related it to you? Think about why you pointed it out in your blog. Is it something that you really on some level want to share? If not, then don't post it. I would suggest that is the best way to evaluate whether or not it should be posted.
CaroL
CaroL
I guess I want to share
I guess I want to share it... I wrote down the story in about a week... writing 2500-3000 words a day, in a foreign language... I guess that means it really wants out.
Thank you for your comment, I guess I just needed to read how other people feel about stuff like this.
Beyogi
Sometimes we write to bring things out
All of my characters have something of me in them. They have to, they were my creations, whether it shows my positive or negative qualities. It's a safe way of bringing out some of my feelings and opinions, without having to actually emotionally bleed all over the place.
Don't look at it as a bad thing. You're really presenting a side of yourself as you see it-usually without saying "This is me!" but that's something for you to decide. Still, it is a way to get feedback. Is this part of me a bad thing? Can I change it? Do I really need to change anything? Could I really be accepted by someone for myself? You can kind of get the answers to these sort of questions by checking what others say. It's actually rather cathartic.
Don't be afraid to infuse your characters with your ideas and feelings. It gives those characters realism, and in a sense, a "soul". Some characters you'll never forget (Like Diedre in "Maiden by Decree). Just the thought of them brings them to life, and that is because their creators gave them a bit of themselves. Those are the truly great characters.
Wren
I guess I'll just have to
I guess I'll just have to finish editing and see how you like it :D
Thank you for your great comment,
Beyogi
Self as Antihero
I think most of us, when we create a main story character, whether they're in third person or the narrator, we usually try to make them a bit more like the person we'd want to be than we really are. They might have many of our doubts, foibles and quirks but they end up triumphing, doing the right thing, beating the bad guys, finding love and/or freedom to be themselves, whatever.
But then there are stories about people who aren't so sane or brave or noble. These can be great stories, illustrating the things that can go wrong with people, how they can delude themselves or embrace their worst facets; Or looking at society from an outsider's point of view. Bukowski's autobiographical scribbles with their smart-ass distain for anything usually considered a virtue, the neurotic trainwreck of a Tennessee Williams play, Irvine Welsh's (Trainspotting) or Hubert Selby's (Requiem for a Dream) junkies, David Mamet's 2-bit grifters; Various lost, insane or suicidal characters. They're not going to cheer anyone up or inspire anybody (except for some weird emo teenager wearing black and clutching a copy of THE BELL JAR in her pale paw) but I think transgressive fiction like this needs to be written and read.
You mention your character being "a total loser and enjoying it". That sounds like
my novella FUCK UP, which can be found here: http://fictioneer.org/content/fk-part-1-0
I wrote it because it really happened, I had gotten that bad, and it blows me away that I could've been so nuts.
And if I did what I set out to in writing it (I don't know if I did or not because apparently no one wanted to read a book called FUCK UP) my character will come off as a punk rock Don Quixote (only without all that admirable ambition); a fool, the anti-hero of a cautionary tale about getting too deep into your own head, who if you want to get to the truth of what's happening you take whatever he says and assume the opposite is true. What Angela Rasch and other smart people call the "unreliable narrator"...
I'd say go ahead and post it. Let people see the worst in you. It'll probably be cathartic; and I don't think it will become a self-fullfilling prophecy but may even have the opposite effect, because it'll help you look at your character's emotional binges and messed up thought processess more objectively. Which is what happened with my dark novella about a self-pitying jerk. Then you'll probably be exhausted after writing it & need to follow it up with a story about fluffy unicorns.
I ♥ fluffy unicorns!
~hugs, Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Yes indeed
I remember writing something like "That character was what I could have been, that one what I nearly was, and that one what I would love to be"
It's more like the character
It's more like the character I could have been in the future if something would have gone even more wrong in the past ;)
Wow... thank you for this
Wow... thank you for this comment. I found it somewhat scary that a character who had some flaws I share somehow became me at my worst. At least I gave him some excuses... I guess maybe I'm not that bad.
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who dumped his or her dark side into a story.
Beyogi
my characters tend to have some of me
in one way or another, so I understand what you mean there. The nice thing is, in some ways, you are the "author" of your own life - if you're worried about the direction its going, you can at least try and change it.
Big hugs.
Dorothycolleen, member of Bailey's Angels
Similar experience while watching a movie.
Well, it will give you a chance at mindful self examination and provide you with the opportunity to change what you think needs to change for the future.
A few days ago, I had the chance to watch the BBC movie of Jane Austen's, "Persuasion" (1995) with Amanda Root. About half way through the film, I realised that in many ways I am Anne in the movie, and immediately identified with her shy reticence. I noticed how she seemed to be the family servant, and the one to deal with the difficult situations. It has helped me to begin to make peace with the past in areas I had not previously thought of.
So, when you write characters, perhaps many of them come close to representing a part of your own life. I can certainly see it in my own scribbling s. Take heart, they can't actually hurt you, and may go a ways to fixing things in your own life that you are not able to fix.
And if you watch the aforementioned movie, you get to see what a total hunk Ciar'an Hinds, (The Sea Captian) is. LOL
Much peace
Gwendolyn