originally posted by George
Janny
I was just wondering, as a writer, how much of the interaction between the players and generally the underlying character story do you model on personal experience and observation?
For example emotional issues like anger, love arguments etc etc or alternatively situational issues like loss of a loved one.
George.
George - you asked. The answer is both simple and complex.
The simple answer: all of it.
The complex answer - none of it.
All of it - we each perceive out of our perspective on experience - what we pay attention to, what detail we observe and notice, what emotion and impact CREATES value.
I see a lot of detail, and experience in as wide a range as I can bear to - and push that limit all the time.
Now the complexity -the story has been laid out with an IMMENSE range of depth and detail - but when YOU experience them, what do YOU see - what do you value, what resonates with your experience, what sensitivities get amplified due to who YOU are - now we see - your experience in this manuscript will be YOURS…what you gave attention and meaning to will be REAL as real - but was the "real" that I saw the same thing?
It shared common spring points, but what I wrote, and what you experienced are two different individual experiences along a parallel.
Therefore - what is real to me and what is real to you MAY intersect - or may not.
If so, it is real to us both.
If not, it is NO less real to us both.
Real for you and Real for me need not be exactly in unison.
If you found meaning in something, saw an insight or a possibility that was real for you - that was yours. And just as preciously real, to me, as something of YOURS, as the seed that was real for me, that perhaps, triggered that cascade of meaning.
The two points do not have to intersect. The value is equally valid.
originally posted by R’is’n
I also find, that when I re-read books, the perception of 'real' changes according to what I've experienced in the interim, or am experiencing at the moment.
One of the author's I like to reread, apart from Janny, is Jane Austen. Every year I find myself reacting differently to characters, situations, plots.
For example, as a teen I never liked Elinor and always identified with Marianne in 'Sense and Sensibility'. The older I got, the more I began to understand the restraint in Elinor's character, later still, felt annoyed with Marianne for throwing caution to the wind, and finally, coming to appriciate both sisters' strengths and weaknesses.
It's like a reverse sort of journal, in that reflected in the writing, I can trace my own evolution.
I've come to realise that any kind of judgement usually is a phase, a blindspot that clears with more time and understanding.
Now if I could only remember that more in 'real' time… *grin*
originally posted by Greebo
Hee hee. I do appreciate them both but I still find Marianne annoying. Took me several goes till I could read Emma all the way through because I had to get over the fact she was so aggravating. I'm too impatient with certain kinds of people, clearly…Too self-absorbed to fully enjoy the display of it in other people…
Janny, do you consider yourself self-absorbed? Must a creator be self-absorbed? Thoughts, anyone?
Creating anything, solo, is pulling it out of the void on guts, grit, and inspiration - you are basically amusing yourself, so I imagine, yes, while creating, this would be true.
The rest of the time - I interact with people, home, husband, and friends.
While creating, if a friend had a crisis, no question which way I'd turn. The real world person over the virtual one, every time.
Some creators immerse into their talent to escape life, some do so to explore life. The former immerse deeper the thicker it gets, express their angst on paper so to speak - the latter just can't. Life's actual stuff looms too large, and they work when things are peaceful. I happen to be the latter type. (or so I experience so far, anyway)
originally posted by Greebo
Nicely put. I s'pose not too many creators take their self-absorption to the extreme - that would be a bit self-defeating.
That's an interesting division you've proposed (to escape life or to explore it). I wonder about the relationship between that kind of division and a person's tendency towards introversion/extraversion…Personally, I'd have a foot in each of those camps, but if you look at it from a certain perspective, those are both ways of interpreting or dealing with life, as well - one from an inner focus, the other from an outer.
And may I say, for someone who isn't expressing your personal angst on paper, you sure are generating a bit nonetheless. Other peoples' angst of course. 