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bettsfic · 10 months

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I’ve been thinking a lot about mindset when it comes to approaching a story.

For a lot of my stories I approach certain reactions as “what would I do”. But the story isn’t about me. It’s about these fictional people that I’ve dreamt up and need to feel real to tell anyone authentic story. I feel like sometimes as a writer my head isn’t as deep into my characters as I would hope BUT when on the rare occasions it is—my mind is consumed by the character I’m writing and I don’t want it to stray out of fear I’ll loose the realness of my character. But I also need my mind to calm down to actually live life.

But this only ever happened a few times.

How do I go about forgetting myself when writing and get consumed by the protagonist and scene instead of being cognizant that I’m just typing words on a blank page and adding my subjective input into my stories, even if it doesn’t align with who my protagonist is?

this feels like two different questions: how to develop character depth and how to find a state of immersion/flow state. those two things are definitely connected but i don't think they're one and the same.

in terms of forgetting yourself/getting consumed by a character, i don't think it's something you can force, although crafting a good character certainly helps. it's not so different from acting, insofar as you can get into the brain of someone else for a while and think their thoughts.

which goes back to the other part of your question. in all honesty, a great many writers can only write slightly varying iterations of themselves, and that's all they ever want to do. and that's okay. part of the beauty of prose is that you can discover states of being outside your own experiences, and i believe all states deserve to be written about. the idea of a writer creating a self-insert character or basing a character on themselves has never bothered me. so much of the work of writing is putting a mirror up so you can see yourself from a different view.

but that's not what you asked. i intend to write a newsletter at some point about character depth but the gist of it is this:

a person's identity only really has two parts: attitude and behavior. in other words, we have the things we do, the way we physically interact with our environment; and we have the way we feel about that environment or what we think of it. this is kind of the fundamental tenet of research psychology.

logic dictates that attitude controls behavior. you think something, you do it. you believe something, you act within those beliefs. but there's also cognitive dissonance, which is when behavior affects attitude. the classic example is that if you have two people do a simple task, and compensate one person but not the other, the unpaid person will have a better attitude toward the task. in other words, in lacking payment, a person can be compelled to feel internal satisfaction to justify having done something meaningless.

when crafting a character, you can consider things like, in what ways are their attitudes in conflict with their behaviors? if someone considers themselves deeply loyal but also cheats on their spouse, it creates conflict, and conflict creates story. the story becomes, how would someone who sees themselves as loyal be compelled to cheat on their spouse? and more importantly, what has happened to them to make them this way?

here's another example. let's say you have a character who gets punched in the face. getting punched in the face is painful, illegal, and just generally a huge bodily violation. logic dictates there will be a negative reaction to this. maybe a character cries, maybe they get angry, maybe they punch back. but what if they didn't? what if they took a punch and had no reaction to it at all? what kind of person wouldn't react to getting hit? someone who's used to it. and there's a story there, of what has happened to them to make their reaction go against our understanding of a normal response to being hit.

i write self-inserts sometimes, but i like to write them from outside their point of view. i like to make myself the romantic interest. and that sounds narcissistic, i know, but i've gotten a lot of great character inspiration by asking myself, what kind of person could love me? what traits would they have to have to fit with my myriad glaring flaws? and the opposite: what are traits i often love in others? what are flaws i find endearing rather than abhorrent? i'm a very practical person, so someone who values that about me might be whimsical. i'm very in my own head all the time, so someone who values that about me would probably have a lot of other relationships, and that might mean they're outgoing and friendly. i tend to take everything too seriously, so i'm drawn to playful people, and exceptionally playful people can sometimes be a little immature or naive.

of course, people don't fit together that neatly, and in the ways they don't fit together, you can develop interpersonal conflict which will potentially create character growth.

all these dynamics can be seeds of inspiration for a character, and when those seeds spring from the self, i think it's a lot easier to reach that state of immersion you described.

the first time i wrote an opposite self-insert, my POV character turned out to be kind of a sociopath, because at the time i didn't have a very high opinion of myself. the second time, after a bit of recovery, i was able to find a softer kind of person. and as i've continued this experiment, what i've found is that over many revisions of each individual story, the characters become their own as i begin to understand their histories and motivations, and what ways their lives deviate from mine.

i have many more thoughts about this subject which is why i want to devote a whole newsletter to it, but hopefully it was at least a little helpful.

#writing advice #character

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bisluthq · 3 years

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Roomate anon, hi babe! ❤️ First of all I just wanted to say that I am so so happy that you managed to work out your thoughts and admit to yourself that you're gay, that's so good for you! Some of us take years and years to even start accepting that part of ourselves. Also, you don't have to go and tell your family and friends right away hun, you have all the right to decide who gets to know this part about yourself because you feel safe and comfortable with them knowing.

You're so brave and admirable and from what you've shared with us, I can tell that you genuinely are a sweet, kind, and compassionate person who cares about others and tries her best at everything. Those are such lovely qualities to have ❤️ PLS tell us what happened when you talked to roomie! Your story is so beautiful and it's safe to say that we're all rooting for you, sending you love, and wishing you the best😍❤️

Now, in reference to Tay's gay sounding songs, I 100% agree with you on Dress and Delicate. Without the backstory of Swiftwyn, those two songs are very sapphic and really capture the feeling of a sprouting wlw relationship. Nat has a very good lyric by lyric interpretation of Dress somewhere in the blog if you wanna check it out, I feel the same as her in regards to that song.

To me personally (and I think many here will agree), Treacherous sounds very gay too bc of all the "I'll do anything you say if you say it with your hands" and "forever going with the flow, but you're friction". Imo Begin Again is somehow gay as well, bc of all the comparing a past "he" that didn't understand you or treat you the way you would like, and currently being with a "you" (female imo) that thinks you're funny and endearing, can relate to you, and treats you the way you wanna be treated.

Wonderland is... pretty gay idk. Like the rs it talks about goes into trouble bc "whispers turned to talking and talking turned to screams" as in people started to find out about them and being judgy. Not to mention "too in love to think straight" which speaks for itself haha.

I hear wlw in It's Nice To Have A Friend. It sounds to me like two high school friends who are actually more than friends but don't yet know it and, like you a few weeks ago (it's okay we've all been there ❤️) , think "aw it's so nice to be straight girls and be best friends and be able to just kiss and sleep together, isn't it so nice that bffs can do that".

Seven. Holy shit that song called me out so loudly lmao. Seven is about two different themes imo: 1) the beauty of being a little kid and not having to worry about anything and just playing and running all day. As a kid we're very free spirited and imaginative and, in my case, happy to play in the trees and the mud and just be wild 2) being seven years old and looking at one of your girl classmates in school and loving/memorizing very specific physical features of theirs like their hair (like a pattern), their freckles, their dimples etc and also thinking "we should run away together and live a cool life like superheroes or dancers or animal rescuers (me haha)". At that age we don't really know it or understand it, but those are early romantic feeling towards another girl. I could go on and on about this song tbh.

I agree with you in that August has a wlw vibe to it. Idk if it's the nostalgia, the cottagecore of it all, or the lamentation of a love that could not last for whatever reason but the energy is there. "Wanting was enough, for me it was enough to live for the hope of it all" and all of that you know.

Ivy is imo a fraction of a wlw story set during winter in like the 1700s or 1800s. The narrator is a widow whose husband died recently and she's having a romantic thing with one of her female friends, but the friend's engaged to be married to a man (as in her hand has been promised to him because that's how things worked during those times, marriages were often arranged by families), so the whole thing is a secret affair, which is why she says "your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand": her friends touch sets her insides on fire bc of how much she's attracted to her, but the touch is "tarnished" bc the whole thing is forbidden, yet it's "so grand" because it's meaningful and their love is very real.

"And the old widow goes to the stone everyday, but I stay here grieving for the living" = a widow would usually go to visit their husband's grave and lament his passing, but the narrator doesn't do this because she doesn't (and probably never did coz you know she's gay) feel any deep love towards her husband, she doesn't really miss him, and instead she prefers to focus on the love and infatuation she has for her female friend, and she grieves that they can't actually be together in a normal way bc of society at that time.

But they really are deeply in love with each other and it breaks the narrator that they can't spend their lives together as a couple : "goddamn my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand". Yet they continue to love each other, spend time together, and be magnificently cursed while sitting down to talk for hours while drinking the narrator's dead husband's wine, because she doesn't really care that it used to belong to her husband; it has no significant value to her in that sense so she prefers to drink it with her lover.

"Clover blooms in the fields, spring breaks loose the time is near, what would he do if he found us out" : the bridge explains that winter has passed, spring is coming, and the wedding date for her lover and her bethroved husband is getting nearer (aka they're running out of time to be together). They discuss the possibility of attempting to keep their secret rs even after the marriage, but they fear of what would happen if the husband found out: "he's gonna burn this house to the ground", the house being their romance.

Still, the narrator insists that her lover will always be in her mind and in her otherwise cold ("my house of stone") heart ("your ivy grows and now I'm covered in you"). She claims that she will forever remember and hold on to the "moments that they stole, on begged and borrowed time", which suggests that they don't end up together, not even in secret. Sorry I got carried away but my mates I could write a whole ass novel about this song, I already have the narrator and her lover well developped in my brain and I have some pretty solid ideas for side characters lol.

Cowboy like me has sapphic aspects to it. "Takes one to know one" makes me think of how a lot of gay people have very on point gaydars and can sorta tell when someone pings haha. Idk Tay really loves Joe in a gay way and I love them for it haha.

And lastly what even is Dorothea lmao like is there even a non-gay explanation for that song? It's a fictional setting and fictional characters but Tay hun you really know how to capture the feeling of having been in love with a girl and now seeing her from far away huh. I mean it could be accidental but still👀 the song sounds gay to me idk.

Those are just off the top of my head and my personal opinion. At the end of the day, we can relate queer experiences to all sorts of songs and all lyrical interpretations are valid. That's what art is all about 😊.

💯

#roommate anon <3

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