Tuesday 22 May 2012

Are you Walking Down the Street Naked?

Neil Gaiman's speech to the graduates of the University of of the Arts in Philadelphia has been circulating around the internet. And rightly so. Do give it a listen, if you've got a moment. All good stuff.

What got me thinking, was when he spoke about finding your voice:

"write ... as only you can, the moment that you feel, that just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself that's the moment when you might be starting to get it right."

Things that tend to snag my attention are things that I don't do. I don't feel at all that I'm showing too much of myself. I think of my stories as intellectual puzzles. I'm very interested in emotion and character but my characters are always very definitely not me. If anything I feel they are a conversation between me and ideas I've picked up along my way.

No doubt, every word, every character arc, every happy ending, is revealing a lot about me--eek. But I don't feel they are me. And of course, every writer is different and has their own process.

But food for thought. Do you feel this way about your stories? Do they expose the heart of you? How can I use  Gaiman's advice to write better stories?

26 comments:

  1. None of my characters seem "me" -- but they all have a part of me in them, because they're all human (except when they're horses). Writing is hideously personal.

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    1. True, Melissa. I write about characters who hold very different opinions from myself. Heck, sometimes I even write men, and aliens. But I guess they've all got bits of me in.

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  2. "I'm very interested in emotion and character but my characters are always very definitely not me. If anything I feel they are a conversation between me and ideas I've picked up along my way."

    That is, I think, a wonderful way of stating it. Each character contains some seed of the author's personality or perspective. Some more so than others. But in general, characters are like conduits between the author and the story. Sometimes, they tell US the story. At other times, I struggle to connect with my own characters because they don't make the same decisions I would make, and that troubles me, makes me question their motivation. And that can be a fun creative process all in itself.

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    1. Hello Adam, it's great when characters come to life and start to write their own stories. It doesn't happen enough for me. In an ideal world, they would just get on with it, and leave me to read.

      I like your interpretation that characters are conduits between the author and the story. That's very true for me.

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  3. I agree that most of my characters have something of myself in them. Moreso for my POV characters. The novel I'm working on has some of my most personal writing in it, drawing on some direct experiences even if they're couched in a fictional context. And I think it's one of my more honest stories as a result. I'm not sure if it's because I'm tapping into myself more or if I'm a stronger writer now than a few years ago or what. I hate the whole "write what you know" mantra, but for emotional truths, I do think it can make a difference.

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    1. That's interesting, Blue. I think it was Orson Scott Card in Characters and Viewpoints, who talked about using the emotions in our every day life, and amplifying them.

      I do tend to take my emotion from characters in other media, though. My current story has a crime family boss, and I know I'm channelling Tony Soprano.

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  4. Great post, Deborah.
    I think story characters have to be a part of the writer, otherwise it doesn’t feel real to the reader. But the characters in our stories do not complete us. You could not know me or understand me just by reading one of my stories or six of them. But yet, maybe a part of you connects with a part of me. To me, that’s what it’s all about.

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    1. Yes. A connection. Interesting, Erin, the idea of constructing a bridge between the writer and the reader.

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  5. I definitely write characters who are NOT me. Rock stars who love the limelight, that kind of thing. Very not me. hahaha. But at the same time I have no doubt that every one of my characters reveals something about me to the reader too. "Eek" is right ;)

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    1. Wouldn't it be horrible to be a famous writer, then everyone would start psychoanalysing us.

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  6. I'm sure there's a piece of myself in every one of my characters, but am I brutally me in my work? Not yet. Maybe someday...

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    1. 'Brutally me' I like that expression, Milo.

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  7. Interesting question!

    There must be a bit of me in all the people I write, but there is more in some than in others. Some I can't even think what bit of me there must be in there. But I wrote them, so there has to be a bit, somewhere.

    Two weeks ago I began to write the 'brutally me' story. Lol. That's one that'll never see the light of day.

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    1. Your story at EDF felt very real, Lydia.

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    2. Thank you :)

      Luckily I've never had to deal with that sort of tragedy, but a few of the minor details were borrowed from my life.

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  8. I get what he's saying - and what you're saying - very well. I've not been that good at really being "me" in the past. I have been good at thinking "No, you can't say that!"

    These days I'm better though. Getting older maybe helps. I tend to look out for that little voice of self-censorship and think "Great - that's probably something interesting that is worth saying..."

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  9. I think I almost know what he means, Simon. I wonder if I want to go there? Hmmm. Hmmm.

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  10. My characters are never me - but they do share some of my interests, values and experiences.

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    1. Ah, thanks Patsy. I do think my characters share my interests, but not always my values. I like to mix it up, but I'm writing a story a week. They can't all be me!

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  11. I struggle with this too but I take Gaiman's statement a slightly different way. My characters are definitely not me (that would get old fast) but their dreams and hurts and challenges show my internal compulsions. If I create an evil demon who steals souls leaving his victims as mindless shells, the demon doesn't reflects me, but his actions reflect what I see as evil and from that you can extrapolate what I fear.

    Thinking about your Rocket Science story, there's clear statements there - of conflicts of responsibility, of family, of loss, of what is of importance. That's not that the characters are you (to my mind) so much as your world view shines through and I gain a sliver of a view of struggles that you find imortant..

    I think my stories are wrapped up in gauze and they would be more powerful if I was more truthful, if they reflected my biggest hopes and worst dreams. But I don't know (yet) how to tap into that...

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  12. Hello Sylvia.

    hanks for a very thoughtful post. Also thanks for reading my story. That's a good example, because you're right, it does reflect something that I'm interested in: the balancing of all the different facets of our lives, in this case through the social impact of colonisation. I think my world view did shine through ie: family is the most important thing of all. But I didn't feel particularly exposed because most (I'm assuming) most people think that.

    But I remember talking to you about how I felt it was too gendered (ie, a story that you might assume a woman had written). Aha. Perhaps I did feel exposed. Hey, that story got great reviews. Perhaps there's something in all this after all.

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    1. I saw this today and thought of you! http://www.buzzfeed.com/cconnelly/neil-gaimans-graduation-speech-turned-into-a-s3x

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  13. Wow, what a great discussion.

    I agree with Sylvia - for me, I don't think that naked feeling comes necessarily via characters, but through situation or conflict in stories.

    Maybe we could judge our closeness to Gaiman's model based on how much a story invites psychoanalysis? I propose a scale of one to Fully Freud.

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  14. Elizabeth, I was reading about Dali (yes, for that anthology) the other day. It stunned me how much of his life he incorporated into his art. That was his aim, during his surrealist phase to transform his element of the subconscious into art. And of course Freud was their inspiration.

    Blimey.

    I'm more of a Jungian kind of gal (she says, displaying her shaky grasp of psychoanalytic theory). I'm very interested in archetypes, and the elements that make stories appealing through the ages. I'm thinking fairy tales and mythic stories that endure.

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  15. I like this. I do find that the stories and poems that are most me--that expose me, that make me nervous to submit them as if I'm sending off nude photos of myself (which I try not to do)--are in the end my best. I can read them over and over again and each time connect with them because they're ME. Sounds a bit narcissistic I know, but you have to be a little self-involved to be throwing bits and pieces of yourself at perfect strangers while demanding "love me, love me!"

    The stories and poems that are perhaps my most crafted and plotted and polished I often times want to skim. I say, oh that was clever, but anybody can be clever. No one else can be me, and that's really all I have. It's all any of us have.

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