Patterns and Craft

[sartorias]

I've been on the run showing my house guests all over Southern California. Too bad we can't do internet runs while sitting on the freeway. I could have caught up on every missed post going back ten years. Ah well, wait for the implants.

One observation before I get to the post I had some ideas about. Monday my visitors wanted to see The Getty

Comments

[sartorias]

No guarantees. I was just thinking about this as I did some food prep--I remember being in a workshop once many years ago. There was a writer around my own age (early twenties) who had a good ear for dialogue, and her plot sense zipped right along. But her favorite novel, which some of us began to dread her bringing up, was centered around a character that was just like her. This was not a Mary Sue in the full sense. The character was prettier than the writer, that is, everyone said she was prettier. The key thing was, the character showed all the writer's idiosyncracies and personality traits. This made for a vivid character . . . the falldown for the reader (and it took a long time for us clueless newbies to figure this out, and then no one could think of a way to express it) was that the other characters invariably thought her reactions were wonderful--funny--special. So even though the character wasn't a Mary Sue in the usual sense, she took a Sue's place by being the center of everyone's admiration. And some of those personality traits . . . weren't funny, or charming, or special.

So, stepping backward, on the positive, we had a really distinct character, mirroring real life, rather than being yet another composit of popular character bits. Also on the positive, the writer just loved her story, which she never tired of rewriting, sending out, polishing yet again when it was rejected, and sending it out. For all I know she's still sending it out, because in all these years it's never appeared that I could see.

In the negative, well, writer-love did not translate into reader-love.

[asakiyume]

What I find bemusing about the situation you describe is that I don't know ANYone who thinks that their jokes, habits, etc., meet with universal approval. Most people are keenly aware of how (to their minds) they're NOT appreciated. How strange that this particular writer could observe herself so well, but couldn't see other people's reactions.

[sartorias]

I think what was going on was that she was puzzled by others' reactions, and in her story world, everything worked out. Looking back, I see a super smart math-mind type who had some serious social disconnects. Like she couldn't see how everyone in a room winced when she'd wave her hand violently, stand with her toes in, and say in a little girl voice "Hoppy brickle!" when it was someone's birthday. In her mind, she was adorable. In her story, people reacted the way she expected people to act around adorableness, not the odd, unpredictable way she found in RL.

[asakiyume]

That makes PERFECT sense. I've met people like her--exactly. Your "Hoppy brickle" example is perfect.