I’ve learned that some people like reading fiction best when they find themselves in it. I guess it’s not so different from how we tend to view most things: through a lens etched with our own experiences and beliefs. I can do it, too–comparing a character’s behavior and life to my own.
More enjoyable for me is fiction where events, circumstances, and characters slip loose from the moorings of ME ME ME and provide a new world for me to consider. I don’t care if *I* wouldn’t do that…make that choice…make that mistake…pick that route/person/job/place. It’s a lot more fun for me to think *Why* is s/he doing that, what will happen because of it, what will the character learn, how will it impact the story/other characters/how will all this ever be resolved?
Novels written by someone who has any fame/notoriety/celebrity often fall prey to the belief that they are memoir or autobiography disguised as fiction. Their authors occasionally admit when there is some truth to that. Maybe it’s part of selling books, making readers wonder which parts are true, which characters are based on whom? Even with those books, I enjoy them most when I let go of that perspective.
Fiction allows liberties–and liberation!
I like this quote from Carrie Fisher’s Postcards From The Edge. I’m content for it to be neither about me nor about Carrie Fisher, simply about the character Suzanne Vale.
She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn’t feel the life she saw she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective.
Sometimes I think of sending postcards to myself as if they’re from other writers’ characters offering wit and wisdom. Sometimes I feel like my own characters send me mental postcards saying, No I would not do this. YOU would do this maybe, but I would not. Let me be me. Even if you don’t like it. Even if you think a reader won’t like it.
My rebellious, outspoken characters can sometimes make me feel like I’M a madwoman locked in a tower. I love them for that.
those characters are why you may be a mad woman. they were on the shelf much too long. WRITE!!!
As fast as I can! =) (Some exceptions may apply.)