Readercon Panel Notes: The Origin of Character in the Breakthrough of the Bicameral Mind

[skogkatt]

Before I begin, I just made a MySpace profile. If you're on MySpace and want to associate with me there, my page is hereAnd now, the notes! These are paraphrased and not guaranteed to be 100% accurate. I welcome corrections and discussion in the comments

Comments

[mvc]

The page you linked to notes the resemblance between Jaynes's theories and the plot of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but doesn't mention the fact that Stephenson's first book, The Big U, was much more explicitly based on Jaynes, complete with students reverting to bicamerality.

Personally, I'm with Cosma Shalizi--Jaynes is a nutcase, but his theory is a great premise for SF. (Mind you, I'd distinguish the idea of the bicameral mind from the sort of unconscious breakthroughs the panel was about, which are totally real and totally awesome).

[cucumberseed]

I tried asking Kit how I ought to write her story, and she was most unhelpful, which is part of the reason why that story will live forever at the bottom of a trunk.

I have tried character sheets and inventories and things like that, being gamer-descended, but I could never keep and refer to them, because I always felt like a great big dork, and for some reason, then it really mattered. I haven't tried it since; most RPG style character sheets are badly designed for writing, though a lot of indie games are changing that dynamic.

[skogkatt]

Yeah, your world building for Autumn War is the sort of stuff that I see other people use in their own story creation processes. For me, if I spend time really making all that stuff concrete, I lose the focus of my story. I had a great idea for a story set in Northumberland, and it's been trunked for a while now because my research got way out of control. I think I might need to just write stories first and then fix the research after the plot is committed.

[skogkatt]

What you're talking about seems pretty close to what Ellen Kushner had in mind. I've never really gotten anything useful out of that type of thing, personally, though. For me... I guess characters come with voices so clear, that doing that stuff just sort of slips me off track and out of my story. My weakest area is plot, so I need to stay on track there.

[skogkatt]

This makes sense to me. I don't think you need to worry about sounding too self-focused on this. I think everyone does things slightly differently, even while there are lots of similar overarching themes, and what makes each person a special snowflake -- and why -- is interesting to me.

[asakiyume]

I never have tried Ellen Kushner's trick, though I've heard others talk about the characters talking to them. I haven't ever had characters talk to me like that. Sometimes I've felt that I've become a character, but that's been more the story and the character affecting me in my life here than helping me write the story.

As for writing the story, for me, I feel like gradually more and more of it gets revealed. It's like an archaeological dig, and as more gets uncovered, then sometimes you go back and reinterpret, and the story changes. ... sometimes, anyway, it feels like that...

I'm looking forward to what the voices tell you.

[skogkatt]

I really like the archaeological dig idea. That rings true for me. I think part of my learning to listen to the voices, is trying to carefully uncover the story from underneath the layers of rubble and dirt, making new guesses about the true story as I go.