Writing about Writers

[Lucifer_Carroll]

What are your opinions on writing about writer characters?

Personally, I despise doing it since in my college days, we had to read nothing but "new" experimental stories featuring a writer nearly exactly the same as the author of the story. Everytime it was presented as fresh and innovating and the plot ended up being devoured by psuedo-intellectual self-worship. And beyond that it just seemed too easy...like a cop-out on character creation to keep from researching.

So I'm biased against it, but I was curious about what other people's opinions about it were and how you've possibly handled writer characters in your fiction in the past.

 

[nushu2]

Writing about a writer is a good recipe for a bad psycho-drama or a made-for-TV-movie. Hell, not even porn plots are based on porn actors. They say, "Write what you know", but using a writer as the main character smacks of a retarded imagination.

Having said that, I'm working on one now. Seriously, except it's supposed to be humourous.

 

[CharleyH]

What are your opinions on writing about writer characters?

Personally, I despise doing it since in my college days, we had to read nothing but "new" experimental stories featuring a writer nearly exactly the same as the author of the story. Everytime it was presented as fresh and innovating and the plot ended up being devoured by psuedo-intellectual self-worship. And beyond that it just seemed too easy...like a cop-out on character creation to keep from researching.

So I'm biased against it, but I was curious about what other people's opinions about it were and how you've possibly handled writer characters in your fiction in the past.

Writers are egoists. As is anyone who thinks they are good at their game - authors are not alone. So take a different road, and write about a writer who NEVER gets published, or who only gets published on freebie sites.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Having said that, I'm working on one now. Seriously, except it's supposed to be humourous.

Ha ha, me too. Sort of a self-satire.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

"Write what you know"... I've heard that from a lot of people, and I guess it must work for some. But I can't write a good story about the inside of a bar, or drinking too much, or having a shitty job. I can only add those things as fine details. My best story on here is "...Frankenstein". I've never been married, nonetheless lost a wife, and I've never had children before. One of my better liked stories off this site was about senior citizens, written from thier point of view, and I'm 28.

That rule has always bugged me, simply because the type of story I write and read simply doesn't ground well into reality, though they can be very realistic if done well.

As for stories about writers... They get old, but Bag of Bones was excellent.

Q_C

 

[The_Fool]

Writers are egoists. As is anyone who thinks they are good at their game - authors are not alone. So take a different road, and write about a writer who NEVER gets published, or who only gets published on freebie sites.

Vonnegut...

 

[rgraham666]

I've done it a few times.

According to my feedback, the stories were all right.

 

[carsonshepherd]

mine's about someone who writes bosom-heaving historical romances and all his friends laugh at him, but envy his cool car...

 

[nushu2]

mine's about someone who writes bosom-heaving historical romances and all his friends laugh at him, but envy his cool car...

Sounds good. No chance of crossover. Mine's a spoof on Stereophile-type reviewers so I get to use a lot of inappropriate adjectives (airy, liquid transparent) to describe and compare the two women in his life.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Sounds good. No chance of crossover. Mine's a spoof on Stereophile-type reviewers so I get to use a lot of inappropriate adjectives (airy, liquid transparent) to describe and compare the two women in his life.

Oh, and then he gets kidnapped by a dasing, roguish pirate captain that he hates at first, and then falls in love with and they end up living happily ever after on a Carribean island....

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Charaters are characters. Writing is a legit profession for a character to have and perhaps the easiest to bring to life as you can understand the deeper emotional travails of a writer.

that said, i don't usually use an author as a character. Not sure why.

 

[CharleyH]

Vonnegut...

Really? Did not know, never read. Too cool. As I always aspire ... nothing ex nihilo

 

[yui]

"Write what you know"... I've heard that from a lot of people, and I guess it must work for some. But I can't write a good story about the inside of a bar, or drinking too much, or having a shitty job. I can only add those things as fine details. My best story on here is "...Frankenstein". I've never been married, nonetheless lost a wife, and I've never had children before. One of my better liked stories off this site was about senior citizens, written from thier point of view, and I'm 28.

That rule has always bugged me, simply because the type of story I write and read simply doesn't ground well into reality, though they can be very realistic if done well.

As for stories about writers... They get old, but Bag of Bones was excellent.

Q_C

But do you think that you do "write what you know" in an emotional sense? We all write about love and hope and betrayal and isolation and fear and anger, etc, because that is what we've experienced on some level (if not in the exact same manner, or series of events, as our characters).

I've always thought you had to feel it, know it, to write it well. Not the actual acts, so much, but the feeling. Isn't that writing what you know, mebbe?

And I like "The Dark Half" better.

As for writing about writers, that would require a plot, so I haven't so far.

 

[The_Fool]

Really? Did not know, never read. Too cool. As I always aspire ... nothing ex nihilo

One of Kurt Vonnegut's characters was Kilgore Trout, an unemployed science fiction writer that was a parody of himself. His (Kilgore's) stories were published with porn titles and big-titted women on the cover.

 

[JamesSD]

The entertainment industry

People writing about what they know is why so many hollywood movies are set in Southern California and somehow deal with the movie buisiness.

It often ends up feeling like a cop-out, but it can be done well. I liked Adaptation, for example.

 

[nushu2]

Was there any link between Kilgore Trout and Theodore Sturgeon besides meeting at a party?

 

[nushu2]

Oh, and then he gets kidnapped by a dasing, roguish pirate captain that he hates at first, and then falls in love with and they end up living happily ever after on a Carribean island....

Shit. Now I'll have to rewrite.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Writers are interesting enough to write about? At length? Hours, days, weeks, months in front of a keyboard, interspersed with snack runs, jobs, walking the dog, housekeeping, and lazing around the house, er, um, battling writer's block?

Maybe if it's all done naked...



No, I've never written about writers. They're just people, too, right? Is the story you tell about them engaging regardless? Remember Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday"? They were newspaper reporters, news writers. The writing is featured, either via dictation or we see them typing. There's nothing pseudo-intellectual about it, and the depth of their self-involvement is played for comedy. It's well done. Go watch it. It'll be fun.

 

[CharleyH]

One of Kurt Vonnegut's characters was Kilgore Trout, an unemployed science fiction writer that was a parody of himself. His (Kilgore's) stories were published with porn titles and big-titted women on the cover.

Big tits? hehehe

 

[English Lady]

I've got one story that is about an author -she's a virgin erotica writer. The story doesn't centre around her and her writing, it's a bit of a medical romance with a hunky, chunky phisiotherapist. "An unorthodox excercise" if anyone is wondering and I didn't find her particularl hard to write, it just seemed to work well in the context, someone who knows all the ins and outs but hasn't done much practically. It seemed to give her the edge she needed really

 

[impressive]

I haven't done it (yet). Don't see anything wrong with it, though.

 

[rgraham666]

On thinking about it, the fact that my character(s) were writers was rather tangental to the plot.

It was how they made their living, or expressed themselves. I could have made them just about anything else.

As was the case in my stories, it was the emotions that were important. As yui pointed out, that's something we all share.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Writers are usually people who think about the world.

I don't want to read a story about a guy who sits around thinking about things.

And QC--yeah, that business about "write what you know" is bullshit. I think what they mean is "write what you feel". If you can feel what it's like to be married or old or a Neptunian homosexual plumber, than you can write it.

And let's remember that Kilgore Trout also had a job selling aluminum storm windows. That's how he supported himself.

 

[TheEarl]

The lead in my novel is a writer. They have certain aspects of my personality in them, but they are also 1) female, 2) gay, 3) atheist, 4) fileld with a deep hatred of their family, none of which apply to me, so I feel safe in not being accused of a thinly disguised self-portrait.

However, I have actually written myself as a character before. I wrote/am still writing a Mary-Sue fanfiction in the 7th series of Buffy, with the Mary Sue being my rl persona. It's meant to be serious, with my character not a true Mary-Sue, as he creates far more problems than he solves.

It's actually very difficult to write yourself and not what you think you should be.

The Earl

 

[impressive]

Writers are usually people who think about the world.

I don't want to read a story about a guy who sits around thinking about things.

There's something to this.

The couple of times my characters have kinda sorta been writers (in the creative sense), they've had more extroverted careers (advertising, journalism) which would bring them into greater contact with the world.