This week, we're talking about how much of your soul (see yesterday's Motivational Monday) goes into your work. Are you intentional, do you avoid it, or does it sneak in regardless? How much of your "soul" do you put into your work?
How much does your writing reflect your personality?
Ef Deal: I don't think any one character reflects my personality; each of my main characters does carry a piece of me. One is always focused on work to the exclusion of all else. Another is mistrustful of the world, but fiercely loyal once her trust is gained. Another is Earth Mother to younger people, and Mama Bear if you hurt one of them (or in her case, Mama Wolf). Music is a huge part of my stories.
Bobby Nash: There's a lot of me in my work. There's a small piece of me in every character, some more than others.
Barry Reese: I don't usually sit down and deliberately try to put my personality and beliefs into my work but I'm sure it creeps in, especially over time.
HC Playa: As a beginner writer: oh I don't put THAT much of me into my work.
Me re-reading after awhile and lots of personal growth... 👀 Well then that character hits a lot closer to home than I thought.
As I have written more I feel like all my characters are an amalgam of traits, some from me and some from people I have known. I'm smart and sarcastic and it took me like 5 novels to realize all my characters are either highly educated (traditionally or by some alternative means) and very smart.... probably smarter than the average bear. I put in a few comical morons, but realized that my worlds are potentially unrealistically populated with smart people 🙄. Why? That's what I know. While not particularly educated, my mother is quite smart and fostered in myself and my siblings a love of learning and questioning. Growing up with equally gifted siblings, gifted friends, attending university and majoring in chemistry, working research and getting a PhD and in turn having equally gifted children... My world definitely skews scary smart with the occasional average individual. It's one of those things I didn't intend on putting in, but it's a reflection of my lived experience.
Marian Allen: Quite a lot. My writing almost always involves exploring the question, "What does it mean to be my brother's keeper?" I also almost always explore it on a tangent, bouncing off into humor and oddity.
John L. Taylor: My writing reflects my artistic and visual aesthetic more than my personality. I tend to put some of my anxiety or childhood phobias into my horror writings but rarely does a character really reflect me as a person. The only story I ever really my own personality into was called "Flying Cars," and was about raising a child with Autism. It's also the only story I ever won a cash prize for, so maybe I should more often.
Sean Taylor: I'm not the kind of writer who can keep my "soul" out of my work. If something is a part of me, it's going to work its way into the nooks and crannies of my writing. Feelings, things I'm studying or researching, themes, POVs -- I just can't keep them out. They don't always come out in my actual characters though, more often through my metaphors and themes and consistently appearing subject matter. And the more I change and grow, the more my writing will reflect those changes.
An example, the more I get fed up with the battle my LGBTQIA+ friends and folks have to fight to change the system (and just be acknowledged as important to the world), the more I will see them and that battle reflected in my writing. But not in a preachy or "let's make a point" way. It will be reflected more in the types of stories I tell and how their stories become important within those tales.
Another example, I grew up in the South and I bleed red Georgia clay if you cut me. So that's the world I know best. That's the world that seeps out, either in the setting or in the backgrounds of many of characters.
How much does your writing reflect your personal beliefs?
John L. Taylor: My political and religious beliefs usually only manifest in my poetry. Though in my horror writing, I lean on what people would consider traditional "Satanic" imagery (Satanic in the "what rural Christians think devil worship looks like," not Satanic in the "Anton LaVey/modern Satanism" sense). That is both a product of my upbringing and an attempt to resonate with a rural American audience, but doesn't represent my opinions or beliefs.
HC Playa: As for beliefs, I use stories to hopefully make readers think or at least weave a bit of tolerance into their mind. Most of my protagonist share my beliefs in some way or go through a personal growth arc that opens their eyes. I wasn't particularly good initially at writing bad guys that didn't come off as comically over the top. The more I write the better I have gotten, but it still is a challenge to write characters that are extremely different morally.
Barry Reese: I mean, I'm a liberal pacifist that has made a career of writing gun-toting vigilantes. In terms of my personal and political beliefs, I'm not really like most of my recurring characters... BUT they all share some of my spirit, regardless.
Sean Taylor: Like I said earlier, every part of who I am ends up getting into my stories. Even in little ways. As a Christian believer (in spite of how my conservative friends and family think I'm become a sort of liberal heretic --ha!) I have a strong weakness for redemptive stories (I even wrote a tutorial about it here on the blog -- check out he keywords on the side of the page for links). My characters tend to understand religion and reflect a worldview that at least started with some kind of religious instruction, even if they no longer believe or follow it.
I also tend to revisit the idea that people only learn through pain and loss, and we are too stupid to really learn and embrace change during times of great joy, and so that's also a common theme in my work, which tends to reach the point of bittersweet-ness at best, seldom true joy.
Susan H. Roddey: My personal beliefs are always expressed in my books, whether intentional or not. I've always considered my stuff to be purely escapist, but the more I look in on it, the more I realize that more conservative readers might be put off by some of what I write.
Bobby Nash: Some. I can't have every character thinking the same way I do, believing the same things I do, etc. That leads to boring drama if there's no tension. I try to let the characters be as well-rounded as possible. I get better interactions that way, I think.
Ef Deal: My religious beliefs are all over my works. In my fantasy series, my MC was betrayed by her lover, a temple priest, so she rejects all religion although she is a dedicated believer in the Sacred Spirits. In my steampunk, my MC has a thorough knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and studied Scripture (such as it was known in 1843) on her own to arrive at her beliefs, which are thrown into turmoil as she encounters lycanthropy, magic, ghosts, vampires, and the aether. She has a lot to say about it, too.
Do you find it easy or difficult to write characters whose beliefs and personalities are vastly different than your own, and do you tend to relegate them to side characters or use them as main characters? Got any examples?
Ef Deal: I've learned a lot about religions of the world, and I've seen religion used as a weapon as much as a healing balm. I've experienced divine visions, and I've suffered immense prejudice for my questions and doubts and rejected tenets of dogma. I feel pretty confident writing the good and the bad of any religion.
Other aspects of "personal beliefs," such as ethics, politics, relationships, gender perceptions, etc., I admit I'm not so adept at. I'm a big believer in mercy and redemption as much as I embrace justice. I like to believe the best of people, but I feel comfortable writing the worst too.
Marian Allen: Difficult. For instance, Darryl, in Sideshow in the Center Ring, is a rat bastard, the shadow character of the narrator, Connie. They come from the same background, and superficially have the same goal and seem to have the same attitude, but the fundamental difference between them is profound. I had the hardest time writing him! The most grinding, forced work I did (although it doesn't seem so when it's read) was writing Darryl, possibly because he was so close and yet so far from my main character.
Barry Reese: The notion that justice and the law are not always the same is something that I agree with... as is the feeling that you stand up for the underdog... and the idea that guys and gals in thigh-high boots are sexy is something that I and my characters all agree upon! I have occasionally written characters that were diametrically opposed to me... but, honestly, they usually end up as the antagonists in my stories.
HC Playa: For example in my first novel, the villain is an alien bent on domination based on past glory. While there have been plenty of historical figures that fit that trope, it's a simple villain.
In a novel I have written that's in the publishing process I have an immortal being that at first glance seems just as over the top and evil for evil sake as the Goloth ruler in Daughter of Destiny, but then we start to see glimpses of his motivations and the picture starts to shift. Who is good and who is bad becomes a bit murkier.
Personally, I feel this is more like daily real life. People are not all bad or all good. Good people can do bad things and bad people may truly think they are doing the right thing or be guilty of atrocities and still do good things. Real people are murky and so well written characters reflect that.
John L. Taylor: I don't find it difficult to write perspectives other than mine in general. Truthfully, writing gives me an outlet to understand other people and voices than my own. I have faced the criticism children in my stories seem incredibly dumb/gullible. This stems from the fact that growing up as an autistic kid, I was reminded constantly that I wasn't normal. Hence I initially wrote children to be like what adults in the 1990's seemed to expect kids to be. Apparently, I overkilled on that.
Bobby Nash: It's not difficult. I've been doing this long enough that I can divorce the characters beliefs from me. I have written characters doing and saying horrible things I would never even comprehend. I remember that they are unique characters. They are not me. I'm here to tell an entertaining story (I hope) and not to preach or push an agenda.
Sean Taylor: I write all kinds, and they all suffer under the weight of my ink. (Ha!) I really love the idea I learned from C.S. Lewis that the greatest good can become the greatest evil if we begin to make it the thing we truly "worship" with our thoughts and deeds and emotions. It's a lesson from his awesome book The Great Divorce. That kind of spiritual hubris tends to affect both my heroes and villains alike, so it makes it easy for me to write them all, regardless of their individual beliefs, POVs, genders, sexual identities, etc.
Susan H. Roddey: Writing characters with different personalities isn't "difficult" per se -- not in that they're hard to write. They're hard for me to UNDERSTAND. But people are different and they have different motivations. Conflict always starts with a difference of opinion, so they're necessary. As a rule, I try to avoid blatantly obvious political/religious/social clashes (I'm writing books to get out of the real world. I don't want to bring it into my fiction) because I don't want to alienate people. The one example I could give is the one thing I've written that may never see the light of day simply because I'm not the type of writer to let that kind of personal catharsis out into the world.
I loved reading the other commentators' thoughts. Thanks so much for a great topic!
ReplyDeleteThanks. It was so much fun. You rock for taking part.
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