How much truth do you put into your writing?

The subway rides, bar scenes, sightseeing trip in Hokkaido, and Manga drawing are mostly personal touches in my novel.

But I would have never pushed that button.

~Tom

Glad to see I'm not the only one.

lending truth to lies and myths on the subject.<<Hmmm. Wonder if that what Stephen King meant.

It isnt so much truth as it is A truth. I have always thought of it this way. Your characters ARE NOT you. YOU are not your characters. BUT, you MUST UNDERSTAND your characters. You must have a deep and intimate understanding of each and every character that you write, their experiences, their frame of mind, their thoughts, their reasoning, their logic, all of the psychology that goes into who and what they are. If you dont, your character wont be convincing. This is similar to how actors "Get into character." They become the character, in a sense. Of course, they dont actually become the character, and their original self must be preserved, but they integrate enough into the perspective to be able to convey a realistic version. That IS the truth that they create. This is why it is easier to model our characters based on ourselves or people that we know, or use real life events, changed or modified to fit. It is because that is what we know. That is what we already understand. The characters that are nothing like us, those are harder, because we must come to understand a truth that we do not already know. So, basically, each character and each situation must be a truth, even though it is, technically, a lie. For no character goes loved or hated if it is not within a realm of realism.

My point was in the psychology of it, not literal translations of metaphor and analogy. Superman was also Clark Kent, Spiderman was Peter Parker. It is in this, in their mannerisms, their thoughts, their feelings, their humanity, good or bad, that the connection is made, because that is what people identify with. The supernatural does not do without the element of realism. Even aliens on Star Trek have a decidedly human element. We route for Ripley on Alien because of the infinitesimally unlikely, yet significant (in our minds) possibility of ending up in her position. Even the quirky, unlikeable, or even villainous traits of a character can be identified with. It is only through this identification that the character can be hated or loved. Contest it all you want, but the fact of the matter is, THAT is the truth, it is the realistic elements that that draws us to a character, and that is why Stephen King speaks of the truth in the lie, the Peter Parker in the Spiderman.

I would say that the exaggeration brought by comic book characters, in their disguise modes, makes the notion that "real" people are boring more palatable. In a broad sense, the style extant in American literature across all genres that is "naturalism" is a hoax for the agenda-driven author to pretend he is giving the reader "reality" when he is in fact giving no such thing. In contrast, somewhat in reaction to naturalism, neo-romanticism and surrealism, carries with them a style a kind of honesty in purpose and have given to literature real art by embracing idiosyncrasy (or "the best" particularly in romanticism) and a purpose-driven story that is transparent rather than phoney as it is in naturalism.

Moreover, I contest the notion that character "traits that can be identified with" is something important, but rather it is the artful means to transport the reader's mind to understand traits that cannot be identified with, some being that which one is not, is important and makes for  a great story. In the end, even for commercial purposes, hating or loving a character is unimportant, but instead it is in having interesting, purpose-driven characters. It cannot be that a "mother" character who likes to bake cookies and never has an unkind word for anyone has any particular purpose for an author or reader except to operate cheaply and at a low intellectual level through stereotypes.

For one thing, you are missing the point that we all ought to be referring to writing as a novelist or short-story crafter or essayist, not a hack movie/TV writer. I'd say exactly what has happened to American literature, to contribute to its downfall as any kind of art form, is that authors are thinking like only so much as contributors to TV/movies and not as the sole creator of a product that is and ought to be always very different from movies. The novel can afford to be more complex and heavily crafted than anything put on film, and the rule of thumb  since novels have been adapted for movies, is the better the book, the worse the movie,  for something, and often  so many things, have to be left out to make a movie. Maybe it is true for the commercial product of the movie is that it is only so much can be devoted to any one character and all which MUST be identified with, but movie studios have had a history in making the flop, probably predicted so much as a flop -- the artful flop having a different approach -- so long as the studio's annual balance sheet is in the positive. Those flops, I guess, are not anything you have seen or care to see, but from time to time the "low-budget" film does make it commercially. Something by David Lynch comes to mind. Tell me with which character in Mulholland Drive is a normal "real" person is supposed to identify?

Second,  "The SITUATION may not be real, but the FEELINGS are . . " is just so much gibberish on the tropic of truth written into fiction, for no one including me has suggested that fiction contains anything that is not really 'not real' in toto, but rather from what truth can an author draw to make fiction, and I am saying that such truth, feelings or situations, is always contextual and not classifiable as something "which can be identified with." What you can identify with may not be something I can identify with, so how is the author wrong in not choosing me as a target audience, except, perhaps, in a bean-counting way?  Sometimes it is that a real person is simply boring and sometimes a real person has a disjunction between events and his feelings that any normal person will not identify with -- by Bret Easton Ellis, for example.

Third, I disagree with the premise: "This is because we MUST identify with it on some level in order to care . . " because "identifying" and "caring" might be subordinate to anything else the author wishes to convey, and I think perfectly rightfully so.   Both in the novel and the movie American Psycho what is it that we're suppose to identify with and/or care?  Victims of senseless murder, in some sense, possibly, but to think that was the point of the story is to completely miss the point of the story.

@ Charles
1: Your inability to understand analogies is not my issue, and it will only hold you back in life. I was presenting a concept that is not exclusive to movies, but was an EXAMPLE that is prevailent throughout all works of fiction. Your ignorance, I am afraid, will not be curable regardless of how much logic I present you with, and it will only work as a detriment to anything you write.

2. It was not gibberish. You have absolutely no understanding of what you speak of. You can identify with many things that you are not in a 3rd party fashion. You can identify with the victim and the villain even if you have been neither, because they are both rife with human feelings and the inner workings of the human mind as well as analogous situations and circumstances to which you can relate.

3. Yes, you identify with through your fears, through your empathy, sympathy, thoughts, and many other, more subtle aspects.

@ TirzahLaughs

YES YES YES. You get it. You understand. That is what it is all about, the truth, a truth, within a lie. Thank you. I appreciate your reply.

Dude everything you say is borderline retarded. I dont direct my argument towards your points because you arent making logical arguments. If someone were to tell you that Christmas trees have feelings and then ask you to argue against it, you couldnt, because they arent presenting an argument, but an opinion based on nothing, which is the case we have here. You spout gibberish with absolutely no understanding of the concepte, principles, or psychology that we (the rest of us) are discussing.

On top of that, you have not presented me with logical argumentation against a single one of my arguments. It is the equivelency of telling me that I am wrong because potato, with a few big words that you dont understand thrown in. We are not in the midst of a real argument (hows that for realism ?), but a lopsided conveyance of concept and thought versus an inability to understand that concept and thought. It is not possible to argue away sheer ignorance.

I have read plenty of novels, and have written one myself (a novel, not a novella), and, even if I hadnt, what I am saying is still factual. Complain about how normal is boring all you want (even though the word normal hasnt been said by me a SINGLE time throughout our discussion, which shows how little your comprehension levels are (which, btw is a large part of why this discussion has proceeded thus far. You think I am arguing that normal and boring should be every character's M.O., yet I am saying nothing of the sort. I am speaking about how you connect the abnormal to the normal, and you simply have no grasp whatsoever of what I am saying. I assure you, it is literally as if I am arguing with a potato.)), and enjoy writing about a superhero meteorite in the asteroid belt, which has no feelings or thoughts or characteristics or anthropomorphization whatsoever (which is about the only thing that you could write that doesnt adhere whatsoever to the principles I am conveying. As I said, there has never been a main character without some level of anthropomorphization).

The fact of the matter is that people must identify with something on some level if they are to care about it. Arguing against this is futile, as it is a fact. Period. Period period period. Argue all you want in the most ignorant and unhelpful of fashions, but it will still remain a fact. Argue that red and green are the same color and that dirt is tasier than doughnuts. The facts will remain facts.